If I were to write out all my thoughts from my last day in Rome, I’d have . . . well, probably I’d have a memoir! However, I’ll capture some of the basic events and photos for you now.

On my way to school, I said my last “Buongiorno, San Pietro!” as I crossed Via della Conciliazione.

We finished the last of the Level 2 books, so we took a test in class. I didn’t do very well (what would amount to a D+ or C- in my school), but I seemed on par with many of the other students. Actually, considering most of them spoke and understood more Italian than I did, I was pretty surprised I didn’t do far worse!

We had a break after the test, so I ran down to the local coffee shop for one last authentic cappuccino. Only one euro! And with two packets of sugar, even this non-coffee drinker found it pretty tasty. 🙂 It was the same place we got a free cappuccino and croissant on our first day of class, so I felt I had come full circle. I was at the same place, but this time I wasn’t just handing the guy a coupon. I ordered in Italian, and like a real Italian, I stood at the bar to drink it instead of taking a seat.

After the break, we finished up our class by going over our test results and then listening to an Italian song, proving yet again that listening is the hardest part of learning any language for me.

After class, my young Russian friend wanted to go to lunch again with her Serbian roommate and another Russian girl. However, they wanted to go back to the same salad place I’d already eaten at twice that week. No way was I doing that again. They charged us 2 Euros for bread! I told my young Russian friend that I wanted to go to the Musei Capitoline, which she had already been to, so I had a good excuse to slip away and spend some quiet time just soaking up Rome on my own one last time.

So I headed off toward the museums, stopping briefly to eat my lunch of an apple and some popcorn on the steps of Sant’Andrea della Valle, which some of you might remember was the first church we had mass in for my pilgrimage and where I got to be the lector. This church has definitely become an old friend for me.

Then I continued my walk toward the museums, which are behind the monument to Vittorio Emanuele II (the first king of a unified Italy). Even if you’ve never been to Rome, you’ve seen pictures of this building that the Italians jokingly refer to as the “wedding cake.” Knowing how the Italians feel about it, I hadn’t originally put it on my list of things to see, but I also wasn’t really sure where the entrance to the museums was. My Russian friend said something about them being “to the right” of the monument.

To make a long story short, I ended up walking up into the monument, visiting briefly a museum display they had on the history of Italian soldiers (of which my grandfather, Angelo Cattapan, was one during World War I), and then coming up to the front to visit the tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

You get a pretty nice view of Piazza Venezia from this first level of the monument.

However, if you want the really good views you need to pay 7 Euros to take the elevator up to the tippy top of the monument. Boy, am I glad I did! The views from up there are spectacular.

You feel like you have all of Rome at your feet. As this was the last day of my trip, it was the perfect spot for me to get a vantage point of my home from the previous two weeks.

To make things even better, there weren’t a ton of people there, and at times I felt like I almost had the place to myself.

I spent a lot of time up there, using the labeled photos to identify all the buildings I’d visited, and trying to somehow capture it all in photos and words. I actually sat down in the shade for a while and pulled out my journal.

Finally, I tore myself away. So where to next? The museums were close by, but it was just too beautiful a day to be cooped up in a museum. Instead, I headed to a church that was even closer to the monument than the museums: Santa Maria in Aracoeli.

Santa Maria in Aracoeli can be reached via the massive staircase in the photo above. However, I had read a bit online where someone had said there was an entrance right off the Vittorio Emanuele monument. Sure enough, after I came down the elevator from the top terrace, which brings you to this sort of middle-level terrace, I found an opening that led right to the doors of Santa Maria in Aracoeli. In the photo above, it would be to the left at the top of the stairs.

Santa Maria in Aracoeli is another amazingly beautiful church. It was nice and quiet in there, so I took the opportunity to say some prayers, including praying for those people who had left special intentions on my Facebook page.

Well, where next then? Having already decided I’d rather walk around outside than inside a museum, I headed over the river to the Trastevere neighborhood. This is a pretty trendy spot to live in Italy. As my tour guide from the pilgrimage said, “I’m not cool enough to live in this neighborhood.”

That’s not to say that Trastevere is somehow snooty. It’s really rather charming.

The first place I stopped was the Basilica of Santa Cecilia. We had visited this church on the last day of our pilgrimage, but I wanted to go back for three reasons.

1) The church is beautiful. If I were a resident in Rome, this is where I’d want my wedding.

2) I love St. Cecilia. As the patroness of music, she’s my mom’s favorite saint. Also, my very first article that was accepted for publication in an online children’s magazine was about St. Cecilia.

3) When we had come for the pilgrimage, I had missed out on visiting the tomb of St. Cecilia and the excavation site under the church. I hadn’t even realized you could buy a ticket to do so until it was time for us to leave! I had been too busy begging the intercession of St. Cecilia! So this time I paid the little nun to go down to the excavation site, which was small, but pretty cool.

Also, I may have gotten in where I wasn’t supposed to go. Besides the excavation areas, there’s also a little chapel to St. Cecilia down there, and this is where her tomb is. While I was exploring, an Italian family was also walking around. A man and his daughter had just come out of the chapel area, and the dad was starting to lock up the gate to the chapel. I’m not sure if the chapel was supposed to be locked up or not. They were speaking Italian pretty fast, but I got the sense they had kind of snuck into the chapel themselves, but then the daughter looked at me and then said something to her dad about keeping it open for me.

