Semester Superlatives: Food

Best Dish: Risotto with artichoke and sun-dried tomatoes (at a bayside restaurant in Xlendi)
Favorite Pasta: Penne all'Arrabbiata from Insalata Ricca (Rome)
Best Roma Style Pizza: Margherita con Bufala from da Remo (Rome, Testaccio)
Most Interesting Pizza: Super Bufala from Dar Poeta.  The style of pizza is all this pizzaria's own, but it really is quite good.  (Rome, Trastevere)
Best Panino: Volpetti's (Rome, Testaccio)
Best Cheese: Pecorino Romano.
Best Gelato: Fior di Luna.  Their Arancia, Fragola, Melone, and Stracciatella are all to die for.  Actually, all their flavors are.  (Rome, Trastevere)
Best Tiramisu: Pompi (Rome, near Piazza di Spagna)
Most Interesting Wine: Fragolino (wine made from grapes that taste like strawberries.  A Venetian specialty, you won't find it (and have it be good) anywhere else.  Wine and strawberries? Sign me up!)
Best Cheapest Food: Carlo Menta (Rome, Trastevere)

Murphy's Law

This is the post my parents shouldn't read if they are still following along.  If you do read this, Mom and Dad, remember, I made it home in one piece and didn't get into too much trouble at any point.

Okay so a list of all the things that went wrong this semester:

Well, it all started within my first hours in Italy: I left my purse in the cab that took us from the airport.  My wallet and passport weren't in it, nor my computer, but just about all my other major things were: ipad, visa documents, glasses, sunglasses, ect.  Fortunately my driver realized what happened and brought it back within the hour.  Whew.

In Florence, I accidently nudged a bottle of wine when reaching for a bottle of Chianti and sent it and another tumbling to the floor to shatter.  Two broken bottles and a broken ego made me glad to get out of the city

Sicily.  Well, I planned it to be an adventure in the sense that I didn't plan much for this trip.  Some things that went wrong: I left my wallet in an Internet cafe in Messina (it was still there when I sprinted back 15 minutes later) and the flight we booked to return to Rome was actually booked for Monday night rather than Sunday night (we were able to get a new flight, but it wasn't cheap).

I lost my iPhone in club in Prague.

I lost €30 in a bar in Rome.  (I pretty much stopped going out at this point, because this was the weekend after the iPhone incident and I decided the world was trying to tell me something.)

I dropped my camera in a museum and broke it. (I then proceeded to drop my camera a dozen more times until it worked again.  Probably not the best idea, but hey, it wasn't going to hurt it any more and it worked.)

Ciao,
J

Great Expectations

So because I had such an amazing time this semester and saw so many amazing things, I now have some very amazing expectations for my future.  Some could maybe, eventually, hopefully happen while some are just flat out ridiculous.  I don't care.  So here is what my semester has done to my dreams:

I will have a rose garden that is a pretty as the Roseto Comunale. (First I will learn how to tend garden and make things grow.  Really I just want to have access to fresh beautiful roses on a regular basis.)

I will have a grand library like the Biblioteca Angelica.  (I am determined to have at least a full wall of bookshelves when I grow up so this is a do-able goal.)

I will have a house (villa) in the Pigneto neighborhood of Rome (co-owned with Shruti) where we will escape to during the alternating years when she is not visiting me in California, nor I her in Thailand.

I will have an apartment in Gozo overlooking Xlendi Bay.

I will have a Vespa or similar scooter/bike to get around Rome (and it's countryside) and Gozo. (I haven't quite figured out how to get the scooter between the two residences yet.)

I will be back in Italy for an olive harvest, and make and eat fresh olive oil.

I will travel to all the places I didn't get to this semester, including (but not limited to): Italy (Cortona, Riomaggiore, Basilicata, Pompey, Capri), Russia (Moscow, St. Petersburg), Croatia, Budapest, Portugal, Greece (Athens and assorted islands), Netherlands, Turkey (Istanbul, Pamukkale), and lets throw in Egypt and India and New Zealand for good measure.

