Thursday was a walking tour adventure with our chief critic, Nick. I don't think any of us knew exactly what he'd be getting us into! First we took the bus from L'argo Argentina (more commonly known to us as CAT SANCTUARY because it is an excavated ruin infested with cats, and there is a little group that takes care of them and you can go pet them) to the international area, kinda like a Roman China town. We peeked into a huge fresh market that I want to go back to! Then we walked to a park to an ancient aquaduct/shrine ruin, Palazzo Vittorio. We started heading down what was the "city road" for the Roman republic - using our trusty Nolli maps (haha...ha...ha). The Nolli map is from the 1700s, so is quite outdated but very beautifully created. We stopped in a church, then got to see the crypt in San Martino, which was pretty awesome. Might I add that since Nick is an architect...most of our touring has been architecture-based, which is a lot to take in for us illustration and painting majors. Of course it is super interesting, but a ton of information to handle all at once! Also he power walks. Fast.
After the crypt, which maybe I should explain is not where the church keeps its dead bodies (that's in the floor in the main altar area), but is used more as a storage space, so there was a ton of ancient stones and fragments from sculptures and things just left down there. But anyway, with Nick's CRAZY AWESOME CONNECTIONS, we got to go into the Roman Forum, in the the Nerva (?) area!! No one is usually down there, and we had a lot of time to just wander, sketch, and absorb where exactly we were. Still feels unreal. Everything here is so surreal! What is my life right now! For dinner, Astrid, Mariana, Alma (my new studio mates!), William, Christina, and I got dinner at a restaurant...with a name...I can't remember. Christina took us there, and it was soooo good. I had pasta carbonara, the real way. In the US carbonara is pasta covered in cream sauce with peas and bacon. The italian way is when the pasta first comes out, while it is still hot, they put parmesan and a raw egg in it, so the heat from the pasta cooks the egg and makes a sauce with the cheese. Then they add pancetta, which is pork belly, which is basically bacon.
Friday was quite the adventure. We were split into groups of 4, and each given a list like a scavenger hunt, that would take us from one end of Rome to another. By walking. Yeah. Take a second to let that sit in. First we (Alma, Hamed, Eda, and I) took a bus to Porta Maggiore in the very eastern (or southern?) end of Rome. The clues were mostly numbers from the Nolli map, which is incredibly difficult to decipher, since a lot of the roads either don't exist anymore or have been built over or added to and...yeah, we cheated with my modern map a lot. We were doing really well for the first few...we crossed through "aqueduct city", which was a long wall of aqueducts, then to the church of San Croce. The next thing we had to find was a Roman tomb that is now...an orange tree in an apartment complex. (Thanks, Nolli.) Next was the clue...."FASSI...el palazzo de FREDDO!!!" Or, the cold palace. After asking a few people directions to the cold palace, it became obvious that was a clue, not the place. And so we stumbled upon FASSI, the first gelataria in Italy. Pretty cool. Except it was closed, so we could not get any gelato. We skipped the next clue because we really could not figure it out, unfortunately.
This is when we got lost and started walking in what felt like infinite circles, only to find out that we had been in the right place the first time. Might I add that our last clue was a specific place at noon, and we were under the impression that we had to finish by then, so we were rushing like mad and not really taking everything in like we were evidently supposed to be doing. But next we had to take the country road - remember earlier I said we took the city road? this was a parallel route that used to go through farms and villas instead of the city - to the university, then cross a pedestrian bridge across the forum. And this is where we became hopelessly frustrated. After walking for 4 hours, relying on the Nolli map that was strangely inaccurate around the Forum, we just got lunch to refuel. Then it was time to find the Arch of Titus - well, we found an arch that we suspected was Titus, walked around more, only to learn that it was indeed Titus. Check! Next - "follow the stations to Bonaventura." This one was a little confusing. We have to actually be inside the Forum, we learned. Which costs like $14, and was already closed when we figured out this clue. Oh well. We'll go back!
Next was "Where is Geta?" with a corresponding number on the Nolli map. The route took us past Circo Massimo, where the Romans held their chariot races and other games. Pretty awesome. We found the gate, still don't know where Geta is though haha. It was just a gate attached to a church, though there must have been something more. Nearing the end of our list, kinda, was "put your hand in the drain cover", which we found out was the Mouth of Truth, a huge stone circle with a face carved into it. You stick your hand in it, and if you are an honest person you're fine, but if you are a liar it will bite your hand off. Haha! So we stuck our hands in the stone mouth, and came out unscathed :) Then we got to take a nice stroll along the Tiber river at sunset, looking for the ancient port. I need to add here that we had been walking since 8 AM, and it was now about 4 PM. Very exhausted, but the river is beautiful at sunset. We crossed the river into Trastevere, found our next clue, which was an old cinema. And the last few clues took us into downtown Trastevere, one of my favorite places so far. It is so perfect there. We couldn't find the last three, and were incredibly frustrated/burnt out, as it was around 6 pm by now, and so decided to call it a day, get gelato, and continue on Monday.
And so ends a 10 hour walk across Rome. It was quite an intense experience, but I had a great group and in retrospect it was an unforgettable and crazy adventure. Tomorrow (actually TODAY, but I wrote this last night. Will update about the rest of orientation in a couple days!) - another architecture tour with Nick.
No comments:
Post a Comment