Where am I?

All right, all right, I know it’s been a while… but internet costs me 2 euro per hour so I’m not about to spend all my time and money blogging something hardly anyone reads!!! But now that I’ve bought an adaptor for my computer, I can type things up and then upload them in mere seconds. Aren’t you pleased?? But I don’t have a digital camera, so I won’t be able to take funny pictures and upload them like Anna. : ( (I’ll just have to wait until Anna comes and upload HER pictures!)

So. Matt and I departed May 26 for London, where we spent 5 lovely days in a serviced apartment left vacant by Matt’s friend Scott, who had, in fact, gone back to spend the week in San Fran. While there saw the sights and had some amazing dinners and drank a lot. I’ve decided London is a very livable city. On June 1, Matt poured me onto a 3:30am train to Gatwick Airport, and I caught a 7am flight to Rome. I have no doubt that Anna was in London at exactly the same time I was, but alas! didn’t know to meet up.

Once in Rome, I met up with Emily, who is a grad student in Vancouver also here for Latin. I met her because she saw my Craigslist posting begging for summer housing and wrote me and told me about Amy. OH! Yes, the pick up went without incident – Giofreddo, with blue cap white numbers 831, was there in his station vagon, and I had my copy of some London tabloid, and all was well. My room is in an apartment that is otherwise full of antiques, art books, paintings, and two old Italian ladies. Who knew? Angela, the landlady, is one of those Italian grandma-types who pushes her way through marketplaces and throws elbows, I’m sure of it. Elisabetta is I think a cook or cleaning lady – she does all the work, anyway, and she’s a bit younger. As for the art, I can’t say it’s good, but out of the THIRTY paintings on MY walls alone, there are four of the naked female form. Hmmm….

So I met up with Emily and, because our program has class 6 days a week and excursions on Sunday, we decided to hop up to Florence for the day (June 3 – the 2nd was a holiday and there were fireworks!). I got to visit all my old haunts: sandwiches at Antico Noe, gelato at Gelateria dei Neri, and Tornabuoni Beacci for prosecco on the rooftop garden. Yum! Oh yeah, and we saw stuff too – Palazzo Vecchio, Duomo and Baptistry, Santa Croce, San Spirito.

The next day we had a park adventure – yes, Rome has parks – but they’re really out of the way. We went to the Villa Borghese and the Villa Ada (by getting off at the godforsaken stop of Campi Sportivi and walking the long way round!), then we managed to make the Catacombs of Priscilla about half an hour before closing. It is now a monastery of Benedictine nuns, one of whom led the tour around in Italian (English language nun had already left). But hey, turns out this is where some of the earliest bits of Christian art come from, and I recognized a lot of the frescos from the first 10 pages of my Medieval Art book from sophomore year! (Yes, Anna, we can go.)

OK, I have to run off to my first lesson! Yikes!!