To my few faithful followers, I apologize that it has been so long since I last posted an update, but it is just a sign of a good thing happening here in Rome, because we are once again a yellow zone!! And as an added bonus, there are even a few restrictions that have loosen up since we were a yellow zone upon arrival for our first two weeks. You can now travel between regions, as long as the other region you are going to is also yellow and on Monday April 26th, restaurants opened back up for outdoor dining, until 9pm, which is huge! Italians haven’t been able to eat dinner at a restaurant since October, so you better believe they all were celebrating when we ate out last Monday night with Fr. Glasgow. So, the past three weekends I’ve been able to travel, so I will catch you up to speed as quickly as I can. As a Rome Coordinator we normally get two to three weekends off a semester, but this year with lockdown early and having to do more planned events than normal, we didn’t have any in March or the beginning of April. We each got assigned one for the last three weekends of the month, but since there are now three of us, there is a bit more flexibility so if two of us wanted to travel together, as long as the director and third RC is fine with it, it’s ok! So, I was able to travel with Margaret on her weekend off and then traveled with two students for part of my weekend off. And then this past weekend, all of the students had five days off and almost of all of them were gone for that whole period of time, so all three of us were able to go away for two days. Well, that’s the basic summary so now to the details, photos and many adventures! Get cozy on your couch, with a cup of tea or even better a glass of wine because this is bound to be a long post.
In addition to the Masses that we have in the Vatican crypt on Tuesdays and Thursdays with Fr. Baggot, Fr. Glasgow has been saying Mass for us once a week as well. A few weeks ago, we were able to have a private Mass at the Church of the Gesu, which I had actually never been to before, it’s so beautiful. I will definitely be going back. There are just way too many Churches in Rome. It will probably take me several years to visit them all if I made it my goal.
Also, something I had never done before in my other two trips to Rome was climb the cupola at St. Peters, so I was determined to accomplish it this time around. So, one of the days after we were done with classes at the Institute and it was sunny (we’ve been having a lot of spring rainy days recently) I set out to conquer the curved stairs and narrow passageways. Most of the students had already done it at the beginning of the semester so it was just me, but I kinda liked it that way. I sat up there for at least forty minutes just taking it all in and sitting in silence. I will definitely be climbing again; I think it would be a fun tradition to do it once each semester.
That same morning, I had gotten up really early with some students to go to early morning Mass at Trinita before class and on the way back they introduced me to the place they’ve been getting their cappuccinos at near our classroom and it’s become our new place since the Yellow Bar is closed now (I am still very sad about that fact). The guy even put a heart in the foam of the cappuccino, something very common back in the States but I have yet to see it done here in Italy before.
I was so excited for Thursday to come because I had planned a special event for the girls that is near and dear to my heart: Pizza and Prayer Night with the Servadora sisters. I already mentioned a few posts ago about meeting up with Sr. Oyente for coffee and now we were finally going to be able to have her and another sister, Sr. Mon Choi over to Balduina to do an event with the female students. Their order has a tradition of having pizza every Friday night, wherever in the world the convent is located so it’s a uniting activity. And in DC, I used to attend every once and a while because they would open it up to women on the First Friday of the month, it would be Holy Hour followed by pizza and games.
Initially we had tried scheduled the event for the first Friday of the month but then with some schedule conflicts, it ended up being on a Thursday, but the intention was still there. All but two of the girls came and we had a great time. Instead of Holy Hour, we all said Evening Prayer together and then did a make your-own-pizza night with other snacks and goodies followed by vocation stories and Q+A! I think we could have talked for much longer if the city-wide curfew was not still in effect. So, I took the sisters back to the train station and then came home to pack for my first of three weekend adventures!
On Friday morning we were off to Lucca, Italy which is home to two Italian saints: St. Gemma and St. Zita and just a very cute small town in Tuscany. Miss Ott suggested it to us, and the biggest selling feature was the ability to rent bikes and bike on top of the city walls, they are elevated and you can see down into the medieval old town. We did that for a solid two hours and it was incredible. It was so nice to do something other than walking and still get a ton of exercise and fresh air.
