Christmas With Family and Friends

Our children (Conor, Lily, and Owen) and my sister (Ger) joined us for Christmas in Rome! Ger was supposed to arrive late Monday, December 19, but her flight (connecting from Seattle through Istanbul) was cancelled and she ended up spending the night at a Ramada Inn in Istanbul on the day the Russian ambassador was assassinated in Ankara ... She got to us the next day and we went out to lunch together to celebrate. 

Aunt Ger with formaggio

Then we looked forward to Lily arriving early evening on Wednesday, December 21, but her flight left Oakland (where she was visiting her boyfriend, Luke) four hours late and she missed her connection to Rome and spent the night in London. Sigh. Okay but the boys were to arrive later that night. However, when we checked Conor's flight, we could see it had left Los Angeles so late that he would miss his connection (also in Istanbul). Sigh. Owen did arrive on time, after a 12-hour layover in Paris and a little sightseeing trip of his own into town. 

The next morning (December 22, are you confused yet?), Conor arrived and we walked over to the Vatican to check out the tree and creche outside San Pietro.

Finally, that evening, Lily arrived! 

It's been hard to take many pictures or post with all the comings and goings, but we visited the Vatican museum on December 23. It is a totally wild place. 

And we had new friends over for a little cocktail party at the house to meet the kids and Ger that evening. Rose and Wayne (Seattlelites who introduced us to Caravita), Steve and Luisa (who we met there), and Gail and Louie (who we met through an expat group). 

We rested most of Christmas eve, then went to evening Mass at Caravita.



We had dinner afterwards with Wayne and Rose and also Steve and Luisa, who were both headed to All Saints Anglican church to play the organ and solo, respectively, for midnight Mass there. The dinner was excellent, especially Wayne's octopus and potato, fish being traditional in Italy for Christmas Eve. 

Christmas morning, the still very jet-lagged visitors, got up late and then we opened presents.

Then went to Christmas lunch (what else?)...

The chef recommends ... Happy holidays!

Bacala on toasts and artichoke flan ...

That night, we walked through Piazza Navona. 

Christmas market and carousel at Piazza Navona

On December 26, we went to the Roman Forum and Coliseum. 

Today, December 27, we took a private tour (with Context Tours) that focused on the Risorgimento, the movement that ultimately lead to 1870's final unification of Italy and establishment of a democratic government. Many thanks to our excellent guide, Richard, who is here reading from the 1848 Constitution engraved on the wall in the background that looks over Rome from the Janiculum hill.

One last shot (no pun intended): a "Pio Nono," the name given to the cannon balls rained down on the republicans by French troops defending Rome and Pope Pius IX (Pio Nono in Italian) on a plaque outside a church at the top of the hill. 

Rome in December: Cold Days, Sunny Skies, Empty Museums

Rome may be hot in summer, but it’s been cold lately, down close to zero at night! Of course, that’s in Celsius (meaning around freezing at night) … the lovely white cyclamen I bought for the empty planter by the front door are not happy!

Luckily, the daytime has been clear and sunny since late November, with highs in the low teens (meaning the 50s farenheit).

One day last week, we went out searching for Christmas decorations.

Afterwards, as we wandered home down some unfamiliar side streets, we heard music ahead. Following it, we finally tracked down two men in shepherd’s lambskin coats, one playing the Italian bagpipe and the other a wooden whistle. Turns out the Zampognari are a Christmas tradition in Rome and other parts of Italy.

Also last week, we got up early to catch the Trevi Fountain unmobbed by tourists. We had it to ourselves: so different not to have to wedge ourselves near the sides where the crowds are not quite so crushing!

We also recently returned to MAXXI, Rome's museum featuring modern art after 2000, for a wonderful exhibit by Pakistani-American artist, Shahzia Sikander. She began her career in the ancient art of Indo-Persian miniature painting but now does huge video and other large pieces. I loved the catalog description of her work as addressing “some of the critical issues of our age: the tensions between the post-colonial world and the inexorable evolution of culture, between the experiences of migrants and the constitution of nations, between diverse geopolitical conditions and religious doctrines.”

As a bookend to that experience, we finally visited the Musei Capitolini, the world’s oldest public museum, opened by Pope Sixtus VI in 1471. The Piazza in front of the museum was designed by Michelangelo and, in keeping with what one author called the “too-muchness” of Rome, the collection is crammed with amazing bronze and marbles pieces as well as paintings and much more. Among those few included in my little slideshow are the Boy with Thorn bronze from the 1st century BC, the massive equestrian Marcus Aurelius from 180 AD, the almost-as-large Hercules in gilded bronze from the 2nd century BC, the Brutus bust (with yellow wall behind)—yes, that Brutus—from the 4th or 3rd century BC, the bronze of Remus and Romulus (Rome’s legendary founders) suckled by the she wolf possibly from the 5th century BC, and Bernini’s Medusa from 1648. At the end of our tour, we stepped out onto an empty terrace overlooking the monuments of the Forum lit up for the night.

