It is the end of our second week in
Rome. I have learned so many things about its history and ways of travel this
week! I noticed that Italians are
not very good at keeping track of time. They also don’t seem to mind waiting as
much as Americans seem to. When
something such as fireworks, or a row boat race, doesn’t exactly start on time,
the crowd doesn’t seem to get anxious or upset… they just keep on enjoying
themselves. It is important to enjoy the in between times, the times when you
are not exactly needing to do anything specific besides wait, those are great
times for sketching, conversations, or just soaking in your surroundings.
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| Roses falling through the oculus at the Pentecost |
The 27th was the
Pentecost, which is a celebration in the Pantheon that commemorates the holy
spirits descent on the 12 apostles and other followers of Jesus Christ. The
Pentecost began at 10am with a Roman Catholic Service that was in Latin, I did
not understand most of it, but when the congregation sand it was beautiful, and
just to be standing inside the pantheon is awe striking in itself. After about
an hour and a half, all heads looked upwards towards the oculus of the
Pantheon. Suddenly, thousands and thousands of rose petals rained down upon us
in bursts of red graceful billows. Pictures do not do it justice. I do not know
how many rose petals were used total but the petals continued to fall for about
twenty minutes in a continuous downpour.
This last weekend we went to the
Paestum. Paestum is a lovely patch of undisturbed Greek temples near the
Mediterranean coast. They had such rich history, and it was very interesting to
see such old temples in such great shape!
From Paestum we continued onward to
Atrani, we got there at dusk but even in low light you could not mistake its
beauty. The entire city is built into a cliff, with uneven staircases going
every which way. Once we got there we enjoyed some delicious dinner beside the
sea and called it a day.
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| Temple at Paestum |
The next weekend I went on several
hikes, spent many hours on the beach and worked really hard on my sketches.
There was a little restaurant by the beach which made the most amazing tuna
sandwiches I have ever had in my life. Kelton and I enjoyed one of those tuna
sandwiches each day that we were there. On Sunday was the Rigotta, which is a
row boat race between the four maritime powers of Italy. All the crowds were
cheering with intensity! A-MALF-I! After an eight minute rowboat race and some
extreme confusion it was announces that Amalfi had won! I was sad to leave
Atrani, that was a great weekend and being outside of Rome was really nice. It
was also great to return to Rome and have it all be familiar to me again.
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