Rome

This post is out of order, but I've got too much to write about Crete to do it in a timely fashion!

I landed in Rome this morning at 10:00 AM, followed the crowd to my luggage and found my driver waiting with a “Mc  Kynlee Westman” sign.  I was finally THAT person!!  I wanted to take a picture, but my driver was not all smiles so I figured it wasn’t a good time to play the airhead tourist.  The city was dreary and wet, but not as cold as I was expecting.  I made a few attempts to throw out Italian or slow English, but we passed most of the ride in silence. 

View of St. Peter's from the hotel

St. Peter’s Basilica is literally right outside my hotel room.  After a nap that was not as brief as I wished (but very necessary), I layered up and headed out to see what kind of crowd waited to see Peter’s rock.  For a rainy day the showing was impressive.  Sadly, the only Halloween costumes I saw were a bunch of Mary Poppins fighting the rain and Catholic priests (weird how popular that costume was inside the church.)  Some salesmen were making a killing on parkas and umbrellas for people standing in line, but it actually felt pleasant to me (and lord knows I need to save up for all the gelato I’m about to eat).  I made friends with a German fellow visiting with his family, and he protected me under his Regenschirm.  The hour wait went by quickly and we were finally inside. 

 This line wrapped back and forth for days

Taken by a nearby foreign friend.

I am overwhelmed by the detail and the scale of artwork inside St. Peter’s Basilica.  I can’t even keep myself motivated to finish a 12x12 painting, and these artists created sculptures on top of sculptures within mosaics over tombs on altars.  I wonder how much of a single artist’s life was consumed by creating any facet of that building.  It seems that today we each do so many more things, but rarely do we have such a long-lasting impact.  I’m not sure if it’s cultural or generational, but it’s shock all the same.

I ate dinner in my hotel’s restaurant tonight.  The prices were very expensive, so I ordered my main dish off the hors d'oeuvres: a mini tuna hamburger.   The waitress shortly came out with a half dollar-sized dish, which gave me a fright, but it turned out to be fried mozzarella with tomato to get me started.  When the tuna burger finally came it was still small, but at least more substantial.  A small piece of bread sat in an oily juice at the base of the plate.  On top of that was a nice chunk of seared tuna meat, garnished with julienned celery, caviar and tuna skin.  Fish skin usually throws my appetite, but it was actually deliciously savory.  The tuna was a little more well-done than I prefer, but still tender, and the celery surprisingly added a lot of flavor.  It was easy to take tiny bites to make the dish last longer.  I figured I might as well try a dessert to counteract all the salt, and ordered an almond parfait.  When it came out I gaped and my waitress laughed.  We were speaking the same language for the first time all night, “Good luck finishing this, and if you do, good luck still fitting in your pants.”  A hockey puck of frozen (yet powdery) almond parfait lay on a bed of Brazilian chocolate and wore a headdress of burnt caramel.  I don’t think I need to say more, except that I’m glad I was wearing elastic pants.