Bella Roma

I met Mum and Dad by accident on the travelator in the airport, and together we took the bus to the Ryanair terminal (situated, as always, in the least convenient place on earth). We caught up on the goings-on of the last days, and started to think about all the things we were going to see in Italy – Rome, Florence, Pisa, and whatever else we could fit into the ten days I was there. I knew I wouldn’t get to see everything I wanted, but was hoping to make it to Florence at least to see Michaelangelo’s Davide.

First things first on touchdown we were picked up at the airport by Andrea, Dad’s colleague at the Universita di Roma. We drove down the highway at 140 kph, the three of us simultaneously worried and calmed by Andrea’s assurances that we weren’t really speeding that much, most people in Rome drive much faster than that. We drove to Andrea’s house where his wife Nicoletta had prepared a delicious authentically Italian dinner for us – she is a wonderful cook, and she shared some of her secrets with me – one of them being www.lacucinaitaliana.it. As well as being interesting and sensible people, Nicoletta and Andrea have two really sweet kids, Maria Theresa and Davide. They were so excited to see us – nothing like when I was a child. I used to hate it when my parents’ friends came over, and I would hide in my room until dinnertime, eat a silent meal with everyone, and make my excuses to get away as soon as possible. I just never knew how to relate to adults – they only asked boring questions about school and made judgements about everything you said or did (“A pretty girl like you should wear skirts more often dear” or “What do you mean you don’t like maths? It’s really useful” etc.). After they asked what grade you were in for the 10th time and criticised your wardrobe they went back to pretending you didn’t exist (natural adult attitude to non-biologically related children). Anyway Davide and Maria Theresa were great, and we got along just fine even though they didn’t speak any English or Spanish and my Italian is limited to “pizza”, “caffe latte” and “grazie”. If I spoke really slow Spanish or they spoke really slow Italian we could figure it out (with a lot of hand gestures). They got me Calvin and Hobbes books and were fascinated with my iPod. I even helped Maria Theresa once with her Italian grammar homework (hurrah for Latin being the root of so many languages!).

The next day we went to Palestrina, a village in the mountains which is older than Rome itself. Like many things in Rome it is old and beautiful but additionally has a museum which, among other fascinating pieces, has an amazing mosaic depicting the flooding of the Nile. We bought some fresh home made pasta at a pasticceria and took it home for lunch – it was incredible, just so tasty. Andrea and Nicoletta don’t live in Rome, but in Zagarolo, which I imagine is some kind of suburb in the outskirts. Anyway they have a house out in the sticks with an amazing view of lush verdant hills and trees. The house itself is kind of small by Australian standards, but a good size by European ones. What I love about it is (surprise surprise) that it’s totally crammed with books. Shelves of books in every conceivable space – some I don’t know how they reach. One day I’m going to have my own place and it’s going to be the same – wall to wall library.

The following days Dad and Andrea spent working while Mum and I explored Roma. We were staying in a rather nice apartment in a dodgy part of Rome (near Termini) so we were glad to get into some of the more salubrious areas. Pretty much first up was the Colosseum. The outside of it is cool and imposing, but to be honest the inside is a bit of a yawn. They don’t let you see the really good bit where the gladiators used to be since September 11 in case someone wants to blow it up (like they couldn’t blow it up from the outside). There’s a really pretty arch just next to the Colosseum (can’t remember the name) which I found much more interesting than the Colosseum itself.

We saw different bits of the Foro Romano a few times (it’s soooo big) but I didn’t get to see the statue of Romulus and Remus being suckled by the she-wolf as we spent ages trying to find it and never could. Mum eventually found it somewhere after I’d already gone back to Dublin. We went to the Bocca della Verite and I stuck my hand in it just like Audrey Hepburn (who I was beginning to develop an unhealthy obsession with – if I said “Audrey Hepburn is so classy” one more time I swear my mother would have knocked me unconscious). We ate gelato next to the Fontana di Trevi (one of my favourite parts of Rome) and wondered at the sheer cheek of the Catholic Church appropriating a beautiful pagan temple (the Pantheon) and making it into another freakin’ church. By the way did you know Raphael is buried there? I didn’t. Another cool thing about the Pantheon – it has a hole in the roof. Apparently it’s really gorgeous when it rains. The Pantheon is basically an enormous dome with the big columns out the front (you know the ones). They constructed it by making a big pile of sand and building the dome around it. When they were done the Pantheon was full of sand that had to be evacuated, but being a lateral thinker, whoever was in charge of the construction had hidden coins in the pile, and advised the citizens that they could keep whatever they found. Bet it was empty in record time. We went walking in Villa Borghese (a big beautiful park in Rome) which has loads of statues of famous people from history (I got my picture taken next to Aleksandr Pushkin). We went to the Piazza d’Espagna and sat on the famous stairs. I could see myself as a teen hanging out there – it’s the Roman equivalent of the clocks at Flinders Street station. We had a glance in the windows on Via Condotti and sighed, wishing one day to be able to afford all that crap. Not to buy it of course, but imagine the things you could do if you had enough money to spend 2000 euro on a scarf? Nicoletta also showed us a small, totally unremarkable church save for one tiny detail – it’s home to a Caravaggio! It’s so weird, there’s so much art, history and culture in Rome you’re basically tripping over it. I bet half the Romans don’t even know that painting is there. The Roman point of view is unique – never before have I seen 19th century art in a modern art museum (though they did have some contemporary art too!). We found Michaelangelo’s sculpture of Moses in another “blink and you’ll miss it” type church.