I will revisit all the places I saw this semester.

I'm sure there are several other things the semester has lead me to dream about because this list seems much shorter than it was in my head three days ago.

Ciao,
J

Life on the Hill

Somehow, I always manage to find a school on a hill: my high school was built into the side of a mountain, my college is sitting pretty at the top of a hill in Clinton, New York, and now I've found a study abroad program at the peak of the Aventine Hill.  I don't know why I do this to myself.  I hate hills.  Maybe my subconscious is trying to tell me that I really don't.

Anyway, life atop the Aventine was superb.  I was talking about it these last couple days with my friends, and we decided that there is really no better place we could have lived.  We could see the ruins of the imperial palace from the window, had the best food available to us right across the river in Trastevere, and we knew about a bunch of unconventional places like the Parco Savello orange grove, the Rose Garden and the keyhole view.  Really, I considered taking the veil if it meant I could live in this convent.  It was just the most amazing place to live, and all the better for being a little bit on the outside of things: I explored more because it took just as much effort to go to the unconventional places as the top 10 tourist sites.

Speaking of nuns, living with them was awesome.  One of my favorite parts of the day was meeting for dinner in the lobby and watching a few minutes of some Italian game show with the nuns as they chatted and knitted away.  Even those that spoke English forced us to struggle through our elementary Italian to talk to them.  They rocked.  Seriously, a nunnery might be in my future.

Ciao,
J

Its Back to Reality, Oh There Goes Gravity

Days 106-107

I'm writing this on the plane as I fly away from my beloved Rome, though I probably won't get a chance to post it until I'm State's side again.  Even sitting on the plane, having gone through the rigorous game of getting all my bags to the correct weight in the airport, I don't really believe I am going.  Somehow, I'm hoping I will fall asleep on the plane and wake up to find that I am not on a flight from Italy, but rather to it and I get to do the semester all over again.

What I can say about my semester was best said by Giuseppe Verdi: "You may have the universe if I may have Italy."  I just couldn't image a better place to experience, and three months was not nearly long enough to satisfy me.

My last day was spent wandering, exactly as my first days started.  I ate my favorite pasta for lunch and said goodbye to my panino man as I picked up snacks for the plane.  When it finally came time for me to leave for the airport, the heavens opened up and cried.  Don't worry Rome, I cried too, but we'll be reunited someday.

Arrivederci,
J

P.S. Though my semester is over and there aren't really any new adventures to relate, I've got a few more things I've got to say so I don't forget them.  If you were just tuning in to make sure I was still kicking, go ahead and leave off.  If you want all my final thoughts on Rome and the semester, then stay tuned.

And So It Ends...

Day 105

My fairy tale of a semester is coming to its end. 

Today, our last full day in Rome, we decided to do the only thing that was left to be done: have a tour of all the best gelato places in Rome.  So began the Gelato World Tour 2013.  It was perfect.  Walking around the city, hitting up all the best gelato and other dessert places, and revisiting all the sites.

Our tour lasted until dinner time and we revisited one of Romes most famous, though unconventional pizza places, Dar Poeta.  My pizza was delicious, and sharing a meal with a big group of friends while sitting outside, was the perfect last dinner.  Then we washed it down with another cup of gelato (because we could).

Then it was to the orange grove (I hesitate to call it our orange grove, because we lived there as much as we lived at the convent).  We saw our last sunset in Rome, and were pleased to find that the guards decided to forget their duty to lock it up at 9 so we were free to stay as long as we liked.

Now, while I still have most of tomorrow to look forward to, most of my friends are leaving in the wee hours of the morning. So  we resolved to stay up all night and leave sleep for when we're dead (or at least until we have nothing better to do, like on our flights home.)  To that end, we decided to hit up the one gelato place we didn't make it to during the day, San Crispino, which just so happens to be right next to the Trevi Fountain.  We got there at midnight and spent the next hour tossing coins in, taking pictures, and enjoying life in Rome.

