Other Wednesday activities

Wednesday morning, wound my way through Villa Borghese, a huge park just east of Piazza del Popolo. If you're going to be insanely rich, forget the private jets, million dollar cars, pounds upon pounds of jewelry, and expansive mansions. Instead, hook yourself up with a park the size of a small city inside a large city. I hear that if you're going to try this it helps if you're related to a Pope or someone of similar stature.

Somewhere inside that maze of a park is a largish mansion, the Borghese Gallery, which houses some of the best Baroque art in the world, including sculptures by Bernini and paintings by Caravaggio. It's quite a treat to stand in a single, smallish room, surrounded on all four sides by some of Caravaggio's best works - enough to bring a tear or three to the eye.

A couple other notes about Villa Borghese:

1) From the top of the park, above Piazza del Popolo, is a very impressive view of Rome, especially the Vatican City. The most impressive part is that St. Peter's can't be more than 3 or 4 miles away, yet the haze of pollution makes it appear 20, perhaps 30 miles away. Perhaps that's just Rome's attempt at displaying the environmental perspective technique employed by renaissance masters.

2) Originally i would have written something about my personal history with the park, but it's too personal and i'm not drunk. Instead, i'll mention that north of Piazza del Popolo is the Flaminio metro stop and also a tram stop (don't remember the number). This tram runs north to Piazza Mancini, an unremarkable piazza with a number of bus stops, including the 201 and 301. Had to look at all the bus signs to make sure these were the right ones - these buses run further north up via Cassia to my old high school.

at this point i went to my old school, covered in a previous post.

Had to leave school eventually, and at the suggestion of a bartender i looked and found a show about Picasso and his influence. Good little show, better lighting than the Van Gogh museum. One piece was from UofM, another from the DIA - reminder enough of home to bring a tear to the eye.

The night found me eating penne all'arriabbiata after a vegetable soup. The soup was rather thick and hearty and good, perhaps one of the better soups i've had in a while, though quite salty, too salty almost for any other specific tastes to emerge. The penne was uneventful - spicy enough, tasty enough, but the pasta was a little unevenly cooked, some places a little too firm and some places a little too tender. Perhaps it was cooked on too high a heat? The sauce was also a little thicker than the first penne i had. I think the last two places i had penne all'arrabbiata at were more geared towards tourists and thus served inferior foods. Good, just not as good.

I left the restaurant wondering if i should have stuck to a liquid diet. I think i forgot to mention the vegetables with tofu i had Monday night at a Chinese place by Termini - the plate with a distinct taste i couldn't quite place until i rewound my taste buds a number of years to the time i used to eat Ramen noodles - this place was using the flavouring from ramen noodle packages in its meals. That by itself wouldn't have been too annoying, but finding pieces of meat in the dish pushed it too far. That dish, the penne with cheese, and too much pizza with cheese made me think i should only have Guinness from then on - fish filtering i can deal with, i consider it more in the same category as what ingredients are used in the packaging, not what ingredients are used in the recipe.

I didn't go on such a complete liquid diet, but beer did make up perhaps 1/3 - 1/2 of my consumption, just like high school.