Of course one of the most stunning things we saw in Roma was the Vatican. If you know me at all you’ll know I’m not a big fan of the Catholic Church – I’m not against God, Jesus, Mary, or any of that (though I’m not a believer) but organised religion really pisses me off and the Vatican is a prime example of why. I just can’t fathom how anybody thinks it’s right that Catholic churches all pass around the plate for ordinary people to contribute what they can to help the poor and the Church, while the pope builds up a private collection of priceless artworks and houses them in enormous wings (if your house has wings, that’s a pretty sure sign you’re too filthy rich for your own good) of buildings with marble floors and gold-leaf rooves. I’m no communist, but that is ridiculous. On the upside, greedy and despotic religious and political leaders are a tourist’s goldmine. Even better, Nicoletta’s friend is an official Roman tour guide who agreed to take us around the place. We got to the museum at 7:30 (well, ok, we were a little late) for the museum opening at 7:45. Actually it only opens at 7:45 for official Roman tour guides – for the plebs (of which there was already a queue at least 20 metres long) it opened at 8:30. I was hopping and jumping to get to the Sistine Chapel but to get there we walked through what seemed like miles and miles of beautiful hallway bedecked in ancient Roman and Greek sculptures and artefacts. Rosana explained that these artworks, as they were bought as part of private collections of each of the popes and not for public museums, were collected simply on the basis of aesthetics and not for any political, historical or archaeological significance. There were hundreds, possibly thousands, collected by many popes over many years. The floor was unbelievable – five or six different colours of marble (some stolen from the Colosseum and other pagan Roman sites) making delicious curving patterns, fleur-de-lis, and other shapes for what seemed like at least a kilometre. We walked through a hallway with intricate maps of different parts of Italy painted on the walls – startlingly accurate for their time. Past a dark hallway covered in stunning Flemish tapestries, past another hallway with antique furniture. Actually thinking back it was slightly “Charlie and the chocolate factory”-esque! The most surreal part of this adventure was the fact that the three of us were alone in the halls of wonder, the only sounds the padding of our sneakers, Rosana’s low murmured explanations of the meaning or history of the artworks, and the occasional sharp intake of breath from my mother or I.

Eventually we made it to the end of the halls and, again thanks to Rosana, took a short cut down some service stairs or something and suddenly, without warning, we were there – the Sistine Chapel. This was a serious “sharp intake of breath” moment. There were three other tourists and another tour guide sitting in there, but other than that and one surly security guard we were all alone. The chapel was hauntingly silent; Rosana let us gaze for a few minutes in the quiet before she began to explain. It’s stunning – even though you can’t make out the fine detail as the roof is so high, the painting is amazing and poor Michaelangelo ruined both his back and his sight completing it. He didn’t mind though - in his mind he was not working for the pope but directly for God. The chapel does not have very much natural light so he only had a few hours a day in which to work – when the sun went to bed down he went to mix colours for the following day. I didn’t know this before but the roof actually depicts the story of Genesis. It begins at one end of the chapel and continues to the altar, with the famous panel of God giving life to Adam pretty much in the centre. Apparently this was not the original idea the pope had for the ceiling but in the usual artistic ‘you can’t mess with divine inspiration” way Michaelangelo just painted his own thing. And as we can all see, Mikey was right, the ceiling is awesome (in the literal sense of the word) and we’re still all crazy about it centuries later. In fact, I was kind of lucky to see it now after the restoration (which took 10 years!). I saw a picture of the ceiling pre-restoration and it was very grey and murky with much of the detail obscured. Obviously after centuries of dust, candle burning and probably more than one post-religious crisis cigarette smoked by popes or cardinals, you can understand how the roof got a little dirty. Another thing I never knew about the Chapel – the roof is not the only Michaelangelo painting in it! The back wall behind the altar is covered in an enormous painting by Michaelangelo, completed after the ceiling and with even brighter colours (as he got paid more this time around). This one skips straight from the beginning to the end – from Genesis on the ceiling he decided to paint Judgement Day on the wall. Michaelangelo was a little more cynical and disillusioned by this time and this is not a particularly happy or hopeful painting, although there is some hope in it. There are also many stories about this painting including Michaelangelo painting one cardinal he didn’t like in it in hell with a snake biting his balls – what a way to be immortalised in history! Just goes to show, don’t piss off an artist. Apparently this cardinal took umbridge to the way Michaelangelo was depicting people without their clothes (bloody prude). The pope sided with Michaelangelo though, and the cardinal was left with poison balls. Ha ha!

