JANcich & hanDLEY

Acqua gratis - why you should never pay for a bottle of water in Rome.

Throughout Rome there are hundreds if not thousands of public drinking fountains like the one pictured to the left.  These are literally an institution in Rome.  The water comes from Roman acqueducts.  The Trevi Fountain itself is the final presentation of the delivery of water from the Acqua Vergine.

The water in the fountains is perfectly drinkable.    So, if you already have a bottle all you have to do on a hot day is fill it up.  Don't wasted a US$4 buying a bottle of filtered Dasani.  (On the other hand, I love naturally effervescent water.  That's worth it.).

For the accidental tourist to Rome, I have created a photo manual of how you can drink from the fountains even if you don't have a bottle to fill up. Nearly every fountain has a small hole in the top of the spout.  If you block the pipe with the palm of your hand, water will shoot out the top in an arc.  Here's how it works:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 1:  The fountain below is a fancy one in the Villa Borghese shaped like a wolf's head.  I'm plugging the spout with my fingers and the finest water in Rome is spouting from the top.  If you are wondering why it has a wolf's head, you should read up on the founding sons of Rome, Romulus and Remus.

Step 2:  Have a drink just like me below.  Trust me.  You won't die.  Regular Romans do this every day.

Step 3:  Don't drink too much because you'll have trouble finding a public toilet.  But otherwise, you can always pee on the street.  Trust me. You won't be arrested.  Regular Romans do this every day.  (Picture omitted.)

The best tiramisu in Rome and other stories from Week 3

To the left is the what was billed as the best tiramisu in Rome.  You can get it at a place called Pompi off of Re di Roma in southern Rome.  This was the first part of our group outing last Wednesday.  I have to say it was pretty damn good.

We finished the night in San Lorenzo doing what all good people in San Lorenzo do: drinking in in the square in front of the community church. (Sidenote 1:  it is perfectly legal to wander around in the street with an open container.  Sidenote 2: This law does not seem to have eroded the moral fabric of society).

To right, I am drinking a beer below the sign that says "Piazza dell' Immacolata" in front of the church.  It was a truly religious experience.  As you can see, we also have a number of very talented graffiti artists in San Lorenzo.

For the weekend, I went the beach in Fregene with some friends.  Fregene is due west of Rome on the Mediterranean sea.  We were at the beach right in the middle of this map.  It was fun and the waves were actually big enough to attract a few surfers.  You can see a picture of me and the "special" econometrics crew by clicking here compliments of Ana (track back through her album for more beach pics).

The lifeguards kept blowing their whistles at Benoit and I for going too far out.  Of course, the buoy line was an arbitrary, sparse collection of zig-zagging buoys.  At one point, I was standing in water just over my knees and the lifeguard was yelling at me for being too far out to sea.

Sunday I walked along the Tiber river and climbed up the Aventine hill for some views of the city.  At the top you can look through a keyhole at the Priory of the Knights of Malta, into a garden of trees that perfectly frames Saint Peter's Basilica.  Pictures of that excursion and weeknight debauchery are posted on picasa.  Click here.

Flashback to Week 2

I posted a few more pictures from week two.  These include a few shots of my flat in Rome and the views from the side streets on my walk home from a meeting at the Bank of Italy.  Week 3 and other stories are coming soon. 

I have seen enough painting and frescos of Saints and prophets to ask a rather disturbing question.  Why do all the saints look like the crazy bearded homeless guy that hangs out near the metro talking to himself? There's something going on here.

I'm also very concerned at the severe shortage of toilet seats in public restrooms throughout Rome.  In seven floors of the economics building at Sapienza, there is not one toilet seat in the student restrooms.  I kinda think a mafia dominated toilet industry didn't deliver all the goods.  I imagine that somewhere else in Italy there are no toilets but plenty of seats.  (If they can do it with garbage, they can do it with toilet seats click here)There really should be a toilet seats per capita adjustment to national GDP.  In which case, Italy might rank a bit low.

