It’s a warm Tuesday afternoon as I write this, sitting in one of my many preferred caffè, alternating sipping on a pudding-like thick ciocolatta calda and a refreshing bottle of acqua frizzante. I’m full from my free but still disappointing cafeteria lunch, the like of which have not improved since my previous post, but I would feel awkward sitting at a table, a service which at this coffee shop costs but a half euro, without ordering something. And this is my first European hot chocolate, and I am enjoying it so far. It is a refreshing change from my usual cappuccino and my favorite shop’s cappuccino freddo; I’ve had one of each of those already today, and I don’t need any more espresso right now.
In case you’re concerned about my caffeine intake, don’t be. I’m in Rome, heart of the country with the best coffee in the world. I have a warm cappuccino and a croissant (here called a cornetto) before my 9:00 AM class each morning, and immediately after class I cross the Tiber River to one of the best caffè in Rome, the Bar della Cappuccino. It’s a five minute walk from campus, if you count waiting for the lights to turn at the crosswalks, and it has the most delicious drink I’ve had in my life: the cold cappuccino. Somehow, they make it better than any other caffè I’ve tried; there’s something special about this shop’s rich flavor and dark color that far surpasses any other. It’s sweet, as well, even though I don’t add sugar. I take my cappuccini here black (well, without extra milk or any sugar) unless it is subpar. If that’s the case, I drown it in sugar to mask the terrible taste, and the next time I order something different.
After I’m fully awake after my delicious coffee breaks, I either start writing for the day, go to the grocery store, or shop until lunchtime. Immediately after lunch, most days I go to a caffè, sit at a table, order, and write. This, of course, is what I am doing now. Between posts for two blogs, long letters to my best friend, and short stories for my creative writing class, I’m writing on average about 1,500 words a day. Not bad, not bad at all.
Of course, I’m in Rome, so I haven’t stuck to my average schedule every single day. I’m here for five weeks (four weeks to go!) and so I’m doing a little bit of sightseeing every few days. Tomorrow I’m headed to the Vatican for the first time; my friends and I are visiting St. Peter’s Basilica, the Vatican Museum, and the Sistine Chapel and I’ve been mentally freaking out in excitement for the chance to see masterpieces by Michaelangelo, da Vinci, Raphael, and many others up close and in person! If I wasn’t a music major and I enjoyed doing research more, I would be taking multiple art history classes. As it is, I’m content with reading my Rick Steves guide and supplementing it with internet searches.
In the meantime, I’ve already explored some of the most historic sites of Rome: I’ve marveled at the Pantheon, tossed a coin into the Trevi Fountain, climbed the Spanish Steppes, traversed the Piazza Novanna, explored the Roman Forums, and ventured inside the Colosseum. All of these were really, really fun, and I would try to visit them every week if there weren’t so many tourists taking up space!
Tourists are really the only thing I don’t really like about Rome right now, which sounds absolutely silly until you consider that for my stay here, I’m more than just an American student. I’m a student studying at a university in Italy for the summer, and I’m living in an apartment complex in the middle of Trastevere. It hasn’t taken me and my friends very long to feel like we belong here far more than the tourists that plague the streets. The shop owners recognize us in an inviting way reserved for near-Italian visitors; we blend in well after a week here, and slowly we’re fitting into the Roman culture around us.
I’m marveling as well at how quickly I’ve grown comfortable walking the streets here. The first few days, I rarely strayed across the Tiber; home was the small area between the residence and the campus, bridged by the Tiber river and the street of my school. Walking outside of this area, especially across the river, still felt like I was venturing into a very foreign country. But after a week, and a few hours spent exploring most of Trastevere by wandering around looking at shops down whichever street I pleased (but always keeping track of the location of the river), I’ve expanded my boundaries. I can cross the river with ease now, although I don’t do it very often yet. Rome is slowly becoming a giant-city home.
The traffic still is terrible, but I’m slowly getting used to it. Part of my difficulty adapting to it, I believe, lies in my upbringing in a college town lacking in huge population, manic drivers of this intensity, and a mass public transport system. Rome is a large city similar, I hear, to Boston and New York City, both places where I would be just as uncomfortable in relation to traffic, at least for a while. So my alarm is almost understandable.
In addition to exploring Rome, I spent this weekend traveling in the area of Campania. I got to see the ruined city of Pompeii, the touristy but beautiful island of Capri, and Napoli, the home of pizza. (I got to see very little of Naples, but I did get some very delicious pizza and a tasty fruit tart afterward.) Pompeii was fascinating, but it would have been more enjoyable if we could have explored it in small groups as opposed to in a giant tour. But I did learn that, interestingly, one of the best preserved buildings, in regards to the art still on the walls, was clearly a brothel. Not able to hear the tour leader well before entering the building, I was startled by the detailed paintings on the walls. In Capri, I went on a chair-lift to the highest point on the whole island, which happened to be the very top of an extremely tall mountain. Having never been skiing, I had no idea what to expect from the chair-lift, which suspended me several hundred feet above the ground and rocky shore of the ocean. I was mildly freaked out before getting on the lift, but I had three of my new good friends with me who all, having experience with this kind of thing, couldn’t understand why I would be freaking out about something so easy and calm.
They were totally right; once I was up in the air, the lift was slow (it took 13 minutes to get to the top of the mountain) and wonderful. I could see practically the whole island, and it was absolutely gorgeous! The white stone buildings became tiny roofs dotting a green, hilly landscape circled by clear blue ocean, and in the background through the fog and clouds stood a beautiful volcano. Sadly, I didn’t get a whole lot of pictures from this “flight” because my camera died right before I reached the top, but my other friends captured photos for me, and the sight was breathtaking. The chair-lift up and the top of Capri were probably the most enjoyable things of the whole weekend trip.
Little else occurred of importance; I bought a dress in Sorrento to wear to the opera, I bought a “lava-rock” bracelet in Pompeii because I wanted a souvenir from there, I attempted to make garlic bread but just buttered warm bread instead because cutting each garlic clove would have taken forever for eight people during our Thursday night pot-luck dinner, which is now a tradition but will be taking place tomorrow night, and I ate a bunch of tasty Italian food.
I’ve also been writing, and it’s wonderful. I love having so much free time to write, but it’s also very strange, because I’m so used to spending my days in a practice room. I miss my violin, which is encouraging, but it is nice having hours to myself. However, I don’t really know what to do with all my free hours; I spent two straight hours yesterday writing, and it felt like nothing. I wrote two detailed scenes and called it a day; if I’d used that to practice, I would have just gotten started! But I can’t help but miss my violin; I’m careful to stretch every day to keep my body limber, and I do my pencil-push-ups so my bow hand doesn’t completely fall apart when I get back. I’ve also been on the lookout for violin shops in Rome, and I’m planning an expedition to Cremona so I can visit the city where Stradivari, Amati, and Guarneri all built their violini famosi. I am content, here, though, writing all the time. I read the beginning of a short story yesterday by one of the other students in my class, and it was so excellent that it reminded me why I want to be a writer, and especially why I want to be an editor.
Well, after an hour and more than 1.5k words, I’d better bring this blog post to a close. I’ll update soon; I’ll try to before Saturday, as I’ll be wanting to gush about the Vatican and everything else.
Baci,
Giulia
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