We looked at the ceiling for ages and then Rosana took us back through more hallway with more unbelievable artefacts and left us at the entrance of the museum, with explicit instructions of how to get to San Pietro. She also told us lots of stories about the basilica using a guidebook so that we wouldn’t miss out on the history of the place. It was so generous of her to give up her time to show us around, get up early in the morning and take a whole morning to give us a private tour and she absolutely refused to be paid! I hope that she will get some cosmic reward for her generosity – good people deserve good things to happen to them. I got so much more out of my visit thanks to her vast and deep knowledge of Roman history. Mum and I made our way back through the long hallways to the Chapel – but what a different experience this time! Instead of walking calmly down the passages taking in the beauty, we were jostling through the crowds, unable to see the sculptures very well let alone the floor, and thinking how lucky we had been earlier. However this time around they had opened another wing with mini-mosaics – these were so amazing and practically impossible to describe in words. Imagine a small pill-box, a circle say, 3cm in diameter. And imagine somebody (clearly with too much time on their hands) making a mosaic on the lid of this pill-box, with impossibly tiny, tiny, minute, miniscule pieces illustrating trees, chickens, landscapes – so detailed that even the people in them had eyes and other facial features. They have to be seen to be believed. Then we went into another recently opened room full of Raphael paintings. Flipping brilliant. They are a series of three – one depicting rationality, one faith, and one justice (I think). The three pillars of something. I can’t remember exactly. They were great anyway. Then some queueing, and walking, and San Pietro. To be honest I was less impressed with the basilica than the chapel – there is a certain point at which the level of opulence of a place ceases to amaze and starts to quite disgust me. San Pietro ran for that point, leapt over it, and kept racing along. It was bigger, showier and more lavish than the eyes could take in and the mind comprehend. The best thing in it was of course La Pietà, which you couldn’t really see properly as it has been kept behind a glass wall after some crazy went after it with a knife. Pity. In the postcards it looked dead brilliant. I also like Michaelangelo’s point of view regarding sculptures – he didn’t create them, the sculptures were trapped within the block of granite and he was simply working to get them free. What a wonderfully skilful rescuer he was!

Other than the sights I spent time hanging around with Mum and Dad, reading, trying to shake the cold I’d been carrying around for three weeks or so (I think I had finally got rid of it by the end) eating lots of delicious food (particularly gelato and espresso, yum) and relaxing. I actually didn’t do as much relaxing as I wanted to – Rome has a bit too much get up and go to spend your day lazing about, and I don’t think it’s physically possible for me to visit a new city and not do loads of sightseeing. You only have so much life and so many chances to see new things, so in my world you have to take as many chances as you can (without making yourself sick or crazy). Not to mention after so many weeks and months of cloud, wind, cold and rain in Dublin, I was loving spending time in t-shirt weather. Sunshine! Hurrah! It makes such a difference to your mood and motivation when the sun is shining. I didn’t do very much shopping – I only bought some Italian leather gloves (absolutely gorgeous and cashmere lined, which I immediately lost on my return to Dublin, goddamnit) and an Italian coffee maker, which doesn’t work so well on my electric stove top, but at least now I can have decent coffee at home (no more Nescafe, yay!). I was sad that Pisa and Fiorentina were no gos, but there’s plenty of time for me to go back and see them another time – it’s not like I’ll never go back to Italy, and now that I’ve thrown a penny into the Fontana di Trevi, it’s practically assured I’ll be back.