It didn’t rush out on Friday and took a slower train to save some money, so we didn’t arrive in Lucca until mid-afternoon. We made our way to the Airbnb and decided to have a lowkey afternoon. There was a Church right near our Airbnb in the historic center of town that we went to explore and then we made our way to the grocery store to get food for the weekend. We had a snack since we had skipped lunch and then played cards for a little bit before making Fried Rice for dinner since it was a Friday. Finished up the evening by watching a movie. We purposefully went somewhere where we could have a slower weekend, just to get out of Rome but also have some real down time, so it was a great first day.
To continue our slower pace, we slept in on Saturday and then made some breakfast in the Airbnb. Just before noon, we headed back towards the train station (about a 15-minute walk) to rent some bikes for the day. As I mentioned earlier, Lucca is a very bike-able town. Everyone had one, it was so nice. Reminds me of beach-culture, except in the countryside of Italy. We biked the city wall loop (2.7 miles around) three times, before navigating our way through the city-center to grab a quick snack at the Airbnb before going Church-hopping in the afternoon.
There are some really pretty ones, tons of Church towers, and St. Zita to be found. We had tried earlier when we first picked up the bikes to go see St. Gemma who isn’t in the historic part of town but sadly, we discovered that Church was closed. We were also not able to climb any of the towers either since they were closed, so I think another trip back to Lucca might be in my future.
For most of the weekend, the town had felt pretty quiet with the exception of people out running or biking on the city wall paths, but the city center had been very quiet when we went into our Airbnb around 4:30pm for a break and Bananagrams, but when we re-emerged around 6pm to go return the bikes, we were SHOCKED to see how the city’s vibe had changed. We could barely get through the crowds in the main piazza to get back to where we had locked our bikes and then had to take a more out of the way route back to the bike shop because of the crowds and not being able to bike through. Italians take their happy hours seriously, aperol spritzes everywhere!
We had originally planned on just returning them and then going back to make dinner but on our walk back and we saw there was a great place on the city walls to see the sunset, so we walked to a nearby café to get spritzes for ourselves and then watched the sunset!
I was able to find a recipe that used up all of our leftover ingredients, all we had to buy was a few chicken breasts and broth and I made wild rice and vegetable chicken soup. It was so delicious and perfect because Margaret was getting over being sick. We shared a bed for the weekend and miraculously I didn’t get sick. We once again ended the evening with a movie and drifted off to sleep with a slightly earlier morning ahead of us.
Sunday morning, we checked out of our Airbnb, grabbed a cappuccino, and caught a 9:30 train to Pisa. We have to change ttrains there anyways on the way back to Rome and so we bought our tickets to have a longer layover there to attend Mass at the Cathedral and see the Leaning Tower of Pisa. With all the restrictions in place, the only way we could even visit the cathedral was by attending Mass. They were pretty strict about it. We could go in 5-10 minutes and asked to leave immediately once Mass concluded. And no climbing the tower or visiting the baptistry right now but I got to see it, and that’s all that matters! I can check it off my bucket list.
We grabbed lunch and actually caught an earlier train home since there wasn’t much else to do in Pisa and made it back in time for the potluck dinner that night at the Residence with the other students. It was a great little weekend adventure.
The next week was pretty chill and standard schedule of life. We did one last Roma Games competition, another task master challenge. This time the students had 20 minutes to come up with their best idea and execution of a reverse video. So they did everything and we recorded it and then reversed it on my laptop. We compiled the videos and watched them all together the next day and the students voted on 1st, 2nd, and 3rdplace. Room 52: Mike, Patrick and Andrew, affectionately nicknamed the “Poo Boys” (came from another Roma Games Event) secured their firm place in 1st in the overall competition!
