Part One: Trip to Rome

We left for Rome Friday morning at 6 a.m. We went on our regular bus, but not with our regular driver. He was under the weather. Was that why it took us longer than scheduled to reach Rome? Who knows (we did have some bad traffic). After checking in, we headed to the Colosseum. Last week was "Culture Week" in Italy, so a lot of museums and monuments were free, creating longer than normal lines. This video is to show the line.

We moved along fairly well, though. They are a lot more lenient through the metal detectors than the airports are.

There are lots of reasons for visiting the Colosseum, but you can't help but think back to the time it was built and the tools people had to build such massive structures. The holes that you see in the structure are not caused by age or machine gun damage from the war (as Filiberto once heard some guide tell a group) but rather that the place originally had all sorts of marble statues and other do-dads that people over the centuries removed. Quite simply, the Colosseum had

been used as a quarry that people came to for building materials. I know the picture taken through the arch is too high contrast for the bog camera I'm using, but I hope it shows an entry to the seating area. Kind of amazing that a stadium built millenia later would look pretty much the same. Those Romans really knew some stuff. Most people think of the "Christians v Lions" events that were held here, but the stadium was used for a lot more than just that. Events
were free, too. As Filiberto explained, Roman culture understood that to keep the people happy required

entertaining them. I know I have previously commented on Filiberto's skills, but I must do so again. Visiting a place with him is like having your own encyclopedia with you. Some of the students have comments that they have visited places without him and have wished he was there to explain to them all the things they are seeing. I think in the future, I will look to hire a professional guide anytime I visit any historic site. There is a significant difference in the experience.

Lots of people are aware that they even did naval battle reenactments in the Colosseum by flooding the area with a few feet of water and using mini flat-bottomed boats. While the events were free, there was a hierarchy to who sat where. There was not a roof, but they had an early version of a retractable dome using huge sails that would be draped above

the stadium for shade.

Constantine's triumphal arch is located just outside. The pavement all around the monument is full of tourists and vendors. People sell everything from post cards (one was shouting "cheaper than Wal-Mart") to plastic gladiator armor. You can even get your picture taken with someone dressed as a gladiator (as Nicole did at my insistence years ago).

We had spectacular weather the whole weekend. We were a little worried starting out, as there was a light rain as we left Macerata, but that ended before we reached Rome and we had plenty of sun. Mornings were cool enough to need a jacket but by afternoon everyone had removed them and all were trying to soak up the sun.

The Colosseum also had an exhibit of ancient works. This is from Pompeii, about 300 years BC

Circus Maximus looks like just a big field, and it is used by residents as one - running, biking, playing soccer. Thousands of years ago, this place had horse races and could host many more spectators than the Colosseum. Had to believe, but more than 200,000 could watch an event here.

I like this picture for lots of reasons. Here we are in the middle of the tour. We've just visited Circus Maximus and are headed toward Parco di S. Alessio (a nice, quiet park in the big city), Filiberto was on the phone, dealing with other arrangements for the tour. Notice also that most of the students are trying (unsuccessfully) to keep up. He's more than twice their age but he has more than twice their energy. Most of them slept on the bus to Rome while Filiberto worked the
entire time with the AHA accountant, going over budget items line by line.

I'm going to create a collection of these. In Bologna I have the "Don't park bikes" sign with a bike chained to the post. In the park you can see a couple of people "making new Romans" in the background. They weren't really, but that is the euphemism we came up with.

Here's a short clip of Filiberto lecturing outside the Temple of Vesta. I liked
this shot because he was elevated. Pay attention to the fact that the accountant who kept him awake on the bus is seated while he works. Note also at the end of the clip the couple of students (behind Caroline, who is waiving) sitting, too far away to possibly hear.

We walked through the old Jewish ghetto with its ancient ruins.

Notice that at the top of this spectacular old theatre, some noble put his residence hundreds of years ago.

We visited the Basilica of Santa Sabina, which was originally built on this site in 425. Obviously lots of things were added and renovated since then,. but it is distinctive for many reasons, including as the original Dominican church in Rome. Both St. Dominic and St. Thomas Aquinas lived in the monastery at same time.

Perhaps because of its relation to Dominic, perhaps because we had never been here, Kim took a bunch of pictures (more than she did in St. Peter's). Kim and I discussed the fact that returning to Rome this time was a nice mix of familiar sights and new things. We were happy to return to visit the Colosseum and St. Peter's, but St. Sabina, San Pietro in Vincoli and the Campidoglio Museum (in a later post) were great new things for us to visit. Actually they are quite old - just new to us.