Bologna

Sunday afternoon I made the journey from Assisi to Bologna by way of Florence.  Why did I got to Bologna?  Well, I've already been to Florence, Milan is too far and too expensive, I was meeting with my LSE advisor at the university and they have really good food.  I did plan enough of a layover in Florence to sneak a peak at the Duomo and have lunch.  If you really want to see pictures of Florence from 2005, click here.  But back to Bologna...

It is a really beautiful city with some great medieval architecture.  It is not a typical tourist destination so I had to chance to relax in the sun, have some food and hang out on the main piazza with a book and a beer.  My advisor at Maryland thinks the inclusion of Multinational Firms and World Economy as my book of choice is a bit too much commitment to trade theory.

The main church is the Basilaca S. Petronio.  It was originally planned to be even bigger than Saint Peter's, but papal politics put a stop to that.  In fact, the basilica is not really finished.  It has a foundation of what would have been a beautiful pink and white striped facade that stops abruptly after two stories.  The rest of the church is brown brick.  They didn't even put the little statues of saints in the cutouts on the front (see the pics).  I didn't go inside because you can do so with a backpack.

On Monday morning, the first thing I did was climb the Torre degli Asinelli and its 498 steps.  This is one of the few remaining towers that once dotted cityscape of Bologna as monuments to its wealthy and powerful families.  It has a much smaller brother next door that has a significant lean to it.  The tower opened about 25 minutes late, of course, but I can say with certainty I was the first person at the top on Monday morning.  I dusted two little kids and some older dude.  The views were awesome and you can see them below.

Bologna also hosts the Basilica S. Domenico that keeps the remains of Saint Domenico (who else?)  If there are any doubts, they even have a x-ray of the contents behind the tomb.  That church was very nice and had some really amazing wood inlays behind the alter.  So I got to see the tombs of 3 saints in 3 days, two of whom founded major religious orders.

An unusual attraction is the Teatro Anatomico.  Real dissections were held in this room in front an audience and a priest to make sure things did not get out of hand.  It features some skinless wood carvings of the human body.  The entire place was bombed in WWII and had to be reconstructed.

That's about it for Bologna.  You can see the pics below.  Click on the slideshow if you want to go to the webpage instead.

Assisi is not just for the birds and St. Francis

I am back from my trips to Assisi and Bologna.  Both were very nice in different ways.  Given the collection of regional trains and eurostar connections I was making, I had anticipated some difficulties with the trains.  Due to good luck, I think, this was not the case.

I narrowly made my connection to Assisi in Foligno.  I literally jumped off one train and onto another.  If not, I would have wasted about 90 minutes at the train station for nothing. Assisi is located in a section of Italy called Umbria in the province of Perugia.  It is very far removed from the chaos that typifies Rome and is a pilgramage site for Catholics.

The weather in Assisi was a bit rainy with patches of sun.  I had packed my bag full of 2.5 days of clothes, 3 books, some papers and my lunch for Saturday and it was a bit on the heavy side.  I took the bus up the hill into the old part of Assisi and toured the Basilica of San Francesco (St. Francis) first.  You know the guy is important if they built two basilicas for him in addition to the various other monuments and the sanctuary of San Damiano outside the city. 

I think St. Francis is one of the few major church figures I can actually respect.  First for his rather liberal approach to the earth and its environs and second for his recognition that the bible is not to be taken literally (this is a guy who read it in Latin too, before it had been re-worked and re-translated about a hundred times).

The churches in Assisi are quite beautiful because they are so simple.  They are constructed of pink and white locally quarried stones and feature a variety of frescoes rather than detailed and ornate gothic ornamentation.

I hiked up to top of the hill where a thousand year old fort called Rocco Maggiore (~major fort) sits at the top overlooking the entire countryside.  It was quite a hike with all my gear and I almost did not go inside for the the 3 euro ticket.  I am glad I did.  The view from the towers was amazing.  This was one of the cooler castles I have visited outside of the several I saw in the UK.

I see no way the an opposing army could take the city (or at least the fort) without great losses.  Not only can you see everything from 360 degree around, but the surrounding hillsides are very steep.  I suppose the only method would be to barricade the city and starve the people into surrender.  I have several pictures of the view below. 

