A Place Both Wonderful and Strange – Tash & Ricki's Career Break Travels

This blog entry may seem to conflict with the resolution of the last one – that Ricki and I are trying to do less in Italy than in Spain. We’ve been out and seen quite a few sites, but it honestly hasn’t been as fast paced or intense as in Málaga, despite how this entry may read.

One of the first sights we checked out was the Villa Borghese, the largest public park in Rome. Sat within this is the Galleria Borghese, designed as a country villa for Cardinal Scipione Borghese and largely intended as a place to house his extensive art collection. You know your collecting has got pretty extreme when you need a whole other building to accommodate it! The collection is largely classical and includes sculptures and paintings, with pieces by Caravaggio, Raphael and Titian. The building itself is a work of art though, with beautiful ceiling frescoes.

A few days later and we were off to see probably the most revered ceiling fresco in the world. Even non-art buffs have likely heard of Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel. To see it, of course we would need to travel to a whole other country…the Vatican City.

Becoming an independent state in 1929, it is the smallest country in the world by both land size and population, and the heart of the Catholic church. It felt quite appropriate to make a trip there given the amount of time we have already spent in cathedrals this year.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the visit to the Sistine Chapel is quite strictly monitored. To visit, you need to book a trip to the Vatican museums, and once there, it is a fairly regimented one way system. We had also booked a guided tour to benefit from some commentary, so this trip was literally mapped out for us. The Sistine Chapel would be the last stop, so there was plenty of time to get the anticipation building. 

I feel like I shouldn’t put this in writing online, but after all the hype, I was somewhat underwhelmed by the aesthetics of famous ceiling (to clarify, it is not the one in the photo above!). There have been other designs and pieces of art I have seen this year alone which I was more struck by. 

I was grateful for our tour, as hearing about the technicalities of producing the fresco, I appreciate its masterpiece status is more about the construction than the finished result. Michelangelo wasn’t actually a painter, nor did he even want to be commissioned for the piece. But nobody says no to Pope Julius II, perhaps unsurprisingly known as the Fearsome Pope. There are even acknowledgements that there is a “mistake” in the fresco. Michelangelo wisely worked on the piece from the back of the gallery towards the High Altar, and at first didn’t get the scale quite right. As a result, the detail in the first third/phase of the ceiling is much harder to make out from ground level. It was also amusing to learn that amongst the biblical scenes, is an animal-less ark. Seemingly Michelangelo wasn’t going to risk letting a wonky elephant (or two) ruin his work.

Experiences can all be about expectation though. After hearing all my life about the mastery and splendor of the Sistine Chapel, perhaps it was never going to measure up. I’ve been contrasting this to my reaction to Leonardo Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” which we saw when we visited Milan a couple of years ago. I visited that with a fairly skeptical stance and was surprised by how much I liked it. Perhaps being located in a refectory, the simple setting just lets it stand out more than the vaulted grandeur of the Sistine. I also felt particularly sorry for the artist Giovanni Donato da Montorfano, who I had never heard of, who also has a fresco opposite “The Last Supper” and gets about 5% of the attention. If I remember correctly, he painted it at the same time as Da Vinci – imagine looking behind you and realizing you had to compete with that.

That’s not to say the Sistine Chapel ceiling isn’t impressive – it is, particularly taking the circumstances mentioned above into account. I am under no illusions that I could have done something better myself! Ricki has also suggested that part of the issue may have been the fact that the Sistine Chapel was much busier than the church in Milan, which had more limited visitor numbers.  Despite the fact you are not meant to take photos and videos or speak in the chapel, people were doing all three. Combined with the guards constantly asking people to move along, be quiet, stop taking pictures, it wasn’t the serene environment that is sometimes required to pause and appreciate things.

We were also able to see and learn about the Raphael Rooms, particularly the fresco “the School of Athens”. This fresco is something like the recent celebrated Vogue cover of its day, although rather than 40 influential women, the fresco features many philosophers and scholars from ancient Greek times such as Pythagoras and Socrates.

In addition to this, it also has the Roman equivalent of a selfie. It was not the done thing for artists to sign their work in the bottom corner as we are used to, so to attribute the piece to themselves, they would often include a small self-portrait. Raphael also snuck in a small portrait of Michelangelo who had been working on the Sistine gallery ceiling at the same time.

After an atypical Roman lunch stop at a Filipino diner (we can’t eat pasta and pizza ALL the time!), we headed back to the Vatican in order to visit the Basilica di San Pietro. The line was a little  intimidating in length but was constantly moving. Ricki jokingly suggested that we use the prayer line, a much shorter queue, to get in quicker. Upon my reminder that we aren’t actually religious, he simply replied “how would they know?” . They would probably work it out pretty quick if I were to make an attempt at the sign of the cross, as I’d probably end up doing the YMCA or similar in a panic. And of course God would know – and it’s pretty rude to disrespect your host!