The first day ended with dinner at La Grotta Azzurra (The Blue Grotto), a restaurant that appears to cater to groups. We were met by Sarah, who in 2002 assisted with guiding our tours while Filiberto was recovering from surgery. She is now doing a post-doc at the British Institute in Rome. She's Australian, her mom lives in Hawaii and she lives in Rome, thanks to the Brits. How international can you get! Day 1 ended about 16 hours after it started.

We were joined this week by the last of our guests, Wayne Davis and Ferne Bonomi. Wayne and Ferne were the only people to come visit us in Slovenia in 1995 when we had the Fulbright. In 2002, they visited us here in Macerata. Of course we had to take them to our favorite place to eat while they were here.

We visited a modern art museum (1900s Italian artists) with Wayne and Ferne that we had visited the week earlier with Ed and Dana. The museum is in Palazzo Ricci, a 16th century palace just around the corner from our apartment. It's not usually open this time of year - they just opened a week around Easter. They open for holidays and all summer long (the palace isn't heated).

I posted Monday. Wayne and Ferne arrived Monday evening. They left this afternoon. Tomorrow morning at 6 a.m. we take the students to Rome for the weekend. I'll have a post sometime after that.

This video clip captures the crane that pulled into our courtyard today to work on the satellite dishes on the roof. Unfortunately I didn't get any video of them pulling in, but note at the end of the clip the tight quarters he had to maneuver the truck into the gate, and the wall across the "street." Remember - these streets inside the city walls are pre-automobile, so they're pretty narrow.


It has been a very busy week. Less than three weeks left in Europe. Hardly seems like enough time to do all there is to do.

After spending Easter day not leaving the house except to go to church because of the rainy weather, today (a legal holiday in Italy, as in much of Europe) Kim and I were taken by Professor Tonino Zampa and his friend Giorgio around the countryside of the Marche. Just driving around was a real treat. In 2o02 we had a rental car, but not so this time, so the drive through the countryside after 11 weeks was awfully nice. Tonino teaches in the AHA program, and he and Giorgio were part of the quartet that put on the concert for our students a few weeks ago.

Our first stop was Jesi, a town about 30 miles away, probably best known as one of the major producers of Verdicchio wine. We visited the local art museum, which is in a former palace. Surprisingly we were able to take pictures there, so I can include a couple of things. The top photo is the "hallway," with walls and ceiling elaborately decorated with paintings depicting the seasons, zodiacal signs, different trades - as you can see it was quite long, so there had to be a number of themes.

I though this piece was wood when I first saw it
but instead it was plaster. Most of the worksranged from the 1400s through the 1700s. I believe this was an earlier work.

This wood panel was an altar piece, obviously of Christ's entombment. This was by painted by Lorenzo Lotto in the early 16th century. Tonino told us that his work was not appreciated or valued much for centuries - until only recently. Just to the right are two pieces depicting the annunciation.

Interesting side note: this is a "culture week" in
Italy and a lot of museums are offering free
admission. Not this place.

Every ceiling in every room had frescoes. What you're looking at here is actually two dimensional. It's painted, and there are no statues. Not sure the picture does it justice, but the ceilings were amazing. I would have sworn they were 3-D, but they weren't.







Lorenzo Lotto also did this altar piece in 1531 of St. Lucy.

We have seen so many works of art and such spectacular palaces that this one probably doesn't warrant as much attention as I have given it, but permission to photograph inside gave me inspiration ;)





When we finished at the museum it was time to walk around Jesi a bit. Giorgio is on the left, Tonino in the center and obviously Kim on the right.

We had a little bit of every kind of weather today. We had sunshine some of the time, a little rain, some menacing clouds and even when we were up at Cingoli (referred to as "the balcony of the Marche"), our highest point for the day at about 2,000 ft, we had some snow.




The picture above was taken at the same place as this one, only here we are looking outside the walls rather than along the streets of Jesi.










After lunch at Cingoli we went on to San Severino. Before we went up to this point, we stopped in the piazza in the center of town below, had a coffee break, visited a historic church on the piazza, then headed up. The threesome repositioned themselves for this picture. I'll let you figure out who is who on your own.








