Day 07 - Europe 2010

I woke up so tired.  I had slept just fine, nine hours actually, but it didn’t feel like enough.  I got to my feet and felt a jolt of ‘What the heck are you doing to me!?’ go through my legs.  Check out was at 9:30 so we had to gather everything up pretty quickly and head out of there.  Unfortunately, we washed our clothes in the sink the night before, which Nick said was his least favorite activity so far, and they were still wet after drying through the night on a line we strung up from the ceiling.  So there was a wet mess on the floor and we had to bundle everything up into our laundry bags and carry them along with everything else.  I had actually chaffed off the skin on my finger scrubbing those clothes so, considering our trouble, we thought it might be better to find a place to do laundry from here on out.

We walked over to our hostel and checked in.  We spent two hours looking for a place to stay in Rome, which was another frustration.  Hardly anything was available and if we did find something, we would read reviews about it that would say, “The showers are so small you can’t even bend over to pick up your shampoo,” or “The staff is really rude,” or “The bathroom looks like it’s never been cleaned!”  After our ordeal of finding just one place to stay, I started feeling pretty frustrated at the whole thing.  We have no set plan and still had so much to figure out and reserve, including plane tickets, train reservations, and lodging.  Nick and I decided that we really needed to dedicate a good part of our time to getting all this figured out so we wouldn’t have to keep stressing about it and making last-minute reservations or hostel-searching through an unfamiliar city.

Still, we needed to take advantage of the day, which was already half gone by the time we were done with our meals and our planning.  We headed just down the street to the impressive Pitti Palace, home of the powerful Medici family.  Again, we ran into some serious costs.  To see the gardens, the treasury, and costume museum was $12 while the royal apartments and greater art galleries was about $15.  I wanted to do it all but I wasn’t in the mood for spending so much money (remember, we are already spending a lot on food and lodging alone).  So, we opted for the gardens.

The gardens were extensive and the statues were more impressive than the foliage.  Sometimes there were long lanes of trees or archways of bush that were romantic and alluring and there were plenty of cityscape views worth a picture or two.  But I was most interested in the sculptures throughout, especially the great fountain surrounded by orange and lemon trees.  Mostly though, it was too hot and too bright.  We found some shade early on and napped for a while, which was nice.

It was already 4:30pm when we finished with the gardens.  We had decided to buy tickets for the royal apartments and art galleries after all, but I decided we should make use of our already-bought tickets first by hitting up the treasury and costume museum.  The treasury actually turned out to be much more extensive than I thought and quite interesting too.  I was very excited to see the painting by Botticelli of the woman with pearl-laden hair on a black background (I do not remember the name but it is very well known – sorry, no pictures).  I stared at it a while and wondered at how it is so captivating.  Something about her face, I think, and the black background to contrast her bright lovely hair.

The rest of the museum held some very interesting trinkets that I do not even know how to describe.  There were these sculptures with long twirling handles and bulbous shapes on top, a mix of organic and geometric shapes that seemed other-worldly.  They seemed to be made of ivory or something of that sort, I couldn’t quite figure it out.  Again, I felt inspired by these odd sculptures and wanted to create something like that of my own.  The rest of the museum had a lot of brooches, rings, and other fascinating jewelry pieces, along with a few paintings of court residents and such.

We definitely “pulled a Residenz” at the costume museum.  It was pretty boring, or “painful” as Nick described it, with only a few pieces that actually reflected the time of the Medici family.  The most interesting was a small dimly lit gallery with true pieces from some 500 years ago, very very worn but at least showing the design of the time.  That was pretty awesome.

We didn’t finish with all of that until 5:45pm and there was hardly any time left to do the rest of the museum as we had wanted, which was fine because we were both very weary from the heat and trekking the massive gardens.  We were hungry too but first I needed to get me some gelato, the famous ice cream of Italy.  There was one right across the street from the palace and I ordered a mix of some chocolate, cheesecake, and hazelnut.  Wow!  It was so so yum!!!  It definitely lived up to its name.  I am trying to find words to describe the magical richness of this ice cream but suffice it to say I plan to eat more of it tomorrow and the next day and the next!

Nick said we had not eaten an Italian pizza yet so we found a place nearby and sat down.  He got a big pizza all to himself, which he heartily ate, and I ordered an okay serving of some okay ravioli.  After the meal, the waitress asked us if we wanted some lemon jell-o as a “house gift.”  I was confused and asked, “Lemon jell-o?” and she confirmed that we would receive some lemon jell-o.  We looked at each other and said, “Sure!” She came back with two small cups in her hand with some yellow liquid inside.  We looked at each other after she left, our eyebrows raised in wonder.  Hmmm… what is this exactly?  We sniffed it and I started to feel pretty stupid debating over this little drink and sniffing it like I thought it was poison.  Finally, I took a tiny sip and wow!  It hit the back of my throat like a squirt of pure sourness.  Yep, I don’t think I want to drink that.  Turns out it was not lemon jell-o but limoncello, an alcohol drink, we found out later.  Because of my sip, I made Nick sip too – like Adam and Eve, Nick said – and he said it tasted like Theraflu.  So we walked away, or slinked away, I should say, from our table and laughed our way back to the hostel.

We spent the rest of our evening making “plans,” although the free internet was going 2 miles an hour so we barely got anything done despite out 3+ hours on the computer.  We had planned to go to Spain and decided against it, after looking over our itinerary and feeling too overwhelmed.  Cutting it out cost us some money because we had already bought tickets over there and had to change them to head to Paris instead, but we felt a lot less stressed when making that decision.  Someday, I will make it there.

Then, Nick went to bed and I spent all night catching up with the blog.  I went to bed at 2:30 with still two days to complete and TONS of pictures to sort through.  With our eight-bed hostel-room full of a few snorers, I put in my ear plugs and was out like a light.

 PHOTOS:

 Here is the front of the Pitti Palace.  It's pretty big.

We found a tree to sleep under.  It was so hot outside we were happy to find shade.

I am not sure if this is old or new art or if it was meant to be cracked or was put back together, but it was cool anyway.

This was hilarious!  This bird landed and immediately squatted down on the bush and spread his wings.  He was obviously feeling hot too, the poor guy, but it sure was funny to see, especially with his beak open and panting.

We thought there needed to be a sculpture here so we took care of that.  Nick says they modeled all the sculptures after him anyway.

This one looks just like me!

I liked the Pegasus, though I think his wings need to be much bigger.  Not sure he would get very far with those little wings.

The fountain was surrounded by orange trees and lemon trees.  Not sure who the guy in the center is supposed to be but it was funny to watch birds land on his head.

This guy had an unfortunate accident with the shredder at work.  You know, those big machines with all the warning signs they tell you to be careful around.  Well, he didn't listen and now look at his arms.  Good job buddy.

 

 Sometimes he still feels the pain.

This woman looks like she is shooshing you.  She is just one of many statues on a long lane in the garden.

 Nick with the yummy gelato!  More to come, yeah!

Nick with his Italian pizza.  Good thing we were gonna get some free lemon jell-o to wash it down afterwards.