One of the girls room hosted a movie night to watch Fiddler on the Roof which of course I had to participate in, it had been a while since I watched that movie, so good! One of the days after class we took a few students to grab sandwiches and scootering through the Borghese Gardens.
I wrote a bunch of postcards to send home and then was finally able to facetime with one of my best friends, Serena and my adorable little goddaughter Diana and was able to get a virtual tour of their new house. Can’t wait to go visit when I get back to the States.
That weekend was actually my weekend off and Margaret and I had talked about going to Nettuno but since the weather wasn’t looking good, we had decided to not spend the money and save it for the following weekend instead and so we let Tim travel with some students instead. Well, if you saw my posts on Instagram, you will know that I ended up traveling as well but it was very last minute.
Most of the students left on either overnight trips or daytrips on Friday morning. It ended up being sunny, so Margaret and I decided to go explore Villa Doria Pamphilj, which is the largest park in Rome. We had invited the students that were home, but it ended up just being us. We had high hopes of biking and rented the Lime bikes and had a great first 15-minute ride through the park until my bike ran out of power… sad day!
So, we ditched the bikes and just walked around, we did get rained on, but it was brief and we took shelter under a tree. There’s a really pretty villa and gardens that we checked out. But we had wandered quite far and took bus routes home that we didn’t even know they existed. We came home, grabbed some pizza from across the street and were going to put on a movie for the students but it didn’t seem like anyone was home/interested so Margaret and I decided to watch something on our own in my room and then people were suddenly interested so we ended up having about 5 students up to my room to watch Sleepless in Seattle.
It was after the movie that my plans to travel the next morning evolved. Two students wanted to go to Cinque Terre which was somewhere I really had wanted to go to. We had even been discussing going the week before. So at 11:30pm we started planning on trip, booked an Airbnb and train tickets for 6:30am. But the time we had finished planning, packed and I had showered it was almost 2am, so not much sleep but oh well. I am here to take advantage of the opportunities of being in Europe, not here to sleep.
Since our trip was only overnight and Cinque Terre is kinda far, we decided it was worth paying more for the fast train on the way there. So we arrived to the first town, Riomaggiore, where we were staying at 11:30am. We dropped off our stuff, I changed into my swimsuit and shorts and headed off to the farthest town with plans of hiking our way back.
Cinque Terre is a series of five towns along the middle west coast of Italy and the towns are connected by hiking trails. We had been told when we bought our train pass for Cinque Terre that two of the four trails were closed, but it turned out that three of the four were closed but luckily you can take a train to and from each town. So we went from the first town to the fifth town via train and spent probably an hour and a half exploring that place. We wondered along a non-path to an overlook and cave, and I ended up cliff jumping, it was so much fun!! Pretty cold, but very much worth it!
It was here that we discovered the path to the next town was closed so we took the train to two towns over so we could hike to the fourth town from the third one. It was about a 2-hour hike, but the views were beautiful, and you were often stopping to take pictures, so it wasn’t exhausting or taxing.
Each town is a little different, but they all have beautiful colored buildings and charm. In Vernazza, we grabbed some drinks and sat along the water. The train between towns was only running once every hour so we knew we weren’t going to make it back to our town before the grocery store closed so we grabbed groceries in that little town before catching the train back.
But we did make it back just in time to watch the sunset! Back-to-back weekends of enjoying sunset views. Our Airbnb had an amazing view, but an overlook was just a two-minute walk away, so we dropped off groceries, grabbed sweatshirts and headed up to watch.
We came back and make a pesto cream cheese pasta dish, since Cinque Terre is credited with the invention of pesto apparently, so we had bought some at the store. It had been a long day and the two students I was traveling with needed to study so I retired to my room, opened my book probably read only 10 pages before falling asleep until 7am the next morning.
The next morning, we didn’t have to checkout until 10am and then Mass was at 11:30, so although we woke up early, it was a quiet morning. The girls studied and I read my book for a while. We ate breakfast, packed up our backpacks and went out to explore the town of Riomaggiore, going out on the rocks and just listening in silence to the water crashing up on the rocks. It was a perfect start to a Sunday morning.
