Rome: That Light

Sam and I had both heard from artists that the light in Italy was just "different." It had a different quality to it. We were skeptical but thought it could be true…something about the atmosphere at sea level or the humidity…? And when we got to Rome, we didn't notice anything immediately different—but at certain times of day, or on certain streets, we would suddenly turn to each other and say, "Look at that! There's that light again." Maybe it is from the color of the buildings, those warm surfaces for the light to bounce around on? Or maybe it is from the angle of the sun when it's low in the sky. But it was there, and it made everything feel just a bit foreign, so you couldn't ever forget: this is ROME!

By the way, this is my last set of pictures, the ones that didn't fit anywhere else, and I'm sure we can all breathe a sigh of relief now! I feel like a wild-eyed fanatic that has cornered you and forced you to sit through interminable slides of my travels. But you can leave anytime, you know!

Anyway. Some of my favorite moments in Rome, as in London, were those quiet times I had by myself, with nowhere specific to go and no one depending on me. I took naps at the hotel in the hot part of the day, and then walked for miles and miles, wandering into stores or stopping for awhile to sit on a bench and finally finish this book. (That was a strange thing: I would be transported back to Germany as I read, and then emerge to find myself…in Italy? Blinking in that Italian light. Very disorienting.)

You can kind of see the light here. That glow along the houses, coming down and warming up even the edges of the blue shadows. You could walk in downtown Salt Lake at the same time of day, and it  would just feel…different.

This was a market right down the street from our hotel. It was far from the tourist areas and I never heard anyone speaking English. I loved walking through there and listening to the little Italian ladies talking to each other and picking through the produce, and I liked pretending I was one of them, stopping by to pick up my daily…meat?

Or octopus perhaps? I tried to take pictures stealthily so as not to ruin my anonymity. :)

More produce. So pretty!

A flower shop. Fancier than the ones that were all over in stalls along the street. This was right next to a pet store where I saw four bunnies!! We communed.

Ivy. Love it on other people's houses; ripped it off in horror when it used to grow on my own. (It's too…creeping and clinging.) But pretty! And charming!

A dirty stairway. With graffiti. This wasn't atypical. I told you, the city was dirty! But it all felt new and interesting so I didn't mind too much.

That light!

Here, too, even in the shadows.

Practically every street corner had one of these icons of the Virgin Mary on it (not this exact one—they were all different). One of my tour guides said they were put there to discourage crime back in the Middle Ages (no one wants to get over into a dark corner about to murder someone, and then see Mother Mary looking down at them!). She said they were actually quite effective! Ha! Don't know if that's true, but they were nice. I quite liked knowing Mary was watching over us everywhere.

These are parts of the old city walls. No one seems to pay much attention to them, and in places other things have been built right up next to or on top of them. But there they are, looking just as stern and imposing and ancient as ever. Amazing.

Funny little cars everywhere, of course. And people parked like this. Ha!

Also lots of scooters, parked everywhere!

This place was so strange and forbidding and intriguing. Some huge old estate, all run-down and behind barbed wire. I walked all the way around it (it's huge! and just surrounded by ordinary-looking apartments and such) and peeked in the huge wrought-iron gates to the grounds and just wondered and wondered about it!

You can see some of the grounds behind the wall in this picture: all those trees!

And on the other side, some old stone buildings like this one. I would have so liked to climb inside and look around! But being a perpetually law-abiding sort, of course I didn't.

I sat in this courtyard with my book for a long time, listening to the cicadas and the people bustling by. Feeling the glow of that warm light.

There always seemed to be some interesting tower or other, peeking up above the other buildings—but often, when I'd walk around to see more of the building the tower was coming from, I couldn't find it! Everything was packed so close together, and the streets so strangely configured, and so many things hidden within inner courtyards, that I couldn't make sense of it all! I've been raised in the land of Brigham Young's wide, simple grids and that's the only thing I really understand, for goodness sake!

Trees peeking up and suggesting hidden gardens. Love that.

Practically every other store I went in was like Big/Lots or something. Totally incomprehensible and random. Bras? Stickers? Candles? Yes, we've got them all!

There was a certain quality to the light at night, too, I guess from the streetlights and the way they reflected off the cobblestones. And the lights strung across alleys by the outdoor restaurants, which were cheery and full of life even at 1 a.m.

Churches peeking out around every corner.

Sam and I went to a pasta-making class one evening, which was fun and different, but my favorite part about it was that it was just at someone's house, and we got to be out on their lovely rooftop terrace, which was just the sort of place I'd been longing to see the whole time. It was so snug, and secluded, and you could look out across all the other roofs and terraces and see them lit pink and gold by the setting sun.

The pasta was really good too, naturally. :)

I couldn't stop looking at the light on this church down nearby. It was so beautiful!

I'm not sure any of these pictures really capture that light perfectly, but I can feel, looking at them, the heaviness of the air and the heat on my skin. Such a strange, strange feeling to know that I was there—and now I'm here again—halfway across the world. 

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Rome: the Hills

It seemed like all the tourists I talked to in Rome were doing a "three days in Rome" sort of itinerary. They were going to take in the highlights and then hit Venice and Florence and the Amalfi Coast. And I suppose, if we'd been planning an Italian vacation, maybe that's what we would have done too—how cool to see the countryside and the canals and all those other great things! But with Sam's classes and meetings in Rome itself, it just made more sense for us to stay there and not waste our precious time getting from place to place. So we spent all our eight days in the same city. And actually, I was really glad we did, because it felt like we got to see so MANY more things than just the usual! It felt like we actually got to know Rome—a little. (I know. Eight days isn't that much, obviously—but we really did feel almost at home, by the end!)