When we got back to the convent, sometime around 2am, we decided that, since Rome is a city of fountains, we couldn't leave the city without swimming in one.  We decided on the fountain next to the orange grove (because unlike the Trevi, police aren't watching it 24/7).  We had a quick dip in this bathtub, then went back to the convent to drink wine out on the patio.

At 4am, the first of my friends said their goodbyes and took off for the airport.  At this point I realized that I too might actually have to leave and went back to my room to start packing.  My room was a disaster up to this point and anyone looking at it would never guess that I had to clear out within the next 6 hours (we were supposed to be out of our rooms by 10am).  And here I am, having said goodbye to so many amzing friends I have made this semester.  Its okay though.  I'm already planning a summer reunion for the California kids, a fall reunion for all those going to school in New England, and a 10 year reunion in Rome to be held in the villa I'm going to co-own with Shruti in Pigneto.

Ciao,
J

Ciao Firenze! (Pt. 3)

Day104

Most of my friends are still in the final throws of finals.  Rather than stick around the convent or wander Rome on my lonesome, I decided to hop on a train and go see Florence once last time.

I walk out of the the Santa Maria Novella train station like I owned the city.  I forgo a map and decide that if can't remember my way around, then I'm not actually as good as I thought.  But I am.  I had no problem finding all my favorite places and discovering other parts of the city as well.  For lunch I even managed to find the little back-alley trattoria we went to on our last day back in February.  (I wanted their ribollita again.  It was just as good as I remembered).

I didn't go into any museums or churches this time around, but rather just wandered the streets and shopped.  (I may have spent a little much, but I'm not too torn up about it because I can't regret my purchases).

It started to rain very suddenly and very unexpectedly (There were no clouds in the sky when I arrived).  Though I remembered to pack my umbrella, my flats were not as keen to keep my feet dry and comfortable.  So I made my way back to the train station and bought a ticket for the text train to Rome and made it back in time for dinner.

Though I do love Rome more, I think that when I live there, I'll be taking day trips to Florence at least once a month.  It is such a different city, but undeniably beautiful.

Ciao,
J

Bufala Soldier

Day 104

As so often happens, I decide I don't like something before I have tried it, or after one mediocre example, and therefore curse myself.  This happened with olive oil in at the beginning of the semester (fortunately I caught my error after the first month), and just last week I realized I had committed another fatal error: I shunned bufala mozzarella.

In a bittersweet moment, I realized my mistake: sweet because I am now enjoying this delicious cheese every other meal; bitter because I soon must bid it farewell because no one raises an Asian water buffalo like the Italians.  As part of my eat everything in sight program this week, I ate not one but two bufala margherita pizzas at dinner tonight, along with one I had last night, and another I plan on having tomorrow night. (The first three are from the same place, but tomorrows will be from a different place.  The difference is one melts its cheese and the other leaves it raw.  They are both delicious.)

Ciao,
J

Vino vidi vinci

Day 102

The wine, I saw it and conquered.  Even if Italy held no other attraction for me, the wine culture here would be reason enough to make this place my first choice for my semester abroad.

Like so much else here, wine is not something, its everything: a way of life.  Wine an inseparable part of every meal.  Wine a social outing after a stressful day of classes that complements the beautiful setting around me.  Wine is sunlight held together by water, and wine is bottled poetry.  (That last one is Galileo and Robert Louis Stevenson, not me).

I'm not sure I have had a single meal that did not involve wine (outside of the convent, of course.  Cracking a bottle with the nuns is strictly prohibited).  But even when I'm drinking wine by itself (or with a light snack like cheese), I'm not drinking to get drunk.  That idea seems almost barbaric here where there are no limitations on drinking.  No, wine is way to prolong and enjoy ever bite of the meal and every moment of your friends' company.