The Church was a little higher up in the town, so it provided some cool views. After Mass, we had plans to make it to the last town we hadn’t gone to yet, but we had just missed the train, so we decided to grab lunch in Riomaggiorge instead of Manarola. Well, that backfired on us because the restaurant took so long to get our lunch out that we missed the next train too, oh well. We got to spend lots of time in Riomaggiore as a result. We eventually made it to the last town but only had 1 hour to explore before we had to start heading back to Rome, so we walked down to the water and got our feet wet. We had planned on cliff jumping but there wouldn’t be time to dry off, so we settled for gelato instead.
It was a really short trip, we were gone from Rome a total of 40 hours and 12 hours were spent on the train getting there and back but it was still worth it. I absolutely love the beach and/or coast and would go back in a heartbeat. Maybe when it’s a little warmer, so swimming is more enjoyable. As it was, I couldn’t stay in longer than fifteen minutes before being completely numb, but of course, I did it anyways.
Back in Rome and back to regular life, I can’t believe it was the final week of classes and finals for the students. It came so fast. We enjoyed two final Masses in the Crypt of St. Peters, where we have been blessed to continue having weekly Masses despite the new rules at the Vatican which don’t allow for private Masses to be said in the main part of the Church.
We were also able to finally go up on the rooftop terrace of the Institute which has great views into St. Peter’s Square. Normally, we would have had more regular access to this space, but we were grateful just to get up there for that one day and grab group and individual photos.
We were also able to go to the Church where St. Catherine of Siena’s body is held in Rome. Mass was being said when we arrived, so we were only able to see it from the side and not up close but still so cool to come and venerate the saint’s relics on their feast day.
Restaurants finally opened back up to outdoor dining, so in addition to going out to dinner with Fr. Glasgow at the beginning of the week, we were able to FINALLY take our group out for a group meal for lunch at Maria’s. We had to split into two groups since they have limited outdoor seating, but everyone enjoyed the experience.
It was at one of these lunches that the students were able to convince their theology professor, Father Baggot to move their final online so they could have 5 whole days in a row to travel, instead of having to come home halfway through solely to take the final and leave again that afternoon. Once that was agreed upon, it was busy, busy, busy planning with the students for their five days of travel. I was so excited for them to have this opportunity! I put together a travel presentation and we had office hours to help them book Airbnb’s and trains. Most of them put together an itinerary to visit northern Italy, most of them hitting up Florence and Venice with a few groups going to the Dolomites, Siena and Pompeii. The staff stayed around the first two days of the travel days since so students were still around through Sunday morning and it was good to catch up on some work and rest.
We also took the chance to go around and be hometown tourists! We went to the Trevi Fountain and all threw in our coins so that everything works out with Covid and the program continues to run so we will back in the Fall. Then we went to the Spanish steps because in the Spring they put out beautiful pink flowering bushes that take over the steps and create a beautiful backdrop for photos.
We saw that the Tea House I had been wanting to go to was once again open so we planned to come back the next day. Margaret and I split the high tea which came with three varieties of sandwiches and some scones and we each ordered a different type of tea. I got English Breakfast and Margaret got Miss Babington which was coined after the name of the tea house: Babington Tea Rooms. It was so fun to get slightly dressed up and people watch along the Spanish steps for the afternoon. I will definitely be going back next semester!
On Sunday, we went to Mass, backpacks in town because we were heading up for a short stay in Florence ourselves after Mass and lunch. Normally the program takes the students for two nights but there just wasn’t time in our schedule anymore plus the place we usually stay wasn’t super keen on the idea but all but two of the students made it there on their own.
