Food & Fourth of July!

This week has flown by yet again, and here I am sitting on the train Friday morning on the way to Sorrento, on the Amalfi coast, to get away from the city for a few days. I chose the title of this post because when I thought briefly back to the week, the most noticeable moments that stick out in my head revolve either around food or are from our Fourth of July celebration. That’s not to say that we did nothing this week besides eat and celebrate, we went to a few awesome places with either Lucia or Daria during class, but there was definitely a huge emphasis on the aforementioned things. For Lucia’s class Monday morning, the topic was Renaissance cooking, so we met for class in Rome’s largest food market to learn about favorite Italian foods, and more importantly to gather ingredients for our own Italian feast later that night. I’m not kidding when I say we spent 3 ½ hours in the market, trudging along behind Lucia as she rapidly conversed in Italian with various shop-owners. We were like Lucia’s pack mules for the day, as she loaded up our arms with a multitude of groceries, and every time we thought we had to be nearing the end of our journey due to the sheer amount of food we had already purchased, she would remember another kind of ingredient that we must have. The long time spent in the market was, however, very worth it when she cooked us a fabulous many-course meal that night.

Emily got a little startled by the full boar’s head hanging at the meat stand. 

This is a pretty unique (and typical) Italian item- they’re basically like large kegs of all different types of wine, and you bring your own old water bottles or any sort of container and pick out which type of wine you want and they fill it for ridiculously cheap prices. Lucia knew we couldn’t have a real Italian meal without an abundance of wine so she took care of that issue for us while sharing this awesome new (to us) invention. 

Lucia getting started in the kitchen in our apartment later that night, employing Peter as a vegetable dicer. I won’t bore you with listing all the types of food we had, for instance we had 4 types of pizza, two uniquely prepared pasta dishes, and 3 pies, not to mention many different types of salami and cheese for our antipasti, so I’m sure you get the idea. 

Tuesday morning was spent writing a midterm essay for Daria about Raphael’s “School of Athens” fresco in the Vatican, and then before long it was 4pm and we were off to meet Daria at the Piazza del Popolo for another afternoon of art history class.

The girls in Piazza del Popolo while we were waiting for Daria to arrive. 

The topic for the day was the works of the painter Caravaggio, and Daria, as usual, did not disappoint, knowing the best spots to see his work and going at the right times to avoid the crowds. Unsurprisingly, pictures of the ancient paintings were prohibited so unfortunately no pictures to share with you, but take my word, they were beautiful. 

After class, we all went back to Dar Poeta (the amazing pizza place) to celebrate Eric’s birthday! 

The whole crew crossing the bridge to get to Trastevere, the location of Dar Poeta. 

I got the Suprabufalo pizza again, and this time I remembered to take a picture before I devoured it… 

 

Clean plate club! (It tasted even better this time) 

Hillary, full and happy, after finishing her pizza as well. 

Wednesday morning (Fourth of July!), we had class with Lucia in the morning and the topic for the day was Social Life & Leisure in the Renaissance. We obviously had to walk through the high-class fashion stores leading up to the Spanish Steps, and then we climbed to the top of them in order to get to Villa Medici on top of the hill. The Medici family is infamous in Italian history for being a promoter of the arts and all things having to do with leisure and entertainment, so it was only fitting to go on a guided tour through their villa and surrounding gardens.

This is the view from the porch of the villa out onto the first courtyard.

Side view of the lavish Medici palace. 

The gardens had a beautiful panoramic view of the city since we were so high up on one of the hills.

Amanda, Emily, Hillary and I, sitting on the wall overlooking the city. Don’t let my pants fool you, it was 99 degrees that day and pants were NOT a good choice… 

One of the frescoed rooms inside the villa. 

The Medici statue collection in one of their gardens- these are copies, because their real collection is in the Ufizi in Florence (since they are originally from Florence), and we saw the originals when we went there a few weekends ago.  

Another view of the stunning villa. 

We went into the villa to get an inside tour, and we found out you can actually rent two of the rooms upstairs just like a hotel, which would be awesome to do some day. View of the main courtyard from an upstairs window. 

After class ended, we had the rest of the day to celebrate Fourth of July the American way and it was such a fun day/night!! 

The boys and me on the bridge before we ate down on the banks at one of the restaurants. 

Gorgeous sunset over the Tiber during dinner. 

Emily, Amanda, and I in front of the Colosseum later in the night.

Amanda and I!

 After sleeping in til about 1pm the next day, we had art history class with Daria at 3:30 with the chosen topic of the famous sculptor/painter/architect, Bernini.

We first went to the church, Santa Maria della Vittorio, to see “The Ecstasy of St. Teresa” sculpture within the Cornaro Chapel.

This is the elaborately decorated, Baroque style interior of the church. 

Detail of the ceiling inside Santa Maria della Vittorio. 

Bernini relief statue outside of another church. 

The second Bernini commissioned church had a really unique oval shaped dome for a ceiling, which was pretty revolutionary since all domes up until this point had been perfectly circular. The detail gilding on the dome was really impressive. 

Class was pretty short because then we went to a nearby garden next to the second church to review for our final exam, which is Tuesday afternoon.

My tourguide assignment (which is when you teach Lucia’s class for the entire class) unluckily fell on this coming Monday, which is sort of annoying since we have our Daria final exam on Tuesday. So it’s a good thing we’re going to the beach all weekend to relax and not to a city full of sightseeing opportunities.

Can’t believe I’m already coming up on my finals for my classes here! It’s flown by so ridiculously fast. I’ll be sure to take lots of pictures on the coast this weekend, and if I’m delayed on my Amalfi Coast post it’s just because all the schoolwork I have Monday and Tuesday, so sorry in advance! (And also sorry this post was sort of boring! Didn't take too many pictures this past week...)