Day #14 in Orvieto (Roma trip)

March 8, 2013 – Friday

On Friday morning we woke up early and went to a café for a cappuccino and a pastry, then headed off to the piazza with the Fontana dei Quattro Fuime (the fountain with the four rivers).  Prof. Doll explained a bunch of stuff including the symbolism of the rivers and some other stuff (it’s in my journal, I just don’t want to type it now).

Fountain with the Four Rivers

After spending a little while at the fountain just relaxing, we went to the Chiesa di San Ignazio, which was so cool! The fresco on the ceiling of the church is so extravagant and if you stand on one tile of the church and look up, the perspective is perfect. But the second you move away from the spot and walk around, still looking up, it will look like these pillars in the fresco are collapsing in. There is also a “fake dome” in the church. It’s so realistic that we didn’t realize that it was just a flat, ceiling painting, until Prof Doll. told us.

We then went to a few different churches to see some paintings by Carvaggio. We saw three of his paintings about Matthew and then a few more paintings by other famous people that I can’t remember. We walked for a long time to get to another church with Carvaggio’s paintings, but it was closed (every place we went to had such weird hours – that’s why we were rushing around the whole time to get to all these different places before they closed!).

For lunch, we went to the Spanish Steps and had mozzarella and tomato sandwiches (pretty much anything with tomato and mozzarella have been my favorite meals here so far). We had three hours of free time which wasn’t as relaxing and fun as we thought it would be, because it was hard to move in such a big group without Professor Doll, our tour guide. We split up into smaller groups but it was still hard to decide on what to do in our free time after we had so much structure before this point! We ended up walking around for 2 hours and then finally went to Giolitti for some more gelato (I was really grumpy up until this point because I was starved and didn’t want to walk anymore. Thankfully Laura gave me some water and hustled me to Giolitti for some chocolate and coconut gelato – she knew I was getting grumpy). So after the gelato, I felt silly for being so grumpy because once again, the gelato was so so so so good. Apparently Giolitti isn’t the BEST place to get gelato in Rome – it’s definitely good but we heard rumors of an even better place. We couldn’t figure out where it was though.

After our free time, we went to a modern art gallery, the Gagosian Gallery, to compare some modern art with all of the art that’s in these old churches. After that, we went to Sant Maria della Vittoria, San Carlo alle Quatro Fontane, and San Andrea al Quirinale. I’m trying not to blur all of these places together but it’s hard to remember which church/fountain/etc is which! Anyways, after that we went to the Fontana di Trevi (Trevi Fountain) which was exciting but it was a little frustrating because there were people EVERYWHERE and everyone was trying to stand right up next to the fountain and throw coins in. I’m pretty sure I accidentally photo bombed a million pictures this weekend. I tried to dodge the cameras but it was impossible! Camera’s flashing everywhere.

Trevi Fountain

Laura and I casually throwing in our coins. Becky took a more flattering picture of us...

Professor Doll made us dinner in on of the apartments and it was seriously a feast. Soup, endless amount of bread and cheese, salad, etc. After dinner, we went to the Pantheon to see what it was like in the rain. Since the dome is open at the top, the rain falls right into the Pantheon! It looked pretty cool. After that, a few of us went back to the Chiesa di San Ignazio (the church with the cool ceiling and fake dome) to see a German choir concert. The sound was amazing and it was really good. I took a video on my iPhone but I’m not sure if it will upload. Sara and I left a little bit early because it was a really long concert and we were falling asleep. Not because it was bad, but just because we were exhausted!

The sky as seen through the top of the Pantheon

All of the rain in the Pantheon!