The other major saint buried in Assisi is San Chiara (Saint Clare) who is interred at the Chiesa S. Chiara. I have some nice pictures of the that church from the outside.  I spent part of the afternoon re-reading the Aeneid in the Piazza S. Chiara

My hotel room in Assisi had actually Roman ruins in the floor.  There was a large glass panel exposing a portion of Roman wall.  This is common in many areas of Assisi.  I also had a nice Umbrian dinner of  pasta straggozi di Norcia style with a second course of sausage di Norcia.  For desert, a pistachio cannoli at a pasticerria.

My trip to Bologna and a brief lunch stop in Florence will have to wait until later this week.  For now, here are the Assisi pictures.

Yes, I really do want an espresso

A new an unexpected complication has been caused by my newfound skills of ordering food in Italian at bars.  In Rome, the bars are so busy that you get exactly what you asked for, nothing more nothing less.  This is especially true in the student area where I live.  "Un caffe" means one espresso, the cashier is not going to double check and you will pay for what you ordered.

On the other hand, when you are in Assisi and the place is crawling wish British, American and German tourist this is not always the case.  In two different bars, the servers double checked that I really knew what I meant.  In the second case, the woman behind the counter had already pulled out a large mug and was ready to make me a cappuccino or latte.  It usually went like this:

Me: un caffe

Them: caffe?

Me: ci, ci, un caffe

Them: espresso?  you want an espresso?

I can only imagine the large number of tourist that do not understand that caffe means espresso.  Alternatively, I can also see Americans ordering "un Coffee" and getting the beverage (espresso) that sounds the closest to what they really wanted.

By the way, I have yet to see a Starbuck in Italy.  Pictures and stores from Assisi and Bologna are forthcoming.

San Lorenzo...my 'hood

Living in San Lorenzo is pretty crazy.  It is the place where most students in Rome live because it is very near to Sapienza.  As a result, I can expect to hear people running around yelling and drinking in the street until around 4 am just about every night.  Then things quiet down until the trash collection crew comes at about 6:45-7 am.  During the day, it looks like this:

I think most tourists would not like it much.  But it seems okay to me and actually quite safe relative to some other areas of Rome.  There are really very few quiet places in most major cities (US or European).  Plus, it has variety of cheap eating and drinking spots that are authentically Italian or Roman.

I'm off for some travels.  More when I return.

Now that's what I call appetizers!

From last night's dinner for 21 at a restaurant somewhere in Rome.  The pizza we had later was good too.

Jandley.com is back and the worse half is living in Rome.

I just finished the first of four weeks living in Rome for the Spatial Econometrics Advanced Institute.  The institute is going pretty well.  It turns out we have free lunch and dinner on all weekdays at the mensa (university student cafeteria).  However, this privilege comes with a number of rules about what makes a proper meal.  For instance, if you take prosciutto you can not take both pasta and a tomato mozzarella dish.  It is perfectly fine to take pasta with an entire 12 inch pizza,  but you can't have bean salad with said pizza instead of pasta.  If you take a garden salad, you can't take take anything from the dolce section (which includes deserts as well as fruit).  I have taken to putting as much on the tray as I think is reasonable and running through the gates before they can yell at me.

By the way, if you just want to the skip the pictures you should click here.  There should be slideshow below if you have Flash installed, otherwise use the link.

I am doing okay on the Italian.  I managed to visit the supermarket on Wednesday and conduct the transaction completely in Italian.  Then the cashier told me a joke.  He laughed, I laughed and then I left and wondered what must have been so funny.  Faking it the first step to learning the real thing though.

I have done mostly off the beaten tourist path sight-seeing (with some of the usual stuff included too).  I am living in an area called San Lorenzo that is populated by lots of young people and a large number of restaurants and bars.  Nearby is a the main Catholic Cemetery in Rome until  which is absolutely enormous and includes most deceased Roman Catholics until around 1980.  I am also living near Porta Maggiore one of the main gates in the old imperial wall.

