Oh hey there, Caravaggio

It's so wonderful to have the time to really explore Rome instead of trying to overload a short trip! Today, after finishing our midterms, my roommate and I went on what I'm calling a "Church Crawl," the art-lover's equivalent of a pub crawl, to scope out a few churches right around school. As we're always drained after class and tend to be lugging around textbooks, we headed home to drop off our books and rest, then headed out, refreshed and in church-friendly attire (many churches in Rome will deny you entrance or make you wear a scarf to cover your shoulders if you fail to meet their dress codes).

Our first destination? Santa Agnese, a stunning Baroque church by Borromini bordering Piazza Navona (a five minute walk from school). Covered in gold and massive marble Corinthian columns, the church also has very colorful scenes inside it's huge dome. We saw a group of nuns come in and pray (not, somehow, singing "How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?" ....).

Next up? San Luigi dei Francesci, where one of the chapels has three large Caravaggio paintings in all their glorious vibrant color. The most famous of the three, "The Calling of Saint Matthew," was my personal favorite and the motive for the visit, but the other two were also interesting and definitely worth note.

Last on our trip was a church we stumbled upon by accident on our way to San Luigi, San Agostino. To our delight, there was a Raphael painting on one of the walls, a chapel designed by Bernini, and another Caravaggio in one of the chapels. I had just remarked to my roommate, Lily, that it looked like his style when I checked the information in front of it and, sure enough, there was a reason for such strong resemblance. :P

Quite an afternoon! And, of course, we made it back in time for dinner which should be any minute now (we usually eat at 8:30). Our signora is such an amazing cook! Can't wait! Ciao!

Tivoli!

After a day of exploring the Tivoli gardens, I am pretty exhausted. Getting out there was quite the adventure but we made it! We are slowly but surely acquainting ourselves with Rome’s public transportation system. The gardens are lovely! There are massive gravity-powered fountains throughout the extensive gardens. One of them actually functions as a “water organ,” complete with silver pipes, and plays music every two hours. It was a great day to be out in the gardens and it was nice to be in such a serene environment (quite the opposite of the revving cars and loud voices outside my bedroom window as I’m writing this).

My Italian class is so much fun!! I have this compulsive obsession with learning as much Italian as I can because, with every lesson, it becomes easier and easier to speak with my signora at home, or just people in general, out and about. Having just finished my first week of classes, I can comfortably talk to people in Italian and it’s such a trip!! Having such a strong background in Spanish definitely helps a whole lot but so much of learning a language is just listening – idioms, voice patterns, pronunciation. One may learn formal elements of language out of a book but to ACTUALLY learn any language, you just have to listen to people speak.

Though I’ve already been nerding out with regard to monuments we’ve been seeing, I’m insanely jazzed for some of the top museums in the world: The National Museum, Villa Borghese, and the Vatican Museums. Wooo!!

We’re introducing some friends to the Asian restaurant across the street tonight. Normally, of course, it’s important to try authentic local cuisine a lot but, as Lily and I get wonderful, home-cooked Italian food every night during the week I don’t feel too bad defaulting back to Thai or Chinese food on the weekend. 

Ara Pacis and Bernini's "Ecstasy of Saint Theresa" tomorrow!!