I don't know how life if gonna work for me those those three weeks between the time I get home and my 21st birthday, but I know I'll make it through.  The real challenge will be when I go back to Hamilton next fall and I wont be able to drink wine with dinner in the dining hall.  (But then again, the food there hasn't inspired me to sit and enjoy it for 2 years now, so maybe it would just be a waste of good wine anyway).

Ciao,
J

An Evening Stroll

Day 101

I have decided that my for the remainder of my time, I will give in to that impulsive side of me that I always try to suppress.  That means when I want to do something, I'm gonna do it; if I want to eat something, I will walk clear across the city and get it; if I pass something I think is pretty, I'm going to buy it.  The last 3+ months I have been so incredibly careful to budget out my money and time that I now find I have an excess of one and none of the other.

So I started today.  After coming home from a dinner with a family friend I decided that, since it was promising to be such a lovely evening, I would sit in the rose garden next to the convent and read a book rather than go study.  It had rained earlier today and the shower has made the garden more vibrant than ever.  I love this place.  Over the past week I have been considering becoming a nun, but only if I get to live in the convent I'm currently in, because it is just in the perfect location for everything and is surrounded by beauty. 

When the guard came to kick me out at 8, rather than crossing the street and submitting to studying for finals I decided that I wanted gelato, and not just any gelato, but strawberry and melon gelato made using fresh melons and strawberries (you can taste the little chunks of fruit still in it).  So I set off down the Aventine and along the Tiber.  Walking along the Tiber I made another resolution to take my camera with me every time I leave my room because I'm going to need to take pictures of every inch of this city at least twice more.  For instance: walking along the Tiber I was struck that it was just so pretty and had to snap half a dozen pictures on my poor quality iPad camera.  Lets get one thing straight: three months ago, I would have said the Tiber is about as ugly as a river can get.  Its brown and full of trash and constrained by these unnatural walls.  But tonight, man, it was just the prettiest thing.

So I finally get myself some gelato from Fior di Luna (the gelato), and decide to just wander the streets around the gelato place since it, like the Tiber, is just the prettiest thing I have ever seen.  Lining the streets are all these vendors selling everything from scarves to art to jewelry to pouches of dried lavender.  And wouldn't you know but I just had to buy this one scarf.  By the time I hit the end of the street I'm scraping the bottom of my cup.  I'm disappointed for a minute until I realize I have to pass back by Fior di Luna to get back home.  So I eagerly head back down the road crowded with hawkers, diners, and that something that makes Rome Rome, and get myself another cup of gelato.  And then, for the hell of it, I buy another two scarves (I now have enough scarves to open my own shop).  Walking back home I pass another part of the Tiber that I needed a picture of. 

And to think, the day started out rainy and miserable and me being sure I wouldn't do or see a single thing all day.

Ciao,
J

The Name Game

Day 101

So I realized there are about a million and a half things that I wanted to post about but just never got around to.  So here is me trying to fit it all in the next week.  We'll see how it goes.

So Italy, like most non-English speaking countries, has its own variation for the names of cities.  Some of them are totally understandable (we say Rome, they say Roma; we see Naples, they see Napoli; we know Venice, they know Venezia; ect), and then you also get some less understandable changes (at least to me) things like Florence vs Firenze.

Anyway, the point of this little rant is that this semester I decided to participate in this little name game challenge.  Whereas everyone at home calls me Jackie, here I've convinced everyone that I go by JJ. (The notable exception is my professor Jan Gadeyne who, when I told him to call me JJ, gave me a long look and decided that my name would remain Jacquelyn.)

It all started at the airport, when I met another girl on the program and my self-decided moniker rolled off my tongue before I realized I had even made a decision to actually do it.  The funny bit is that now, after having my sister and my friend from school visit me, and having them call me Jackie again, I have to look around and go "whose that?" before I realize they're talking to me!