I managed to a do a run from my place on Wednesday morning all the way down to the Circus Maximus where I ran a victory lap around the course.  It was kinda of like Ben-Hur without the awkward trip the leper colony to visit your mother.  Every morning the trash collection crew comes at 6:45 am and makes a horrible racket.  So I try to get up at least every other day at that time and go for a run.  There is another group of SEAI participants staying a few doors down on the same block.  We are all rudely awakened every morning by the trash crew.

I have made two trips to the Old Appian Way (called via Appia Antica).  This is the historic main road into Rome through the Porta San Sebastiano.  I went first on foot from my flat last Sunday.  It took about an hour to walk there and then I hiked around the Caffarella Valley for about 90 minutes before walking back home.  I went back again today (Sunday) by bus and rented a bike to do some riding about 7 miles down the road and back. 

The bike itself was an insult to Italian bicycle craftmanship.  I managed to practically destroy the rear wheel on the way home.  I stayed off the heavy ancient cobblestones.  At some point shortly after turning around the entire wheel became unbalanced and nearly un-rideable.  I had to disconnect the rear brake entirely and walk certain sections.  So there I was on the Appia Antica with no rear brake, no helmet and riding over cobblestones.  Doing Paris-Roubaix should be a snap now.  They only charged me for a one hour at the rental shop. 

You may remember the movie Spartacus by Stanley Kubrick featuring a  young Kirk Douglas.  In the end, Marcus Crassus puts down the slave revolt and crucifies 6000 slaves along the Appian Way.  In addition to that historical fact, a variety of ancient Roman ruins dot the landscape and I have posted some pics.  I really wanted to see some aqueducts and I got a nice photo from a distance of one of the seven remaining aqueducts in this area (some of them are still functional).  I will try to come back again to do the catacombs.

Next week is going to be pretty busy.  I am visiting the Bank of Italy late on Wednesday afternoon to meet with some researchers.  On Saturday, I am taking the train to Assisi (ever heard of St. Francis?) and staying overnight.  Then I go to Bologna on Sunday for an overnight.  I am visiting my LSE advisor there and also doing some sight-seeing before taking the express train back to Rome in the evening. 

That's all for now. I'll try to update and the end of next week or sooner. 

-Kyle

The Bunny Becomes a Rabbit

We've owned out VW Rabbit for about a month now but haven't been driving it much. In fact, as of Friday, the car only had about 130 miles on it and three-quarters of the tank of gas it had when we picked it up in the dealership.

When we bought the car, we knew we wouldn't drive it very much. I work in Georgetown, a part of the District where parking is downright nightmarish, so I commute to work via the Metro (subway). Parking on the University of Maryland campus is also hard to come by and expensive, so Kyle takes a shuttle bus to school every day. That leaves our poor little Rabbit parked in our apartment building's lot for days at a time.

One of the main reasons we did buy a car was to take day- or weekend-long trips on a moment's notice. The first opportunity to do just that popped up Saturday, so we jumped in the car and drove to the Maryland capital city, Annapolis, which is on the Chesapeake Bay.

Though Saturday's weather was on the chilly side, the sky was blue. The trees have changed, so the drive was beautiful. After a quick visit to the visitors center, we settled in to a local pub and got our first crab cakes as residents of Maryland. They were fantastic, and now we know what all of the fuss is about!

Next, we walked over to the State Capitol building. The first floor consists of exhibits. There is information about Annapolis' role in the American Revolution and creation of the USA. The state house also has the silver from the USS Maryland, which was decommissioned in the late 1940s.

We were struck by the small size of the Capitol building. It is much smaller than the ones in Wisconsin and Kansas. This is partly because it is a smaller state, and therefore has fewer legislators. However, the building is so small I doubt all of the legislators have office space in it.

Our next stop was the Naval Academy campus, which was gorgeous. There is a beautiful chapel in the middle of it. We would have loved to have seen the inside, but there were two weddings going on back-to-back while we were there. Instead, we visited the museum, which has artifacts from the country's naval history. There were captured flags from Nazi Germany and Japan from World War II, and a large collection of medal presented to naval heroes. The bottom floor of the museum houses a collection of model ships.

Overall, it was a great trip. The Rabbit now has about 200 miles on it. Maybe we'll crack a thousand by next summer.

Look for three more photos from Annapolis in the photo gallery (top right).