On our exit from the Basilica we passed yet another post office, marking about the fourth we had seen that day. We already knew that the Vatican City has its own postage stamps but we hadn’t appreciated the high demand for the service – the Pope must write a lot of letters.

As well as being the smallest country in the world, it must have the highest number of Post Offices per capita. I just hope their accounting software is up to scratch. It wouldn’t be like the Catholic church to get caught up in a scandal…

Although we didn’t see this ourselves we have also read that the Vatican City has its own currency too. Sadly you don’t receive a souvenir stamp in your passport for visiting!

A couple of days later and it was Valentine’s Day, so we decided to take our first trip out of the city to Frascati. If this name sounds familiar, perhaps you have seen or tried one of the wines produced there.

To get to Frascati we needed to take a train from the central station. Personally I believe that the “b” in platform 20b must stand for “Beyond city limits” as it felt like we walked for ages to get to our platform and at one point joked we were simply being directed on foot to Frascati. It was a good thing we had plenty of time and hadn’t stopped for snacks as in our original plan. As it would turn out, it was a very good thing to have kept our appetites intact.

After our arrival in Frascati, we had a short walk around the town before looking for place to stop for lunch.

We settled in to a pleasant, small restaurant and after a few raised eyebrows while reviewing the English translations (I’m not sure why the artichokes were being “judged”, nor did “repassed broccoli” sound particularly appetising) made some kind of mis-translation of our own during ordering. We thought we were ordering a simple plate of meats and cheese. In fairness, this did turn up, however it was also accompanied by a second plate of soft cheeses, six unidentified warm dishes and a plate of fried vegetables. Once again, it is a good thing neither Ricki nor I are fussy eaters, and we managed to polish off the whole lot. The warm dishes seemed to include chickpea stews, meatballs and tripe amongst a couple of others I can’t remember, but which were delicious all the same. 

But of course, this was only our starter. For mains, I had ordered spaghetti vongole and was becoming increasingly terrified that this would be one of those plates of pasta that somehow only seems to increase in volume, the more you eat. Thankfully I managed to make a very good attempt at finishing it, and we even managed to fit in some tiramisu afterwards. We left feeling full, happy and never wanting to see a plate of pasta again.

Unfortunately we were going to be spending the rest of our afternoon in a pasta making class. 

I’ll be honest with you and admit that despite my New Year’s resolution to do a bit more cooking, this has been one of my more in depth attempts since the start of the year. Though I have taken advantage of a better equipped Airbnb kitchen than usual, and done a bit of baking.

Along with the rest of the class, a mix of families and couples, we were met by a red haired Italian, who by her own admission looked more Scottish than Ricki or I. She would be our host for the afternoon, talking us through how to make pasta dough and cut it into various shapes of our choosing. I always approach cooking classes with a feeling of trepidation, given how stressful I found school home economics classes. However in school economics, I didn’t have the benefit of a glass of wine in hand. This being Frascati, we had started the class with a tasting of a few wines and were encouraged to order more as we prepared our food.

I am both happy and surprised to report that Ricki and I actually performed on par with each other, each of us getting into something of an eggy, floury mess at various points.

Sadly, it was while my hands were caked in dough and unable to grab my phone that chaos ensued. Someone’s pet dog broke into the class and, relishing the attention, had to be dragged out on its back, legs akimbo. It was a shiny, slidey floor so no harm to the dog, just much hilarity in the classroom.

Meanwhile, it was just as well the host was wandering around checking on everyone and usually was able to remedy whichever mishap you had made with your dough, within a matter of seconds. This couldn’t be said for the final stages, once I had shaped my pasta. I had taken the advice to try a few different shapes perhaps a little too liberally and ended up with a seemingly irregular assortment of strings, resulting in a rather bemused, and slightly withering, “and what have you done here….?”. It was like stepping back in time to my home economics teacher’s reaction when I managed to evaporate all the water in my soup. 

While the dough rested, we were relieved of our positions and shown into the cellars below the school to see part of the network of tunnels that sit under central Frascati. These were used over the years for members of the Italian resistance movement to conspire in secret, as well as Christians practicing their religion away from persecutors, fermentation of wine, and as a shelter when Frascati was bombed towards the end of the second world war. Of course, while down there we joked that the door to upstairs was being locked and someone was eating all our pasta. Or in my case, perhaps they were just replacing it with something more edible and picture friendly. 

I was very relieved that after the sauce making demonstration, my appetite had just about returned and I was able to polish off the fruits of my labour.

To complete the Valentine’s Day experience, our walk back to the train station was perfectly timed to catch some beautiful sunset colours in the sky. 

We finished off the day on a step count of 10,500, and probably a similar calorie count!