Just to be clear, I have no problem with the name Jackie.  In fact, I love it.  I will probably never be anything but a Jackie for the rest of my life.  But what other time in my life do I have to try out this kind of thing?  If your semester abroad isn't the time to shake things up, then when is?

Ciao
J

L'Arte D'Arrangiarsi

Day 100

Today marks my 100th day abroad, and while it should be a milestone and a day of excitement, instead all I feel is dread:  its a day of panic trying to realize how I can fit in everything I have yet to do and everything I want to do again in the next 6 days.

The day started bright and early (as I predict all my mornings for the next week will.  Who needs sleep when you are 6 days away from leaving these friends and this beautiful city?) and I headed off to Tivoli with the only 3 friends I have who have not explored this area yet.  Tivoli (or its surrounding countryside) is one of the places you went when you were an imperial emperor and wanted to build a countryside getaway.  So off we went to explore Hadrian's Villa.  We explored the villa, imitated Classical poses on ancient column pedestals, and shared a bottle of wine.  It was a lovely morning.

We would have continued on to the other major estate in the area (Villa d'Este) except for the farewell party the administration had planned for us back at the convent.  So we hightailed it back to Rome to get back for the one of the few drinking and mingling parties allowed on the nun's grounds.

The highlight of the party was a slideshow composed of pictures the students had sent to the resident director over the past week.  It was lovely and nostalgic and made me so incredibly sad to think that I will be leaving in less than a weeks time.  There were tears in my eyes by the end.  I honestly have never been so regretful to move on from somewhere: leaving my childhood friends at 8th grade graduation, saying good-bye to my high school friends after senior year, nothing could hold a candlestick to the frustration I have now.  Yes, leaving the city is part of it, but I know, one way or another,  I will come back to Rome.  However, the real issue I face is leaving the people.  My semester has been incredible (amazing, phenomenal, out of this world, and a thousand other adjectives), and it truly is the people who have made it that way.  They shared my fascination with ancient culture, art, landscape, travel.  If I wanted to do something I had a friend who would follow me there.  And those few times that I couldn't find someone to do something with were just as memorable: those times I learned to live on my own, and I want to thank my friends for that as much as anything else.

So I say to you: Ali, Bridget, and Hannah; Shruti, Christina, and Annie; Bismar and Mark and Gabby; Sarai, Kelly, Hillary, and Erin; Courtney, James, Callie, and Emily; and everyone else;  We started strangers, but I won't forget you or the times we had together.  We absolutely made something out of nothing: you made my semester unforgettable, it wouldn't be the same without you and I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Ciao,
J

Prayers for Peter

Day 99

Today we got an exclusive look at an area of the Vatican: the catacombs below St. Peters.  The Vatican has a long history, starting as a necropolis with a neighboring circus.  For those who don't know, St. Peter's is situated where it is because it is the most promising site for where St. Peter himself was buried after he was crucified (upside-down) at the circus.  In fact, if you drop a plumb line from the center of Bernini's baldichino inside of the basilica, it would hit Pete's tomb.

So Trinity Rome arranged for us to get a behind the scene's tour of the now buried necropolis beneath St. Peter's.  The place is incredibly well preserved considering how much Constantine destroyed when he built the first church in that place, the questionable excavation techniques of the mid 20th century, and everything else in between.  What really made our tour though was our guide.  Because it is now so miserably hot in Rome, I wasn't paying particular attention when he told us his name, but what I do remember is that he is a seminarian from Manchester who couldn't have been more than a couple years older than me.  He was awesome, cracking jokes at some of the ridiculous things that happened in antiquity (some Romans believed the afterlife would be one giant orgy), in the excavation process (apparently the head archeologist decided to hide a skeleton in his office at one point and tell no one else about it. That skeleton was St. Peter...oops), and during his tours (the most common question he gets asked is why they build the mausoleums underground.  The short answer is they didn't, duh.  Like all the rest of Rome, St. Peter's was built on top of the preexisting structures).

