.appreciate.

7.3.2009

We went to an art museum this morning called the Burghese museum. It had sculptures by Bernini and paintings by Caravaggio that were amazing!!!! For the first time, I truly appreciate the difficult Art History class that I took. I don't remember much about each piece, but I definitely recognize them when I see them. As the tour guide discusses different elements of recognizable sculptures, paintings, and buildings, it all comes back to me. I am in Rome!
So, there are water fountains and spickets everywhere, and there was one just outside the burghese with scultpures of a head that had water coming out of the mouth into a bowl. So, it was just a nice looking fountain and then i noticed people going up to them, rinsing their hands, and drinking the water! At first I thought it was crazy until i saw so many people doing it. So, Allie and I filled up our water bottles with it. It was then confirmed by our tour guide that the water is safe. How cool is that?! There are just random spickets that you can hydrate with. Kinda crazy, really!

Let's see, then we took a walking tour of some cathedrals. I wish that I knew more about the Catholic church to better appreciate everything within the cathedrals, but i can definitely appreciate the art and architecture. I found this quite interesting. . . so, you've heard of Ancient Rome or Old Rome, yes? Well, I have learned so much about it. We went into a cathedral where an archeologist discovered the ancient cathedral directly below it. Rome today is built on top of an entire city that has been buried! It was so cool to go down inside of the ancient cathedral. I asked the tour guide at what point an entire city would just start over. She explained that it was a gradual process where varius sections were abandoned or burnt, so they buried them and built on top. In Rome, they don't demolish buildings because they consider it all as history. There have been cases where they smash a building down and build right on top of it, leaving the debris in place. She said that there are a few buildings where you can see old tile pieces from the old buildings. as you can imagine, that would be rather difficult to build in that circumstance so it is much easier to just bury and and start over. Intersting concept.

Our taxi driver pointed out an interesting fact. People here drive mini cars and scooters. There are so many smart cars and just tiny vehicles with hatch backs. He said that they need small cars to be able to park along the street conveniently because, unlike America, they cannot develop underground parking, because of the ancient city. Isn't that something??