Our Third Time in Rome, or Roma If You Want To

Third Roma

Today we went to Rome for the third time, armed with a simple mission of visiting the Capuchin Crypts, getting haircuts, and eating gnocchi. We were able to accomplish all three.

The Capuchin Crypts are located in the basement of a church connected to a Capuchin monastery. The crypts themselves are ornate tableaux of the skeletons of several friars surrounded by sculptures comprised of four thousand skeletons. There are bone chandeliers, bone wall clocks, pelvic bone wall hangings, kneecap bone wall hangings, fingerbones, feet bones, every kind of bone formation possible. You leave wishing that you had paid more attention in any anatomy class you've ever taken. In the third and last room, there is a sign that says (and I'm paraphrasing, here), "What we are, you will become, what you are, we once were." Then they all come to life and chase you out into the street.

After we had emerged (unscathed) from the crypts, we made our way to the other side of town for our haircut. First we stopped off at the Citibank Roma, which is only notable in that we had to use one of the European Bank Entryways. When you use an EBE, you enter through one set of automated doors, are briefly trapped in the No Man's Land between the doors you just entered and the doors that separate you from the ATM, and then wait for the first set of doors to close before the next set opens. The whole operation heaves through in jerks and fits, and you spend your time thinking that either your body weight hasn't offset the automation device or that you are going to be trapped in the small airless vestibule and turn into a Capuchin Crypt member a lot faster than you had expected. I like it because it makes me feel like I'm a 1978 bank robber.

Our group of six divided in half to take cabs over to the Barbieri. Cody, Beth and I were driven by a quiet female cabdriver with a tattoo on her forearm. I think we talked about the office job of a mutual friend. Brian, on the other hand, spent his cab time getting his driver to take a detour through Villa Borghese, recommend a barber, and tell them where one can get second-hand tap shoes in Rome. These are the kinds of things you can do when you speak the language.

When we got to the barber he was busy shaving a client. We basically saw the whole thing, and the shavee went in looking like he had spent a few hard nights out on the town and emerged a Titan of Industry. We debated getting them ourselves, but talked ourselves out of it because we thought that we didn't have enough growth to warrant the straight edge razor and because we had spent the time recounting Great Straight Edge Razor Moments in Cinema (Mississippi Burning, The Untouchables, The Color Purple, etc.)

All of us got haircuts and all of us emerged looking like a million bucks. The barber, Silvano, began the cut by liberally applying talcum powder, then he trimmed our hair. Following this, he had you lean forward into a sink and vigorously washed your hair. We thought this was a great turn of events, because it got rid of all the stray hairs that normally cling to your neck and ears following a haircut. All during the wash, water is rushing down your hair and face and neck, and your nose and chin is burrowed in the crevice of the sink, and Silvano says things like, "Agua caldo! Refresco?" and you think, "Yes, Silvano, it is refresco." He then doused the hair with hair tonic and you left the barber chair looking like a better, more 1950s version of yourself.

From there we went to lunch, at a restaurant Brian had discovered last summer. The meal was delicious. You could throw your shoe and hit a delicious meal in Rome, so I won't bore you with the details. But it was really good. Really, really good.

Our third trip to Naples

Third Napoli

Today we walked to the Archaeological Museum of Napoli. The museum is fantastic, with a lot of artifacts from Pompeii, incredible art from the height of the Roman Empire, and imposing marble statues of your favorite Greek gods and goddesses. I, however, have a preternatural gift for bypassing all of the stuff you want to see in a museum and instead spend my time in the rooms containing all of the boring stuff. My forty-five minutes in their Amber Exhibit was no exception.

The museum also has a “Secret Room” containing its erotic art collection. You have to sign up to go in, and no one under fourteen is permitted without an adult, so I was really expecting it to be the best thing ever. Instead, it’s a room decorated with lots of large-phallused statues and tasteful depictions of satyr-nymph love. I found myself stuck behind a mother trying to model a healthy attitude towards sexuality for her two pre-teenaged children. I think she was on safe ground until her kids collapsed in a giggle fit in front of a painting of a lusty fisherman getting more than he bargained for after an encounter with Hermaphroditus.