Saying goodbye to Mum and Dad was hard as usual, but actually by that point I was kind of ready to go home. I missed Dublin and my routine, I was tired from all the travelling and I needed a rest. I took the bus from Termini to Chiampino, which was an absolute zoo, and a totally chaotic one at that. All the check in desks had separate lines but in the crowd it was impossible to tell which line led to which desk; the last thing I needed was to queue for two hours to find I was in the line for Amsterdam or Malaga (although they wouldn’t have been bad places to end up). Eventually after asking a million people and navigating myself and my backpack through the multitudes, I found my queue, stuck on the iPod and waited. After check-in and security, the interminable wait until boarding which I filled buying and consuming an indigestible sandwich and buying some Italian spirits at the duty free (soooo much cheaper than Ireland). Then finally the plane back to Dublin. What a relief to be home! A lovely hot shower, and bed, preparing to go back into the fray punctually at 9 the next morning.

The Real City

Practically everyone told me not to bother with Madrid. It's boring, they said, and not very pretty. I figured I had better see it anyway, being the capital of Spain and as a rather large city there must be something to do, even if it's hanging out in Starbucks drinking chai tea lattes all day.

By the time we got off the bus from Bilbao it was well into the night, and we hopped straight on the metro to Gran Via, where our hotel was. We came up out of the underground station and immediately my spirits soared as we looked out onto the avenue - I felt as if I had stepped out of the subway in NYC onto Broadway. Immediately to our left an enormous theatre emblazoned with billboards for "The Producers", all the stores and restaurants were still open despite the fact it was past midnight, and the whole place was buzzing and humming. We dumped our bags in the hostel and tried to drag ourselves out on the town for the night - but in the end decided it would be better to rest our weary heads, be bright eyed the next morning, and really go to town the next night, which would be Halloween and loads of fun. We got chatting to an English couple who had just moved to Madrid; they didn't speak a word of Spanish and were looking for work and a place to live. That gave me hopes for my eventual move to Spain - if you can find work without a word of Spanish then I certainly shouldn't have a problem!

The next day we "saw Madrid" and on route stopped into loads of stores - I went mad shopping as clothes are crazy prices compared to Dublin! Even Julia was in heaven as everything is incredibly expensive in Norway. The architecture in Madrid is beautiful and interesting, although not quite as great as Barcelona. It's hard for a city so old to be ugly. We went to the Reina Sofia, where my mission was to see the Guernica up close and personal. I had seen it before in pictures but obviously it just doesn't compare at all to the real thing. There's something magical about seeing a painting that someone has made with their own two hands, a canvas which has been pored over for months, taking shape from a white sheet piece by piece until it becomes a masterpiece that can move emotions just by looking at it. A reproduction can only be a shadow of the original. Plus the Guernica is enormous. And it is a real masterpiece - the sheer terror, the uncertainty, the gore and destruction leaps out of the canvas and makes you feel what the people of Guernica must have felt that day.

Aside from the Guernica there were also loads of other fabulous pieces, notably Miró and Kandinsky who are among my favourites, and lots more I can't remember. One installation in particular that I loved was by an artist whos name I also can't remember; it was an enormous metronome (bigger than me) and on the top of the pendulum was an eye. If you looked at the eye from the left of the metronome, it was open; if you looked from the right, it was shut. I began by walking from side to side watching the eye open and close, but soon found it was easier to stand directly in front of it swaying left to right. Thus although the metronome is perfectly still, it works by influencing the viewer to provide the regulated movement. Brilliant.

We stayed until the gallery closed, and I got lost on the way back to the reception (it's a big building, and quite scary when it's empty) and then back to the hostel to prepare for Halloween night. We met two Yankee girls studying Spanish in Seville, and the four of us got all pretty (none of us had costumes, but who cares, we just wanted to have a good time) and set off to the clubs. One of the girls we were with was totally into Spanish pop music, and was singing along to all the songs (which were cheesy as hell, just like the English ones), and they played "Gasolina", which I always love to hear as it reminds me of when I was last in Argentina. Later we set off to "La Latina" which is an area in Madrid with lots of bars and such for a drink with some guys that the American girls knew. They took us to a great club decked out in Halloween decorations and we danced the night away. Jules fell in love with one of the guys, and Jenny was talking to her man, while Dierdre and I amused ourselves for a while. In true Spanish fashion, we stayed out till all hours, and at about half six when we made it back to the hostel Jules and I went to San Gines, a famous chocolateria in Madrid, for chocolate con churros and to dissect the night that was. The place was packed from wall to wall and the staff couldn't serve everyone fast enough (at half six/seven am! I love Madrid!) but by some miracle Jules and I found a seat where we enjoyed our liquid chocolate and fried sugary dough (oh my god yummy). After we’d ingested obscene amounts of sugar and fat, we headed back to the hostel and tumbled into bed.

