In Rome with Riley

June 30.  We leave Boston for Newark where we meet up with Riley and fly to Rome.  Car and driver late.  We are staying at the apt of Cristiano Sibilia via Belisario, 6, Rome, Lazio 00187.  This is very spacious wth maybe 15 foot ceilings.  We napped from 11:30 local time to 1:30 and then went to lunch.

 

 

We arrived a the Coliseum at about 3:30 on the day of the memorial service in Israel for the three teenage boys who were murdered near Hebron.  The souvenir kiosks were decked in Israeli flags and conducting no business during the service.  We were told by an employee that all of the kiosks were owned by Jews.

 

  The Colloseum has been undergoing some conservation and compatible construction.   You can see the extensive scaffolding behind Riley.

Riley's phone takes panorama views:

 

 

 

 In 2010 they added a second floor to the area with tourist access and put in some interesting exhibits. 

 

We ate sandwiches for dinner and watched the disappointing world cup game.

July 2, Wed.  After breakfast, we took the bus to Termini to buy tickets for Pisa.  Faced with mobs, we used the ticket machine.  It wouldn't take our chip-less credit cards, so we fed it cash. Then we took the subway to the Palatine and Forum, spending several hours. 


We finished the day at the Capitoline Museum, where they keep the she-wolf

and the Dying Gaul and Caravaggio's Fortune Teller. 

Pizza at Al Forno della Soffitto, just around the corner.  Gelato at Nostre, truly great.

July 3, Thurs. 

Molto mobs at the Vatican Museums and St. Peters Basilica.  To get to the Sistine Chapel, you proceed through a number of galleries.  Even taking the short cut it takes a couple of hours.. They have a small van Gogh  pieta, painted shortly before the artist's death.

 

 

This is a figure from the Raphael rooms.  He is prominent in a fresco that depicts a fire episode near the Vatican.  A good excuse for a mannerist nude making an escape from the conflagration.

 

 

 

 
The Sistine Chapel is as wonderful as when we saw it a while back, shortly after the restoration.  But now there are very few seats and no artificial lighting.  The crowds made it unpleasant and imposable to linger.  (Perhaps we should try again in October or February.  But we are told that the Chapel is always overcrowded).

For this blog, we record a few works we thought were unusually good or interesting:

Dali: 

Ensor:

Baskin:

We ate lunch at the café on the Pinecone Courtyard.

 Fresolla (bagels?):

We took a hot and lengthy walk to St. Peter's Basilica.  Riley climbed the dome:

Bruce and Leslie had a chance to admire the marble floors, fine mosaics, and Papal Tombs.  Pope John 23 is now a saint.  He was beatified in 2000 and then made a saint by Francis based on his opening of Vatican II:

After a cab ride back to our street, we enjoyed café crema:

After a rest, we dined at a local seafood place, il Golfo.   A major treat.  Sweet and sour monlfish, gnocchi with prawns,  saltimbocca chcken, a lively Veneto white wine.