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.
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