There won't be too many tourism opportunities remaining. The class crunch happens this week and next. The last day for the students will be April 5.

Happy Easter to All!

Filiberto and Angelica very kindly gave us Easter gifts - some oil from their own olive trees, a bottle of spumante and this fabulous collection of Easter candy. Italian shops provide special packaging anytime you buy a gift.















Our grandson Luca is nine days old. I grabbed this picture from Anthony's Facebook.


We are on a 4-day Easter weekend. All but a few of the students have scattered to points all over Europe. They have more money than I do (or as one student put it, more willing to incur debt than I am).

Tuesday night we had our old friend John Johnson from Winona visit. I am embarrassed that I have no picture of John. He was only in Macerata 12 hours, 7 or 8 of which we slept, so that's my excuse. I picked him up at the train station after 8 p.m. and brought him home, where Kim had a nice home-cooked meal waiting for us. We spent the evening catching up. I left at 6:30 the next morning for Urbino and San Marino, and Kim got John to the train station at 8:15.

There was a procession Friday night for Good Friday. It just so happened that it went past our apartment about 10 p.m., or we never would have seen it. Kim heard the horses' hooves on the cobblestone and got up to look. There were people dressed in Roman costumes, a marching band, crosses of various shapes and sizes and tons of clergy, all followed by hundreds of people praying and singing.

I saw a story that reported median incomes in 30 countries around the world. Italy comes in at 23rd at 12,731 Euros. In first place was South Korea at 24,030 Euros, followed by the UK, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Japan, Norway and the United States in 7th at 19,905 Euros.

Since Luca's parents are such big movie fans, I thought I'd take a look at the Italian Box Office Hits for the week of March 9. Six are US films dubbed into Italian, three are originally in Italian and one is Spanish, dubbed into Italian.

1. Grande, Grosso e...Verdone - even non-Italian speakers can tell it's a comedy by the trailer
2. Non e un Paese Per Vecchi - The Coen Brothers Film, "No Country for Old Men"
3. Jumper - the Sci-Fi Thriller with Samuel Jackson
4. Sweeney Todd - the movie based on Sondheim's bizarre play, starring Johnny Depp
5. Cenerentola e gli 007 Nanni - "Happily N'Ever After" - the animated film was released in the US in 2006
6. Rec - A Spanish Horror Film
7. John Rambo - I even saw Sylvester Stallone making Italian talk show appearances to promote this
8. Prospettive di un Delitto - "Vantage Point" starring Dennis Quaid
9. Parlami d'Amore - An Italian romantic comedy
10. Persepolis - Animated, but hardly a children's film. About a girl growing up in Iran

Our old friends Ed and Dana came to visit us! Dana used to teach psych at Ball State, but she, Ed and their two boys moved to Arizona 2 1/2 years ago, and this is the first time we've seen them since then. They spent a couple of nights in Venice, a couple of nights in Florence, then came to spend a couple of nights with us in Macerata. Obviously they know all the

best places to go in Italy. Of course we took them to Trattoria da Ezio for dinner. Giovanni didn't want to be in the picture, but finally consented.

Gabrielle is our bus driver. He took us on our excusions this semester. Not just an able driver but a very nice fellow. His bus is modern and quite comfortable.

Our excusion this past Wednesday was to San Marino and Urbino.

Our time in Urbino was spent visiting the Palazzo Ducale, which serves as the National Gallery of the Marche. No pictures are allowed inside, so once again I am limited to showing you the exterior of this expansive palace, which served as the home of Duke Federico of Montafeltro until his death in 1482. You may think you don't know the duke, but you have

quite probably seen his very famous

portrait, which today hangs in the Ufizzi Galery in Florence. The Duke made his money as a mercenary, and was quite successful in his career. The interior of the palace is filled with artwork: altar pieces, paintings, tapestries and some incredible inlaid wood doors and woodwork. Urbino is also a hill town, although higher up than Macerata. We drove up to the top
of the mountain to get to Urbino, then

drove down the mountain and back up another to get to our second destination. Filiberto and Gabrielle assured us that this was a case where taking the longer distance was definitely quicker, rather than driving around the roller-coaster roads through the mountains to get to San Marino.