Our November Sagra: Noci (November 4, 2016)

I'm backtracking here to post about a trip we took in early November. I have been wanting to go to a Sagra ever since Brad and I visited Umbria with friends, Gail, Mark, Molly and Glenn in 2014. A Sagra is an Italian food festival that typically highlights a local crop or dish or drink. Some are of ancient origins, some more recent. We just missed an onion festival in Umbria with our friends in 2014, and I was determined to catch one once my knee felt strong enough for the walking and standing. By late October, I was starting to feel more confident, so we picked a Sagra in the little town of Noci in the Puglia region, in the “heel” of Italy. 

Two of our Seattle Italian teachers are from Puglia: Simona, our Dante Alighieri teacher (from Bari) and Valeria, our summer conversation class teacher (from Taranto). It seemed fitting to go to Noci, which is right between those bigger towns. (We also visited the neighboring towns of Alberobello and Locorotundo, as shown in following map.)

The Sagra, a relatively new one, is called Bacco delle Gnostre and celebrates Vino Novello, new red wine from local grapes, and roast chestnuts. "Bacco" obviously covers the wine, but "Gnostre" actually means the long courtyards they have in Noci, like ancient cul de sacs, open on one side to the street. We took the train from Rome’s Termini station on Friday, November 4. Il cielo a Roma rarely disappoints: I took this photo from the city bus on the way to the train station.

I've become a regular coffee drinker now and can get by with just one sugar (instead of the usual 3 or 4 I needed before to mask the taste)! Quite a feat for a little immigrant girl who only had milky Irish tea growing up and was never able to get used to American coffee. The coffee here is better naturalmente!

When we stopped in Bari to transfer to a regional train, I found myself thinking of last summer’s train crash, which killed 25 people.Turns out that was a different rail company on a stretch of track north of Bari. We had no problems. I took lots of photos from the train of farmland, which stretched in every direction, with artichoke, grapevine, greens, and more, plus notably ancient olive trees like these. 

Arriving in Noci, we discovered that the sagra didn't actually start until Saturday night (Italian festival websites are notoriously ambiguous). So we wandered around Noci that afternoon and then had a wonderful meal at a little restaurant called Montegrappa, run by a young husband and wife, both from Noci. Angela, front of house, spoke virtually no English, but she and I managed to have a conversation about her life with Gino and their two small children, about where he had trained (locally), and about food of course. Here she is cutting prosciutto. 




Brad had “strascinata di grano arso.” “Strascinato” means stretched pasta—think of an orrechiette pulled and flattened into a long half-moon shape. “Grano arso” is literally “burned” wheat (think of the English word "arson), leftover when crops were burned in olden days and the fallen kernels collected by poor farmers. The pasta had a green color and a smoky flavor. I had orecchiette “con funghi cardoncelli di bosco” (a local woodland mushroom). Delicious. Normally, we don’t have room for “secondi” and we marvel at all the slender Romans we see eating antipasto, then pasta, then a main course of meat, followed by dolci and caffè. But Angela talked us into grilled meat, which ended up being just a big slice of beef (quite rare, "al sangue") and nothing else. Is was, she assured us, the best: “costata di scottona” with “la scottona” being “il manzo donna” (female beef), “giovane” (young), “che non ha mai partorito” (that has never calfed). It was both tender and chewy and very flavorful! A wonderful evening. 

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas: Buon Immacolata!

Christmas decorations have been going up in Rome steadily for the last several weeks.

However, the semi-official start of the Christmas season happened only last Thursday, December 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Not to be confused with the conception of Jesus, this feast celebrates the doctrine that Mary was conceived free of “original sin.”

As a side note, in Late Night Catechism, the long-running comedy-show-cum-catechism-class, Sister always asks, “What is the Immaculate Conception?” I have a little plastic Mary statue at home, my prize for getting the right answer. Sister also made me class monitor during the intermission but that is another story … twelve years of Catholic school counts for something!

To commemorate the Pope’s official recognition of the doctrine, a memorial was erected in Piazza di Spagna, just to the right from the bottom of the Spanish Steps. A statute of Mary sits high above the square atop an ancient Roman column sitting on an elaborate base with four large statues of biblical figures, including Moses (left) and King David (right, striking that chord that pleased the Lord). 

On December 8, using ladder trucks, Roman firefighters place wreaths at the foot of the statue and around Mary’s outstretched arm. 

Many other groups, mainly other labor unions, also place huge wreaths at the base of the memorial. 

Later in the day, the Pope comes to venerate. It’s big! Brad and I made our way over there mid-afternoon and waded into the crowd at first. But it got thicker and thicker as the Pope’s arrival got closer. 

We relented after a while, dropping back to where the crowd was thinner. Piazza di Spagna and the street leading into it (Via Condotti) are very high-end: Check out the workers with their smartphones, waiting on the Prada balcony (first balcony to the left above, and below) to catch the Pope's arrival.

And here is a night shot of Via Condotti lit up in the background with a wild, fireworks Christmas tree in the foreground. The tree sits on the main landing of the Spanish Steps, reminiscent of the fireworks that marked their September re-opening after refurbishment, all financed by the Bulgari jewelry company.

We finally gave up waiting on the Pope and went into a little English tea room, Babbingtons, which has been there at the foot of the Steps since 1893. A little later, we could hear the crowd outside cheering as we enjoyed our tea and wine and sweets…