Italy with Chelsea and Dave

Dave, Chelsea, and I took a week-long trip to Italy in February, starting in Rome and heading up to Siena and Florence. 

**Rome**

We stayed in the extra apartment of an architect who Chelsea knows on Ville de Trastavere on the west side of the city. Every morning, we crossed this beautiful bridge over the Tiber to walk into the heart of Rome. We spent 3 days wandering the streets, eating mind-boggling pasta, and sampling wine. The weather was sunny and warm in the beginning of the trip, and there were very few tourists at this time of year so we never had to wait in lines - a real treat! Favorite bar in Trastevere: Ambre Rosse. Favorite dinner: artichoke soup, "not bread", and pasta at El Gildo. Best pizza: Forno Camp de' Fiori #22 in the Piazza Camp de' Fiori. 

The Trevi fountain with Neptune and his charriot - a nice place to enjoy gelato at dusk! 

The Roman Forum - built over 2,000 years ago. I was really impressed by the ancient architecture and the building techniques that were forgotten for 1,000 years after the fall of Rome. At one low point history, the Forum was neglected and turned into a cow pasture. So much remaining and yet so much lost! 

The Colluseum - built in AD 80 in under 10 years! There were 80 elevators which lifted the gladiators and animals up from the holding areas below. So much cruelty.

The Carabinieri take their job seriously here! 

We visited Vatican City. Wandered through the museum along massive corridors impressively painted. I couldn't help but think where all that money goes on Sundays once it leaves the hands of the people who worked so hard to get it. Fascinating paintings of regions of Italy flanking the walls of one hallway. 

St. Peter's Basillica. The bronze of the baldachin was pillaged from the roof of the Pantheon in the 1600s. 

Renaissance sculptures in St. Peter's Basillica - big, expressive hands, callused toes, faces full of expression. Spilling over doorways, gesturing, leaning, looking, pointing from the corners. Life. Flowing gowns made from stone, blowing in the wind, moving with the person, sleeves rolled up, wrinkled sandal straps. Great sculptures - how many people in the world still produce art like this by hand? 

St. Peter's Basillica

St. Peter's Basillica

**Florence**

We took the bus from Rome to Siena - 2 hours, a lovely trip through the countryside. Siena was a thriving city between 1260-1348. With a population of 60,000, it was larger than Paris. Then the Black Death came and killed many inhabitants, Florence invaded, and Siena never recovered enough to do a lot of rebuilding. Most of the buildings and the Duomo, all built on the top of a hill, date back to the time when Siena flourished and there were many nooks and crannies to explore.  Best dinner: Osteria Boccon del Prete (on via S. Pietro #17) - 3 ages of pecorino cheese, a mustard jam, and homemade walnut bread, ragou with pasta, gnocchi with lemon sauce and seabream. Dessert was orange cream with a crispy sugar glaze. Wow! 

The Duomo looming tall over Siena. 

I particularly liked gothic Duomo of Siena because of it's stripes! 

 They were planning to build onto the church, but the plague hit and then Florence invaded and they never got around to it. The giant wall they started in the 1300's still remains. 

 Elaborate marble floor in Siena's Duomo. The center depicts Remus and Romulus and their foster wolf mother. 

 Best snack: Fried rice-dough balls made with orange extract, crispy on the outside, gooey on the inside. Purchased from the stand in Il Campo and dusted in sugar before being wrapped in paper. We ate them quite a few times standing in Il Campo, the sloping piazza before the castle-like town hall. The Palio di Siena is a horserace run twice a year around this piazza - bareback jockys representing the 17 districts within the city. A horse may even if it's jocky falls off (which seems to happen a lot). 

 Coffee of a different style – macchiato served by a barrista in a suit, taken standing up at the bar.

**Florence**

We left Siena on Thursday morning and caught a bus to Florence. We spent the weekend exploring the Galileo Museum, Ponte Vecchio bridge, the Duomo, Piazzale Michelangelo, and the Uffizi.

 We also met up with Coral, Chelsea and Dave's American friend who is living in Florence and learning about wine and Italian food. We met her at her local Saturday market along with Daniella, who came down from Torino (in the area) on the train for the weekend. We all shopped for bread and vegetables and cheeses and headed back to Coral's house to do some cooking. We were snacking on this green bean quiche treat as we met Daniella and Coral.

Making pasta dough at Coral's, stirring the water slowly into the flour.

Daniella making a wonderful salad: fennel bulbs, pecorino cheese, cured meat, olive oil.

Coral rolls out the ravioli dough.

Hand-made ravioli with ricotta-parmesan-spinach filling. Does life get much better?

Tuscan-style bread, baked with no salt.

 Great times in Cora's kitchen! Coral, Dave, Chelsea, and Daniella.