San Marino is a small country that borders the Marche.It pretty much has two things that make it a tourism mecca: first is the spectacular scenery that my little blogging camera cannot do justice. From the top of the mountain one can easily see to the Adriatic. It's also funny how nearby mountains look like small hills lying below us. The second attractive feature for tourists is shopping. San Marino sells lots of items for less than Italy (I think it's tax related) so people buy liquor, chocolates and jewelry. At least those were the most prevalent shops lining the streets all the way up from the old city walls to the top of themountain, where the castle is located. There ae actually three castles, but we only went to the
highest, as is the case with most tourists. This excursion is

significantly different from most others in that Filiberto does not spend a lot of time explaining art works or architecture. This is one opportunity for them to enjoy the scenery and shop.

Because my class is producing a video about food, Filiberto has made an extra effort to incorporate special food-related trips. We went to a fish market. We saw the production of chocolate. Yesterday we went to a local gelateria. Not everywhere that sells gelato makes it, but "La Cremeria" does. In summer they make 3oo kilos (660 pounds) per DAY.

Here Filiberto (with freshly-made ice cream cone in hand) translates the process. The equipment he's showing cost the owner nearly $200,000.

The dining are was large enough to seat the entire class and then some, but the production area was small. Only half of us could watch at a time, and even then it was crowded. Here Angelica distributes cones so we could eat it seconds after it was made.

The first flavor he made was hazelnut: very popular in Italy. Flavors with nuts, chocolate,etc have a higher cream content than fruit flavors.

We are working hard here in Italy, but it does have its rewards.

The second flavor was pistacchio. He gets this paste from a supplier. This is a rather expensive paste, but he made note of the fact that it's pure - no additives of any kind. He advised the students that they always read food labels and know what it is they're consuming.

As you might expect, the main ingredient is milk.

The pistacchio is precisely weighed - not because it is so expensive, but to make sure the gelato is consistent. If you go into a place and order a particular flavor, you want it to taste the same every time you order it.

In the case of pistacchio, some milk must be mixed with the paste before it's added to the refrigerated mixer otherwise the flavor will congeal in small pieces rather than in a smooth cream.

The pisacchio/cream mixture is added to the mixer. The machine is combination mixer/quick chiller. As it is mixed the temperature is brought down and you can hear the machine sound change as the mixture becomes thicker.

The mixture volume increases as it chills and air is folded into the mix. A picture I didn't get was the quick deep freeze. Our gelato never went into it, but stuff that goes out into the serving case does. It quickly drops the temperature of the stuff sub zero (almost 40 below) in order to preserve it, and to prevent crystallization that occurs in our "regular" freezers.

The mixing took only a few minutes. It seemed like a lot longer because all of us were anxious to taste it. The finished product is placed quite precisely in stainless steel trays for display.

Nicole called to tell me I have a letter from Fulbright telling me I received an award. If I can work out the details with Ball State, Kim and I will be in Athens, Greece, Feb. through May 2009.

I need to clear out some old pictures. Today's entry will be a hodge-podge.



I neglected to get this grafitti shot posted in my last entry. I have no clue what it says, means or represents but it was colorful and obviously done with some degree of precision.







This is pretty interesting. When my brother was here last week, he told us of pay toilets (in Paris, I believe) where the entire room is sprayed and sanitized as the occupant leaves. Lo and behold when Kim went to San Marino with Jim and Linda, they found the same thing. Very clean - and discourages anyone from sneaking in while the
previous patron is using it (or they
will get sprayed).

We had a chocolate fair in Piazza della Liberta here March 8/9. There were about 15 tents set up, each with small, exclusive chocolatiers (none of the major brand sorts of things - all small shops that hand-make). Stuff was not cheap but as you might imagine it was
quite good. We sampled chocolates
with a wide variety of fillings,
including grappa and hot pepper.











Kim wanted to make sure to get this picture for Megan.

















These two pictures are the same "street" in Macerata. Obviously we're inside the city walls here, but we're actually just outside what were the old walls. In this picture, the wall to the right is the old city wall. The houses on the left are "new construction."








































You probably can't tell, but this is a bus shelter. Obviously it's covered with writing. As with the other graffiti entry, some is political, some personal, some just nonsense.











I took this picture of Hansel & Gretel's gingerbread house at the mall. The street sign above is pointing the way to them, and another arrow to Red Riding Hood.









You don't get to see much in this video, but we had a portion of a cross-country bike race here Sunday. Tirreno-Adriatico left Macerata at noon and went "only" about 17 miles, but it's pretty severe hills. The Swiss guy who won this leg did it in just under 34 minutes.