We woke up (I use the term loosely) later in the day to check out the Palacio Real, the old palace of the Kings and Queens of Spain. It was spectacular, I must admit, but running on about three hours of sleep I was incredibly blasé about what I was seeing – another tapestry, nice chair, cool throne, whatever. Afterwards I was tired and grumpy and so headed back to bed for the afternoon while Jules went to the Prado. I really wanted to check it out but in that state I wouldn’t have enjoyed it at all so I figured my time was better spent sleeping.

Somewhere in the mix there we went to Toledo, which is a couple of hours from Madrid. Toledo is an incredible little walled city which literally makes you feel like you’ve stepped back in time into a fantasyland of swashbuckling pirates, blushing maidens, duelling, chests of gold dubloons, and maps of deserted islands marked with an ‘X’. There are only two drawbacks – the stores sell nothing but overpriced souvenirs and (very expensive but real) swords; and the streets are so narrow, short and windy and the buildings are so tall that it is impossible to find your way around, even with a well-marked map. At one point we were searching for the cathedral (absolutely huge, beautiful, and full of priceless art) when we realised we had been circling it for the last 5 minutes. Toledo is well worth a visit though, if you can stomach the tourist-trappy aspect which is very hard to ignore.

Eventually our time in Madrid came to a close, Jules went to catch the bus to Valladolid from which she was going to London, and I went to Starbucks and spent the day drinking Chai Tea Lattes with a copy of "El Jueves". Normally I’m dead-set against Starbucks as a propagator of extremely bad coffee, but seeing as I was in Madrid, a city which reminded me so much of New York, being in Starbucks felt right somehow (although Starbucks coffee is deplorable, it’s a damn sight better than the filter stuff that you get everywhere else in the Big Apple). Then off to the airport to catch my flight to Roma. I’d never been to Italy before, and was practically trembling with excitement at the prospect of so much history, culture and art. I was also looking forward to staying in the same place for more than two or three days! My cold was proving impossible to shake and I badly needed rest and relaxation. But how could I relax when there was a new city to explore?

Basking in the Basque Country

San Sebastian - gorgeous beaches, delicious food, relaxing atmosphere - but very little to actually do. This suited me just fine as I just wanted to relax and the beautiful beach weather (26 degrees at the end of October...weird) meant we could stretch ourselves out on the fine yellow sand and absorb the relaxing warmth and harmful UV rays. The vista was as good as any you'd find in Hawaii, marred only occasionally by groups of naked, obese, middle aged men chatting. Skin hardened by the sun and tough as leather, they stood to allow the rays equal access to all parts of their bodies, save the small areas inadvertantly concealed by overhanging rolls of fat.

The San Sebastian highlights were - seeing Jules again after 11 months, lying on the beach, eating pastries, shopping, and the sun. Lowlights - customer service in Spain (uniformly abysmal, the waiters treat you as if you are something scraped off the bottom of a scummy barrell that's been sitting in the bottom of a damp cellar for 150 years), coffee with UHT milk and getting my hair cut. I hadn't cut it since last December and as I'd had such a brilliant haircut in Buenos Aires (Guille is a genius) I thought they'd do a better job in Spain than Ireland. They didn't. It's ok I guess, it doesn't look bad, but Guille gave my hair a certain je ne sais quoi that made it perfect even when I just got out of bed...I'll have to wait until I go back to BA before I can recapture that magic I guess.

We were staying in a pension in San Sebastian's old quarter, which, handily, is where all the bars are. We ate loads of pinxos (canapés basically) and drank plenty of cañas (beer) as we had no kitchen (glorious, glorious lack of facilities!). We must have looked like guiris (foreigners) as everyone was speaking to us in English! My friend Maria later told me it was because of the two telltale guiri signs: running shoes, and large bottles of water, both of which we had at any given moment.

We went on a day trip to Biarritz, which is basically just a French version of San Sebastian (better food and service, but more expensive). The whole Basque coast is incredibly beautiful, and the Basque language is funny (lots of "k"s and "x"s). Little Basque kids are so cute!

From San Sebastian to Bilbao, only for the morning to check out the Guggenheim. I love modern art and I was in my element checking out all the installations (one of which was made out of steam) and the building itself is a work of art. Bilbao looks clean and pretty, and it's a shame we didn't spend more than a few hours there, but we were anxious to get a couple of days in the capital city before I headed off to Roma and Jules left for London.