Thanks for visiting, Daniella! It was great to see you and hear about all of your adventures! 

**Domes and arches**

 I got really excited about the domes and basilicas around Rome, Florence, and Siena, and how they are so interrelated.

 The Basilica of Maxentius, in the Roman Forum in Rome, was built in the 800s and was, at the time, the largest structure in the Roman world. Unlike other Basilicas at the time, it had giant arches instead of columns holding up the roof. These 3 barrel vaults are all that is left, although there were another set of 3 on the other side with 3 groin vaults in between - a massive structure, even by today's standards. You can see the octagonal ceiling coffers still used in much more recently built structures - like St. Peter's Basilica

 St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City has the same basic layout as the Basilica of Maxentius. St. Peter's was completed in 1626, 800 years after Maxentius, at the height of the Renaissance You can se the barrel valuts supporting the over-arching groin vaults and theoctagonal ceiling coffers in the smaller barrel vaults. Michaelangelo helped design the structure when he was in his 70's.

St. Peter's Basilica has the tallest dome in the world. Michaelangelo and other architects looked towards the Pantheon, built in Roman times, and the Duomo in Florence, to complete the dome in 1547.

 The Pantheon's dome was built in 126 AD and was an incredible feat of engineering at the time. The top is open and rain comes in. After the fall of Rome, Europeans didn't build another dome so great until the Duomo in Florence. 

 The Pantheon is a huge dome, but relatively low to the ground compared to the Duomo in Florence.

 The gothic-style Duomo in Florence was built beginning in 1296. They didn't have the technology to complete the dome at the time, so they left it open until 1436 and built a dome based on the Pantheon's dome following Brunelleshi's plans. This dome towers over the city, was built in 14 years, and was an inspiration for the dome of St. Peter's Basilica. This dome much more technical to build than the Pantheon's because of it's height - no internal scaffolding, starting from the floor, could be used.

Vasari painted the dome in Florence's Duomo in 1570. He borrowed heavily from Michelangelo's Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel (painted in 1508-12 before his work in 1547 on St. Peter's Basilica - wow, so many dates! ) but Michelangelo's work outshines Vasari's to an incredible degree. 

The Duomo in Florence's dome is actually 2 domes with space between them to save weight. You can climb the stairs to the top of the dome and get a view of Florence - the stairs wind their way between the 2 domes. 

 The dome in Siena's Duomo.

Weekend trip to Reims, France!

Felix and I went to Reims this weekend with our little French car to check out a city we've driven past many times but never stopped. Here is what we found! 

Lots of neat Art Neuveau buildings like this theatre. 

An old Roman arch - very similar to the ones I saw a few weeks ago in the Roman Forum.

A wonderful covered market, newly remodeled, with great vegetables and seafood.

...no french market would be complete without brains for sale!

Notre-Dame de Reims, where the kings of France were once crowned. Great gothic architecture. 

Who doesn't love a region whose products are gothic statues admiring champagne?

 ...we didn't watch this movie, but I am now checking twice when I brush my teeth in the morning. 

...turn left if you want to drive to Europe...?

Champagne tasting at Pommery!!!!!

Madame Pommery was really into supporting art and had pieces throughout her property and champagne caves. The creator of this piece calculated that a live elephant could do this 18,000 km from Earth and used a stuffed on to show us what he was talking about. 

 The Pommerys sent this enormous barrel to the Worlds Fair in the US and carved an Indian on the front representing "old America" and a french lady handing a glass of Pommery to an American lady - "let's share". Hard to see, but the Statue of Liberty is also depicted in the top left corner of the barrel. 

 Into the champagne caves we go! 17km of caves were dug just for this one company using old chalk mines still existing from Roman times. 

 This underground art display involves an angel statue taken by an American after WWI and given back to the French out of guilt, a giant red paper machete ball, and a fake dinosaur vertebra in a glass jar - it's up to the viewer to make the connection. 

 Bottles of champagne fermenting for the 2nd time - these 3 liter ones take about 50 months and lay horizontal. 

 Madame Pommery had this woman carved into the chalk wall of this cave where the bottles of champagne are finishing their second fermentation

The bottles are stored tipped down at the end of their second fermentation so the dead yeast cells are collected in the neck (for greater clarity). The bottles are turned 1/4 turn to the right and 1/6 to the left each day. At the end, the liquid in the neck is frozen, the cork removed, the liquid (plus the dead yeast cels) are removed, and the final cork is inserted. 

Unlike wine, champagnes are mixed from a variety of years and grapes (Pinot noir, Pinot Meunier, and Chardonnay) to produce consistent flavor. The exception is when particularly good years are kept aside - here are the best years of the Pommery champagnes. 

We took a nice bottle into the park to enjoy in the sunshine...

...in classy plastic cups.

Good times in Reims!