Katie and Tommy: Around the World

Vacationing with the Fausts largely means, I have recently discovered, lots of good food and great wine, but that wonderful combination along with having nearly three months of conversation to catch up on has left us unable to keep up with the blog! Almost an hour after we posted our last blog in Dubrovnik, we boarded a ferry bound for Bari, Italy. Several weeks ago, we had a difficult time choosing an appropriate seating accommodation on the ferry. Our decision basically came down to a private room, or what was simply referred to online as “deck.” Our minds had been filled with terrifying images of frozen, wet lawn chairs so we ended up choosing the private room; we later learned that the poorly defined and translated “deck” really just meant sleeping on plush benches in what was basically a dining room/cafe.

The next day, Wednesday, was a bit of a long one for us because we had to spend 5 hours in the Bari train station as we waited for our trip to Rome, 6 hours of actual travel, and then about another 90 minutes traveling to the small town of Tarquinia from Rome Termini. A colleague of Dr. Faust’s is a native of Tarquinia and offered us her home so that we could live a bit more comfortably during our stay in Rome. Her aunt even met Katie and I at the train station and took us to the apartment; it felt wonderful to be back in a home environment once again. The next day, Katie’s parents arrived shortly after noon but to our horror as much as theirs they came without 2 of their 3 pieces of luggage! The irony is particularly biting when one considers how much Katie and I have been flying over the past year and our bags have been never been lost! Since Tarquinia is almost an hour from Rome by train and much of the day had already passed us, we chose to spend it driving around the Umbria countryside in the rental car, seeing a number of small towns, including Tuscania, Marta, Montefiascone, and Civita during our afternoon tour. Not only were they spectacularly beautiful, but they were pleasantly empty of tourists as well! The only downside to staying in Tarquinia was that this small village was nearly a ghost town after 6:00 or 7:00 in the evening, and so that severely limited our possible dinner options. But for our first dinner in Italy together, the restaurant attached to the hotel down the street proved to be quite delicious; we stumbled back to the hotel well after 11:00!

When our alarm clocks rang on Friday morning at 5:45, however, we admonished ourselves for having stayed up so late the night before as we downed one cup of coffee after another. Arriving in Rome around 8:30, our first order of business was to stop by the Jesuit curia outside St. Peter’s where I met Fr. Adam Zak, a Polish Jesuit who was able to secure for us tickets to nearly all of the Tridium celebrations presided by Pope Benedict XVI. The curia’s location can’t be beat. Their meditation gardens buttress up against ruins of the home of Emperor Nero’s wife. Similarly, from the 5th story roof, nearly all of Rome is visible. Fr. Zak was gracious enough to give us a small tour from the rooftop, but we had to cut it a bit short because we had timed tickets at the Villa Borgese which we were risking being late for. I have only visited a few art museums in my life that I would say truly moved me. However, the Villa Borghese is likely the newest addition to this list. Though all the Bernini sculptures were spectacular, my particular favorite was the Rape of Persephone. After a light lunch, we felt it might be prudent to arrive early to St. Peter’s for the Passion celebration. We were glad we did as the entrance for ticket holders was not clearly marked. My only interaction with Italian Police has been limited to those I have asked for help or for directions in St. Peter’s; even when I have the help of a native Italian speaker, they are amazingly unable to provide any semblance of helpfulness, useful information, or security (nearly everyone sets off the metal detectors but no one is further inspected). However, once we had found the correct line for ticket holders (which an American priest assisted us with), the gates were shortly opened.

Though enthusiasm abounded, civility did not! Poor crowd-control planning on the part of police did not make for an orderly flow of people and we soon found ourselves on the losing end of an enormous shoving contest with seminarians, nuns, and fellow tourists. The scene can best be summed up by an exchange of words I later witnessed in the basilica, over who was the rightful “owner” of a seat: with a face that is difficult to describe other than one filled with the highest expressions of annoyance, anger, and frustration, one tourist argued vehemently, “First come, first serve,” to another. I certainly hope everyone in the Basilica that night was at least Christian as it felt quite embarrassing to see such blatantly rude behavior. Nevertheless, the ceremony of the Passion itself was truly beautiful and gave me, and I imagine the Fausts as well, time for reflection and prayer.When we were leaving the Basilica at the ceremony’s conclusion, we were surprised to see it raining. Unknown to us at the time, it would not stop for the next three days and we find ourselves permanently living in our rain gear! We had really hoped to go to Stations of the Cross in the Coliseum but opted to skip it due to train times and rain. Though it took us an hour once again to return to Tarquinia, once we arrived we were so glad to have such a sizeable and comfortable apartment to our disposal!

When we arrived the following morning in Rome, our first course of action was to go see the Vatican Museums. It ended up taking up a bit more of the day that we had anticipated; we stood for three hours in the pouring rain just to get in and then spent an additional 2.5 hours seeing what was sadly just a small percentage of its immense collections. My personal favorites from here were the Raphael rooms and a wall-sized painting of Jan Sobieski liberating Vienna. Though it was still raining when we emerged, we decided we had dried out sufficiently to try to go see the Coliseum in the ancient quarter. We had originally planned to enter the Coliseum but when we finally arrived and saw the long line snaking around it, our thoughts immediately turned to our harrowing, wet morning at the Vatican and we came to grips with the fact that we simply did not have the morale to wait in any more lines. The Roman Forum ruins complex had just closed, so before we began our trek back to Termini station we simply walked around the perimeter of the complex and observed the ruins. We also stopped by Santa Maria della Vittoria so that we could see Bernini’s Ecstasy of St. Theresa. When we arrived in Tarquinia almost an hour later we stopped at a grocery store so that we would buy some food to eat Sunday night as we predicted that everything would be closed.

Easter Sunday began, naturally, in St. Peter’s Square. Easter mass was scheduled to begin at 10:30, and like usual, we had to arrive early to ensure good seats so we showed up right around 8:30, which, a bit surprisingly, did not even allow us to get in the first tiered block of seats. Unfortunately, we had a bit of a repeat of the previous day because it started raining less than an hour after we arrived. I couldn’t help but think about how Fr. Than once gave a homily about how people stood in the pouring rain during LSU football games, yet whenever it rained heavily during Sunday evenings, the amount of people attending mass was significantly smaller. Regardless, I think Pope Benedict felt sorry for the thousands of people in attendance because the homily was skipped and final blessing was given while communion was still taking place for many people. Though Katie and I were dressed in full rain gear, the Fausts’ pants were really beginning to get soaked so we decided to skip the Urbi et Orbi message that was apparently held after mass. After warming up with hot soup, we tried to finish out those last things we had planned to do in Rome; specifically those we thought were most likely to be accessible on Easter Sunday: the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, Piazza Novana, and the Victor Emmanuel Monument. Having gotten up every morning at 6:00 AM and spent so many countless hours in the rain, we were really exhausted by the late afternoon so we headed back to Tarquinia at 6:00 and enjoyed a peaceful night at the apartment, while we eat a home cooked dinner and finally got to see Joey win on Crosswords! We went to bed at 10:00 and slept in the next morning till 9:00! Internet is a bit slow, but we did manage to get our pictures from Plitvice up!

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 27th, 2008 at 1:43 am and is filed under Italy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.