We had booked a great little Airbnb about an 8-minute walk to the Duomo, right above the famous Florence Leather market. Its location was great for our purposes. We got in around 7pm on Sunday night, dropped off our bags and headed out to see the Duomo and then make our way over the Ponte Vecchio bridge in search of my favorite pizza in all of Italy: GustaPizza. It has been featured on Guy Fieri’s “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives”. It had it twice in two days when I was a student and was so excited to have it again. And no waiting in lines this time, we walked up, there was an outdoor table available, and we had our dinner in hand in about 15 minutes.
The next morning, we slept in, and then headed out to explore the Boboli Gardens. But typical Italy with their weird hours and regulations, apparently on the first Monday of every month, parks are closed…so that didn’t happen. We headed back to the leather market, where we all bought some gifts for our families. Can’t say what since a few are a surprise, but I was happy with my purchases. The businesses are so desperate for business, these towns normally rely so heavily on tourism, so we got some really good deals.
We tried grabbing gelato at Perche No, which translates to “Why Not”, but it too was closed, of course on Mondays and Tuesdays, our two days there. So, we went to a different gelato place and then wandered down the streets of fancy stores eating our gelato. We had decided since we hadn’t spent money on the garden tickets, we would instead climb the Duomo tower which I had the chance to do while I was a student. It was just as great this time as the last, maybe even better because it was pretty empty up there, so we were able to stay up there for almost 50 minutes. But it is definitely a climb up, 441 steps! Phew.
Tim has some friends studying in Florence with Benedictine College, so we briefly met up with them and went and checked out the Church of the Annunciation which was absolutely breathtaking. They were streaming adoration when we first arrived, so we just went to a side chapel until it was over and then we were able to walk around a little while before the Church closed.
After that we made our way across the city of Florence to get to the best spot to watch the sunset in Florence at the Piazza of San Michele. We had made it over 24 hours of being in Florence until we bumped into some students watching the sunset. It was beautiful, I would definitely recommend it to anyone who has the chance to visit Florence. We had gone to that overlook when I was a student, but not at the time of sunset, which nowadays isn’t until 8:30pm.
So, it was quite late by the time we made it back to our Airbnb and made some Carbonara for dinner. It is easily my favorite dish in Italy, my go-to order, and it isn’t that hard to make either. After a lot of walking and climbing, we were very ready for bed by the time we finished dinner and the rosary.
We got up early to go to Mass at the Duomo, so we didn’t have to pay to enter. I didn’t get the chance to go inside my last trip to Florence. It is definitely very plain and simple in comparison to its outside and definitely in comparison to other Churches in Rome, so most of the students found it underwhelming. But it is a little bit of a crossover to the gothic style that are more common in France and Spain, so I enjoyed since it. The dome is especially pretty, as it is the only colorful thing inside the Church.
After Mass, we had a cappuccino outside of the Church which provided a great view. Then we went back to our Airbnb for omelets and yogurt and granola. We did a little more last-minute exploring and shopping before catching an early afternoon train back to Rome. A few students had only traveled for part of the time off, so they invited the three of us over for Taco Tuesday when we got back to the Residence. It was nice to come back and not have to worry about making dinner. We just brough over wine and some dessert.
We had one more day off before the students came back from traveling. So, the next morning I got up and did laundry before heading off to Nettuno for a few hours. I had been dying to go all semester, it was a favorite little place of mine when I was a student. It is a beach town, but it also boasts the incorrupt body of St. Maria Goretti in the Basilica just off the beach. They were celebrating some special feast day, so I stayed for the Italian rosary when I visited the saint.
When I got to Nettuno, I popped in the grocery store and grabbed some quick and easy picnic ingredients of meat, cheese, crackers and a drink and hit the beach. I was able to get some sun to the point where I was red that night but looked nice and tan the next morning. It was a great solo trip of just being able to read my book and lay on a towel and try to nap. I needed the quiet down time before we head off on pilgrimage week with the students to end the semester. But that will be coming in my next post, covering three weeks is enough for one post.
Ciao for now!
The Brunette
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