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My European Misconception – and/or Frustration & Disappointment

I save everything

Misconception: This is an easy one. I have only been off the mainland once. I took my kids to Oahu for a week in November of 2009. This was the most touristy place I had visited. London and Rome put Hawaii to shame. I was not prepared for the overwhelming crush of humanity that made up the body of tourists on any given day in either city, but especially Rome.

Wait – I’m Having a Moment (that speaks to my larger experience in studying abroad)

During my first experience in Rome with that elusive commodity known as “free time”, I had a mini-epiphany. I have spent most of my life fantasizing and idealizing foreign lands, and that is quite a build-up. I was not let down, exactly. I don’t think that I fully realized that some part of my mind pictured Rome as I had seen it in Sophia Loren films; astoundingly gorgeous Italian women walking briskly about in tight pencil skirts, while unemployed streetcorner lotharios in slim black Italian suits chased after the women to pinch their curvy backsides.

               The Stay Club, London

I do know what century I’m living in. Well, pretty sure. I didn’t actively realize that I was

I’m Soaking In It – My Favorite Meal in Bath, England

I need to include my favorite meal while studying abroad. The whole gang went to Bath for the day, and we had fancy English tea. That was fun. When we were finished, some of the group went off to tour the Roman baths, and others went exploring. I was one of the latter, and on my own, the way God intended. Haha.

Interior of Coeur De Lion

Being with a large group of people surrounded by larger groups of people is exhausting for the inner-city house hermit. I needed some alone time. I wandered down a series of

C’mon Down to the Sculpture Warehouse – Every Bust Must Go! – Sculpture in the Vatican

There is an overwhelming amount of sculpture in Rome. Just writing this will in no way convey to you, one of my ten readers, the true magnitude of this fact. It is everywhere. In museums, in parks, in every church, in the ruins…Some religious, some political, some breathtaking art for art’s sake.

After the first few thousand sculptures, I was struggling to retain my awe – my ability to truly appreciate each individual work of art for its unique form, function, and perspective. And then I toured the Vatican. No Words Need Apply. None of them will fit. Instead of attempting to choose just one for this post, I decided to share with you all how crazy my experience was. These photographs were taken in The Hallowed Room of Busts. Well, that’s the name I’ve given it. I just like an excuse to capitalize words. Behold…

                             One row…

                         Two rows…

                         Three rows…

                         Four rows…

                        Five rows…

Beauty Is In The Eye Of The Thirsty – My Favorite Fountain in Rome

Yes, Rome has a stunning array of beautiful fountains, with sculptures of gods, mythical beasts and rulers. Fountains to inspire awe and reverence; to remind the plebeian struggling his way through the gutters of life to look up toward the heavens, and remember that no matter what brutalities befell his corporeal being, true peace and happiness awaited all of the faithful at the end of this mortal coil.

Ha. I’m just screwing with you all. Romans didn’t have that belief system. Their conquerors, the Christians did. But my favorite fountains, for the most part, are not for admiring. Not in the traditional sense. They did engender a deep appreciation for accessible, clean, and delicious drinking water. Especially on hot days while speed walking thirteen miles over nine hours. Trust me – nothing is more beautiful than one of these.

The best fountain of all.

Decorative and functional!

The Galleria Borghese, A Sketch, and the Unknown Artist

“It is a measure of how accustomed we are to inattention that we would be thought unusual and perhaps dangerous if we stopped and stared at a place for as long as a sketcher would require to draw it.”
– John Ruskin, The Art of Travel

My sketch of a painting by “I don’t know who – I barely had time to snap a photo of it.”
I actually tried very hard to research who painted this. My sketch is from a closeup picture of the lower half of the painting at an angle to cut the glare. If anyone out there knows, by all means, enlighten me.

              The original painting

A Sketch on Observation

“No changing of place at a hundred miles an hour will make us one whit stronger, happier, or wiser. There was always more in the world than men could see, walked they ever so slowly; They will see it no better for going fast. The really precious things are thought and sight, not pace.”
– John Ruskin, The Art of Travel

         My Roman cobblestone sketch

Death, Ruins and Lucretius in Italy

Many of the ruins that I saw in Rome were packed to capacity with tourists. This made contemplation of my surroundings, and connecting them to my studies, difficult. Ostia Antica was a blissful exception. It is outside of the city, and doesn’t attract the crowds that Rome does.

The site is stunningly beautiful, and the peaceful setting made it easier for the magnitude of what I was seeing to sink in.

I wondered who had lived and died there. What their lives were like. The unrecorded lives, without statues or monuments left to history. I wondered if and how they envisioned a distant future, and whether they had any idea that they, not as individuals, but as a culture, would live on in history for so great a period of time. Would it have meant anything to them? What did it mean to me? And why did I feel like the ghost, and not them?

I’m still working on the last two questions, but the poem Death by Lucretius came to mind, and I read it again upon returning to Rome. The end of this poem stood out as being particularly appropriate to what I had been thinking while exploring Ostia Antica:

We may be reassured that in our death
We have no cause for fear, we cannot be
Wretched in nonexistence. Death alone
Has immortality, and takes away
Our mortal life. It does not matter a bit
If we once lived before.

So I Had a Literary Insight in London…

Actually, It was in Cambridge. I am a Virginia Woolf fan, and it would have been difficult to avoid thinking about  A Room of One’s Own while I was there for the day. It is an intelligent, funny, scathing and sad bit of feminist literature, and it came to my mind while I was in the Trinity College Library in Cambridge. Another blessed location of near complete silence and no photography. But I Googled an image of the library interior!

                              Shhhhhhh….

I will admit that I don’t spend a great deal of time considering feminist issues in America. We want it better, but we’ve got it pretty damned good. I’m not going to be stoned and set on fire because I spurned the advances of my neighbor who then accused me of adultery. But I did ponder where I would be allowed to go and what I would be allowed to see had I been visiting Cambridge in Virginia’s time. Yes, by 1929 life for women had improved. Giving us a few modern conveniences and a little leisure time inevitably led to a full-blown revolt that didn’t begin to calm down until some point in the mid 1980’s. At least in a good chunk of Europe and America.

After freezing my heiny off in a punt ride down the canal, I was exceedingly glad that I could walk unaccompanied into a pub and order a lovely pint of hard cider, where my literary insight was swept away in a current of alcohol and cold medicine. I was also briefly very grateful that I was not required to wear a corset in public.