Rome: November 16: A Day of Culture (and Rain)

Last night we were too tired to post, having eaten dinner at the Roman hour.

Yesterday morning Vibe wanted to visit Santa Maria Maggiore which we had already seen so she took off at 9 and Cathy and Fernando, being such good Catholics, accompanied her.  Poor Penny stayed home and did the dishes.  Cathy was able to pick up a plastic figurine of a baker for her Christmas pesebre, as well as fill out some "intentions" for Pat Horomanski, in case we don't make it back to St. Peter's.

Since we were close to another ancient church, Santa Prassede, we decided to go looking for it.  If we hadn't known where it was we would have walked right past it since it looks like any other old building on the street, the front entrance being very small and discreet.  Inside it is quite a large church, extending left into the interior of the city block.  It has some nice ancient mosaics in one of the side rooms and Vibe noticed a poster advertising an organ concert at 7 in the evening, conveniently after the organ concert we had planned to attend at 5 at Santa Maria degli Angeli.

Quirinale Piazza with Castor & Pollux

But we had to get back to pick up Penny and head over to the Presidential Palace on the Quirinale Hill (the highest one in Rome), which is only open to the public on Sundays.  The President was going to show us his digs, the ones he got from the Pope.  Pope Gregory the 8th had built it in 1583 as a summer residence.  When the papal states were overthrown in 1870 it became the residence of the Italian king, and when the monarchy was abolished it 1946, it became the residence of the President.  The entrance still refers to the pope and Fernando thinks they should get rid of that sign...

As are so many things in Rome, the palace is over-the-top baroque, which is not very appealing to us.  But we can't expect them to have had our sensibilities, can we?

The line for the Quirinale palace
with an Italian in Petroleum Green

The main reason Penny was visiting the palace was that they had a free-for-seniors concert at 11:50 am in the Pauline Chapel, featuring a piano and violin playing Poulenc and Beethoven.  Actually there were two young ladies named Francesca that did the playing.  In any case, we felt like real Italians, since there weren't many tourists there, except for this one gentleman in the line with a suitcase and backpack.  Yes, there was a line but it moved quickly and although we had to visit the palace first, we made quick work of it and arrived at the concert in plenty of time.

Then, since it was close to the palace, we went to the Hans Memling exhibit across the piazza.  Hans Memling was a Flemish painter who did a lot of commissions for Italian bankers and merchants living in Flanders during the 15th century.  It was an interesting, well-documented exhibit.  When we came out of the exhibit it was still not raining so we decided to walk down into the Centro Storico to have lunch and see some churches, instead of going back to the apartment.

Eating our Paninis

We stopped at an "organic" sandwich shop and had paninis on fresh pizza bianca.  They slice the long pizzas lengthwise, then slice a horizontal opening where they lay the prosciutto and other toppings.  I had prosciutto with puntarelle, which are in season now.  I had seen these bitter greens in the markets but didn't buy them since I didn't know what to do with them.  They were slightly bitter but not overwhelmingly so, not like the Italian chicory I planted in the garden one year!

As we were finishing our paninis, the big drops started falling and from then on, our walk wasn't as pleasant.  We stopped by the Trevi Fountain, which is being restored, and threw our little coins into the temporary fountain.  There were lots of tourists and a bunch of little shops, including a Pinocchio shop with lots of wood items for children.

Tossing Coins into the Trevi Fountain

Penny and Vibe with Pinnocchio

Vibe had left her umbrella in the apartment so we only had 3 small umbrellas for the 4 of us.  The cloud-covered sky made the interiors of the churches so dark that one could barely make out the paintings on the ceiling.  This was a big disappointment at Santa Maria sopra Minerva because the ceiling is supposed to be a brilliant blue with stars.  Everything was a murky gray with spotlights shining down in your eyes instead of up to illuminate the art.

Since it was raining so hard I decided to skip Saint Ignatius and only go to El Jesu, also Jesuit and which holds the tomb of St. Ignatius.  Again it was too dark to read the signs and the boxes where you donate a euro to illuminate the scene were turned to the wall and didn't work.  We looked like a bunch of wet cats and dogs and were not appreciating any of these churches so decided to find a bus home.

Fortunately finding a bus this time was very easy, we sploshed quickly over to the Largo Argentina and caught the #40 express that arrived at the same time.  No seats to speak of, of course, and we were lucky we could squeeze in.  Then the problem was to find our stop when we couldn't see out of the fogged up windows.  Italian buses, unlike other buses in the civilized world, do not announce or otherwise indicate the stops.  Since the #40 makes few stops, we ended up several blocks beyond the apartment but it was a lot better than walking.

Since we hadn't had gelato for a few days, Penny and I decided to stop at the VW Bus gelato place on our block and regain our strength.  Vibe and Fernando declined but perhaps wish they hadn't since it was a long time until dinner.  By now it was about 4:30 but black as night.  These winter days really have many fewer hours of light.

All that music, culture and religion had tired us out so we all took a nap after a spot of tea.  Then off again to get to the organ concert at Santa Prassede at 7 pm.  The organist was a young man from Poland who apparently felt blessed to be able to play the church organ.  There were very few people there - to be expected at a free classical concert, I suppose, even in Europe -- but it was quite enjoyable and he even played 4 encore pieces at the end.   It was hard to get him to stop!

Afterwards we showed Penny the small room of ancient mosaics that she had missed that morning and then we went looking for dinner, at an appropriately Roman hour.  We wandered down Via Urbana and up Via del Boschetto -- I forgot to mention that it had stopped raining when we were in the organ concert -- perhaps because he played one of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, although I can never remember which one.  The streets are in the Monti district so it is very hilly and paved with the large square black cobblestones typical of Rome.  Eventually we ended up at Taverna dei Monti, a Rick Steves recommendation near Via Nazionale.

We started out with Primi: I tried bucatini alla matriciana (a Roman specialty with tomato sauce), Vibe had spaghetti alle vongole (with clams), and Penny and Fernando had minestrone.  Then for the secondi Penny and Vibe had abbachio (roast baby lamb with potatoes), I had eggplant parmigiana and Fernando had tripe, which he said was very good.  We were all stuffed after two courses and swore we would never do it again!  Fortunately the proprietor brought us some limoncello and biscotti to renew our appetites!  No gelato for desert this evening!!