But. I read about a town in the hills near Rome, just an hour train ride away, and we figured it would be fun to ride the train anyway—so we spent one of our days visiting the medieval hill town of Orvieto. 

And it was maybe our favorite day of all! I don't know, I can't really choose. But the thing I loved so much about Orvieto was that it was PACKED with those sort of hidden places I love so much. A whole town full of them, really. Every street felt like a story waiting to happen, the beginning of an acquaintance, a glimpse into another world. My mind was going nonstop, imagining the lives of the people that make their homes along these winding, sun-warmed, impossibly darling little cobblestone streets.

I am always happy to ride a train so I can report back to the train-lovers in the family. I have always [or, since I had little boys, anyway] dreamed of riding a Maglev or a Bullet Train with them. Or the TGV. But, this was just a regular old train. Still fun though, to be at the train station and see all the comings and goings.

The countryside was beautiful. So many interesting little jumbles of towns, clinging to hillsides or tossed carelessly along green valleys.

We saw huge fields of sunflowers, which were of course impossible to appreciate fully through the train windows at high speed. But they made a lovely blur of gold and green, anyway. :)

This was a fortress-like hill town soon before Orvieto, and looking much like it. I just love how…brave and determined these places look, hanging onto the edges of the hills. They don't really look scary or fierce (like they would probably want to)—more like a resolute little five-year-old who has put on all her boots and hats and snow clothes and stepped out like an Arctic Explorer to play in the first one-inch snowstorm of the year. I mean…everything is so beautiful and serene. It's hard to imagine there was ever really any actual need for those defensive walls! :)

When you get to Orvieto from the train, you're at the bottom of a steep hill, and we (I?) was super excited to learn there was a funicular railway there! Another on my list of cool trains to ride! I wished so much we had the boys there for it.

The cars take you on a nice flat ride up the hill, thanks to their angled design.

And then once you get up to the top…this amazing view. We kept saying, "I can't believe we're here. This doesn't seem real." The vineyards. The red roofs. The rolling hills. So beautiful!

In the main square, the town has a beautiful cathedral (they call it the Duomo) made of these crazy black and white stripes! They're just made of alternating colors of stone. From some angles that made the structure look almost modern, like something from the Art Deco movement or something. But it's old, of course. It took long enough to build that it spans a few different styles, but it's SO perfectly Gothic from outside!

They even took the trouble to stripe the crypt!

But just as you're marveling at all the time and effort that striping must have taken, you walk around to the front and see this view:

which is probably the most ornate facade I've ever seen, anywhere! And I've been to lots of cathedrals, over the years. :) This one was so colorful and intricate! All the mosaics were brightly colored with gleaming gold backgrounds, and the stonework was so detailed you couldn't even get the full effect until you stepped right up next to it—at which point you couldn't appreciate the glorious context of it all! So this was definitely a place that you could marvel at for a lifetime. I guess that's why they built it this way. What a statement of devotion!

See those sort of rope-y pillars, by the guy in the red shirt? I was looking at those, in awe of the delicate lines and shapes, and then I got up closer and saw that each one was lined with tiny mosaic pieces and carvings inside each strand. Like this:

I just don't even know how to process SO MUCH EFFORT. HOW did they do all this?? I can hardly stand to think of the time it must have taken them.

I didn't think the inside was as spectacular as the outside, but it was very pretty and peaceful all the same, with a big Baroque organ and lovely little quiet chapels lining the nave. I loved the sun coming in and making these warm patches of light on the stone floor:

Besides the cathedral, there are a few other museums and churches in the town, and we wandered into most of them at one point or another, if just to escape the heat (although nothing offered much relief). 

One really interesting thing we did was take a tour of these man-made caves and tunnels all through the hillside under the town. They were made way back in Etruscan times, used for pressing and storing olive oil, and keeping pigeons, and so forth—and then they've been used and added onto continuously since them, even up to being made into bomb shelters during the Second World War. In these caves it really was cool—50 degrees or so all year round. That felt SO good on this hot, hot day!

We also stopped to get gelato about six different times. And pizza, of course; the very best pizza and Fanta in the world.

But—honestly—with all that, the best thing was just walking around, waiting to be enchanted again with every street, every stone archway, every window garden.

I loved when the narrow streets slanted off down the hill so suddenly, you could catch a glimpse of the green hills beyond.

We loved walking around to the edge of the hills along the old town walls and looking down to see castles peeking up through forest. (This one is an old monastery, actually, I think. Now it's a hotel.)

We loved looking sideways to see the roofs and towers and buildings all tumbled and jumbled on top of each other, like the cities my children build with wooden blocks.

And most of all we loved these STREETS!

I want to live here. Right here. In those windows above the arch. I wonder how many tourists have said that, over the years? :) It doesn't matter, I still feel like this is MY PLACE. I will wake up late to stripes of sun on my white coverlet, and throw open the shutters and water my flowers and then drift down into the town with my shopping basket on my arm to buy tomatoes and bundles of lavender.

Someday. Right? :)

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