After lunch we walked to Spaca Napoli, a neighborhood Brian had frequented last year. His friend Enzo (who I will have to write about in a later entry) had recommended a restaurant here last week, and we spent another afternoon eating a meal of a lifetime. The restaurant might have been called Pizzeria de Presidente (Clinton ate here at one point, and they have the pictures to prove it), or Pizzeria Trattoria, or Pizza Place, there was no clear signage. I split a Pizza Tarantina (anchovies, capers, and olives) with Jenny and it was delicious. The owner told us he was opening a location in San Diego soon, so look for it.

The first week, kind of OR We Were Beverly D'Angelo Oce, And Young

How the trip started:
We got on the ship two weeks ago but it feels like two months. Our producer and director were on the ship the first week, and the first few days were taken up with rehearsals, which really took away from the whole "seeing Europe" thing. But then the show came and we were finally able to concentrate on the matter at hand: seeing Europe like we was Beverly D'Angelo.

Our first stop was Rome. We all took the train in from Civatecchia (about an hour away) but split up once we got there so that we could be more powerful. Beth, Brian and I got off at St. Peter's Square and the adventure began. Rome (or, as I call it now that I've traveled in Europe, Roma) is a prizefighter city: it keeps socking you in the gut with increasingly breathtaking views. We saw the columns of St. Peter's Square first (which I think is where they filmed the climax of "Charade," where Walter Matthau is shooting at Cary and Audrey. I'll try to keep the movie references to a minimum. I realize the Beverly D'Angelo thing was cheap and unnecessary. I just liked how "we was Beverly D'Angelo" sounded and I thought it was a hipper "European Vacation" reference than "Chevy Chase" or "the Griswolds." It's probably not even grammatically correct but the squiggly line under "we" disappeared when I changed "were" to "was." I've said too much.) We stood in the center where all the columns line up, looked at the Pope's balcony, looked at the line for the Vatican, and then moved on.

Our next stop was, I believe, at a restaurant that Brian had tried to eat at repeatedly last year, but had been unsuccessful. He read about "Alfred and Ada's" in a magazine that touted it as one of the finer things in life, and was determined on eating there. We walked by at eleven (which we foolishly deemed as too early to eat. Wasted youth!), and Alfred, an elderly man sporting a short sleeve white dress shirt and smoking a cigarette, was standing outside. We would find out later that seeing Alfred in daylight is like seeing a unicorn making out with a phoenix. Brian conversed with him in Italian and left under the impression that they were closing for siesta but would be open later in the afternoon. Like the deceptive unicorn, Alfred later proved himself to be a liar.

We then walked over to the Piazza Nuvona (I might have the order all mixed up, but trust me, we went there). The PN has three fountains, one that was under construction, but even mounds of scaffolding can't hide that kind of beauty. Brian walked into what he thought was a tourism office but was actually St. Agnes' Cathedral in disguise, so we spent some time walking around there. I later found out that the Cathedral was built on the spot where St. Agnes was believed to have been martyred. Also, my friend Jon later told me that the Piazza Nuvona was where the word "fornication" comes from. Roman prostitutes used to hang out under the PN's arches, and the Latin word for arch is fornix, and thus a new word was born. So the day was educational as well.

Our next stop was the Pantheon. This might have been my favorite sight. My knowledge of it is limited to a few sentences in a guide book, so forgive my gross oversimplification, but it is the oldest still standing building in Rome. It was built as a Pagan temple to all of the gods and then the church co-opted it for its own uses, so now there is a lot of beautiful Renaissance art in there as well. It is also where Raphael is buried.

When we were ready for lunch, Alfred and Ada's was closed, all signs of activity obliterated. Dejected, we wandered into a nearby shoe store, as Brian is also interested in getting made to wear shoes in Italy. The name of the store escapes me, but its owner, Daniela, could not have been kinder to us. She laughed at our jokes, let us look at our shoes, and even brought us into the back room to show us the Berlitz CD and workbook she's using to learn English. She recommended her favorite restaurant, Campanas, and we quickly headed over. I left the store in such a haze of good feeling that I thought that spending three hundred fifty euros on shoes might not be the worst thing.

And as for Campanas, everything I want to write about it is a cliché. Did the food melt in your mouth? Yes. Did the house wine taste like the nectar of the gods? Absolutely. Will I now obnoxiously say, "This almost tastes as good as the real stuff I ate back in Italy?" every time I visit an Italian restaurant in the states? You bet.

On the train ride back to the ship I sat across from two passengers, one of whom might have been the acclaimed Iranian-born actress Shoreh Ahgdashloo. I had a lovely conversation with her about how it's hard to get good help in the states, and that's why she now lives overseas.