Rome Unvisited: November 2010

The Ponte Vecchio on a cloudy day

This update has taken me forever to get around to, and I'm starting to worry about how fast this semester is going by -- Never enough time! Last weekend was our trip to Florence. I had a lot of fun there, and obviously enjoyed seeing all the art, but I definitely prefer living in Rome. We stayed at a really nice bed & breakfast (sans the breakfast) right by the train station and S. Maria Novella. We were also very close to the Mercato di San Lorenzo, the Florentine open-air market famous for its leather goods. When we arrived, a few of us went to a weird American-style diner near the hotel, because we were starving and only had a couple hours to settle in and grab lunch. Kate had an Italian rendition of eggs benedict with some questionable hollandaise, William had french toast stuffed with prosciutto and mozzarella, and I had a 'bagel' with smoked salmon and cream cheese. It was kind of a funny place, but everything tasted good. We had a reservation at the Accademia that afternoon, so we headed in that direction via the Mercato. The David is pretty spectacular in person, especially with Michelangelo's Captives leading up to it along the hall. After leaving the museum, we fueled up with some gelato and climbed the 400-something steps to the top of the Duomo. It's a bit of a hike, but the view is worth the claustrophobia-inducing spiral staircases and passageways clogged with fellow sightseers. That night, we met Hanna's friend Mary who's studying in Florence for the semester and ate a (very) late dinner at a place called the Yellow Bar.

We got up pretty early the next day to grab cappuccini and cornetti at a caffè our intern Justin recommended from when he and Jessie were on the Kenyon program in Florence. It was a nice place for a quick breakfast right across from a good gelateria called 'Perché No!' We walked through the Piazza della Signoria and saw the Cellini Perseus and Medusa and the Giambologna Rape of the Sabine Women in the Loggia dei Lanzi. Then, of course, we took a stroll across the Ponte Vecchio (and looked longingly at the glitzy window displays) before meeting our group outside of the Uffizzi to pick up our tickets. Having never been inside the Uffizzi before, it was a lot of fun to wind my way through the various galleries and stumble upon SO many famous works. I especially enjoyed the Botticelli room, some of the Mannerist pieces (like Parmigianino's Madonna of the Long Neck), the Giotto and Cimabue altarpieces, the Medusa shield by Caravaggio, and one particularly nice Dutch still life. In our post-Uffizzi daze, we found our way to the Brancacci Chapel in S. Maria del Carmine, featuring a number of frescoes by Masaccio, as well as Masolino and Filippino Lippi. I really liked seeing Masaccio's Expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Jacob, William and I then walked to the Boboli Gardens, which are very expansive and lovely. We had fun wandering around there for awhile, although we were all in pretty goofy moods at that point. That night we had group dinner at a restaurant called I Raddi. It was very good, and included (surprisingly) the first soup I've had this whole semester -- a kind of cream of potato, but more textured, with croutons and olive oil. There was also a delicious steak and potato course (because you can really never have too many potatoes); for dessert, they served biscotti to dip in Moscadello, a sort of floral dessert wine.

We had a train at 3 o'clock the following day, so we really just wandered around and saw a few last sights in the morning, and then had a nice sit down lunch at a place Jessie recommended called the Osteria Belle Donne with the best mozzarella and prosciutto antipasto. All in all, a successful and fun weekend excursion. Another perk was that Kenyon sprung for Eurostar tickets (the newer/faster train line), which felt kind of luxurious -- case in point: the seats had individual touch-activated reading lamps!

Side-note: Tonight we had contemporary artist Dike Blair, who is currently a Rome Prize holder at the American Academy, come speak to our group about his work. He's a pretty big deal -- featured in the 2004 Whitney Biennial, and has shown at the NY Gagosian, and the Pompidou in Paris. He was interesting to listen to, and I enjoyed a good amount of his work he showed us from the 80s onward.