The tour ended after we stood in the single spot you can see St. Peter's bones underneath the basilica.  The entire tour lead up to this moment, slowly building up both the historical evidence of Peter's burial and the excavation of the tomb.  This final moment did not disappoint.

Afterwards I went up into the current Basilica and marveled at how far the Catholic Church has come.  It really is incredible when you consider it.  The Church decided to build its stronghold, its home on a place they believed was holy, but had no material evidence to support this idea for nearly two millennia.  And yet, St. Peter's Basilica is the largest church and perhaps the most spacious building I have ever been in, and that's saying something considering how many churches, basilicas, and cathedrals I've been in.  Everything, even the statues and monuments within seem tiny in comparison to its soaring arches.  All this was built on the hope, on the faith, that a few measly documents were telling the truth.  Though the current evidence absolutely supports in ancient testaments, even if it didn't, how incredible is it that an institution promoting God's love was built on this one piece of faith.

Ciao,
J

Interdum Feror Cupidine Partium Magnarum Europe Vincendarum.

Day 99

Sometimes I get the urge to conquer large parts of Europe.  However, this sentiment may have been a bit easier to achieve back when men had whole armies at their beck and call.  Unfortunately, I do not.  But, in this enlightened age, I can do my best by going everywhere I can and eating their local specialties.  I've traveled a lot this semester:  I've been to 3 countries, seen more than 7 world renowned cities, and tried the local cuisine in each and every one.  Here are some of the local tastes I've experienced:

Rome: Pizza, Roman Style (No, the pizza here is different; you have to try it to understand.  Yes, this is only the tip of the iceberg of Roman foods I've tried.)
Florence: Ribollita
Sicily: Sicilian Pizza and a kind of shrimp pasta.  (We just asked for something traditionally Sicilian)
Venice: Squid ink pasta, Fragolino wine (that's wine made from grapes that have a strawberry flavor.  I've tried other 'fragolino's' around Italy, but none are as good)
Prague: Pivo (beer), knedlíky (bread dumplings), Smazeny syr (fried cheese), trdelnik (a pastry consisting of dough rapt around a spindle and slowly roasted).  (We had friends in Prague who took us around, can you tell?  Also I couldn't pronounce any of these, I just pointed.)
Malta: Rabbit Stew
Amalfi: Lemoncello

Ciao,
J

The Sweetest Meal of the Day: Snacktime

Day 93

No day is complete without a fourth meal composed of gelato, tiramisu, cheese, or some other tidbit.  I know I said earlier that I don't snack, and I'm sticking by that.  Fourth meal here is not really as snack, its a way of life.  Snacking back home is eating something salty 4 times a day because I'm bored and my brain translates that to hungry.  Here it is eating something between meals because it is a pleasure.  There are no snack foods in my room and I have to go out and find what my fourth meal will be.

I'm not going to go into detail of what my favorite gelato places are or where I've had the best gelato because I've already started writing my semester superlatives and gelato gets its very own section.  No point in repeating it here.  I will say that during the day I always get fruity gelato flavors and the best places make their flavors fresh everyday from local ingredients: translation delicious.

I'm not much of a coffee drinker because I recognize that I have a personality and body that loves to get addicted to things, and once I start drinking coffee I will not be able to function without it (and if I started with Italian coffee and had to go back home to mass produced school coffee I would fall apart).  Tiramisu, however, lets me get that little shot of Italian expresso without risking my becoming a coffee zombie.  Yum.

Cheese: the saltier the better.  Back home I like cheese...but only if is in some melted form.  When I told my friends here that they immediately set about correcting my ways.  Now my favorite is a Pecorino Romano I get from the grocery down the road.  This is the only snack that I actually can call upon without going out of my way, since I tend to just buy a huge hunk of it at the beginning of every week.  Pair it with a good wine and I'm set for an evening.

Ciao
J