The dad looked at me and reopened the gate. Then he said something in Italian about Saint Cecilia.

“Qui?” I said. (Here?)

“Si,” and he pointed to a spot in the chapel.

Still unsure as to whether or not I was supposed to enter, I slipped in and said a prayer before the tomb of St. Cecilia. When I turned around, the dad and daughter were still waiting for me by the gate.

I gave them a quick “grazie” and headed out. The man locked the gate behind me, and I wondered if I’d just experienced another of God’s little graces on this trip.

After that, I headed over to nearby San Francesco a Ripa. I stayed only very briefly in this church. I don’t think it’s known for anything too spectacular, yet it’s still an incredibly beautiful church. I realized as I was sitting there that thousands upon thousands of artists over the last 2,000 years have put their blood, sweat, and tears into the artwork that fills these churches. It’s awe-inspring, it’s amazing, and I could write a whole blog post about it.

Then it was time for a gelato stop. I headed over to Fatamorgana. Like San Crispino and Gelateria del Teatro, this was another gelato shop that was recommended in various books and/or websites. However, all three of these places failed to impress me. They served small portions for relatively high prices. San Crispino was worst for the price, and Fatamorgana was worst for the taste. These three shops might offer unusual flavors (I had white chocolate and rum plus chocolate and orange at Fatamorgana), but I’m not sure the unusual flavors were really worth it. The white chocolate and rum flavor at Fatamorgana was far more “ice” than “cream,” and gelato should definitely be creamy!

The good part of my gelato stop (in addition to conducting my business there entirely in Italian–yay for the guy not switching into English for me!) was getting to eat the gelato at a nearby piazza that had an active playground for kids. You could tell this was a real family neighborhood in Rome.

Then it was off to Santa Maria in Trastevere, another church from the last day of my pilgrimage. I spent a good amount of time writing in my prayer journal in a small chapel with some college-age kids who looked like they were doing the same thing on some sort of retreat. (They had matching yellow shirts.)

While I was in there, a bell rang and then I heard the now-familiar opening words for the mass in Italian. Without planning it, I had timed my visit for the 5:30 Friday night mass! So I slipped out of the side chapel and took a seat in the main church. Since the word “Eucharist” means “thanksgiving,” attending mass seemed like a good way to spend part of my final evening thanking God for an amazing trip.

By the time mass ended, it was well after 6:00. Dinner is usually after 7:00 in Rome, so I spent a while strolling through the Trastevere neighborhood toward the center of Rome. I knew where I wanted to go for dinner, so I just took my time getting there. On the way, I stumbled upon yet another church, Santa Maria della Scala (St. Mary of the Staircase), and popped in for a quick photo.

Then I wandered back over the Tiber and headed into the center of Rome. My destination was Polese, the restaurant where we’d had our first dinner of the pilgrimage. I even knew exactly what I wanted to order, and I was determined to do it all in Italian. Of course, the waiter greeted me in English.

Waiter: Good evening.

Me: Buona sera. Un tavolo per uno? (Good evening. A table for one?)

He pointed me toward a table: This one, okay?

Me: Qui? (Here?)

I was determined to fight back with Italian.

Waiter: Si.

I took my seat at the end of one of the long tables that is out in front of Polese. One of the reasons why I picked this restaurant is because it sits along a piazza that actually has trees and green plants. There were about twelve seats at this long table, and a couple sat together at the opposite end.

The waiter asked me in English if I wanted water.

Me: No. (shaking my head emphatically) Un bicchiere di vino bianco della casa. (A glass of the house white wine)

I said it kind of slowly, the words still not flowing as naturally as I would’ve liked.

The waiter smiled at me and left me with the menu.

A few minutes later, another waiter came up to take my order. I requested the tonnarelli cacio e pepe and bruschetta al pomodoro.

Thankfully, he responded in Italian. “La bruschetta prima?” (The bruschetta first?”)

Me: Si, grazie.

While I was waiting for my first course, I looked around and realized I had been seated at the exact same table I had sat at when we’d eaten here for the pilgrimage. The only difference was that I was at the exact opposite end of the table. That first time I had sat in the end chair closest to the piazza. This time I was seated in the chair closest to the actual restaurant.

When it hit me what had happened, I had to keep myself from laughing out loud. Of course, God would seat me here! I’d come full circle. On the last night of this trip, I was back at the same place I had been on the first night of the pilgrimage. So why wouldn’t God also sit me at the same table? But even better, he had the waiter put me at the opposite end of that long table. Because that’s where I am now. Metaphorically and literally, I am at the opposite end of where I had been. I am not the same person I was at the start of the pilgrimage, and yet I’m also somehow simultaneously still the same person. I’m at the same table; I’ve just got a completely different perspective.

While I was eating my bruschetta, a woman came up and asked for a table for herself. The waiter sat her at the table across the aisle from me. She conducted all of her ordering in English, but I had to smile because there was something so familiar about her.

At first, I thought it was because she looked like someone Meryl Streep might have played in a movie once upon a time. Her hair was swept back and held up with a clip. She wore a fashionable blouse, and there was simply something of the carefree, confident global traveler about this woman.

And then I smiled some more because I realized I was looking at a kindred spirit. Immediately, my mind went back to my friend Ellie, from the cooking class on the previous Saturday. She had lived in Austria, London, Japan, and Australia. And now a few years after her husband’s death, she had returned to her home country of Austria and then traveled on her own to Rome. Something told me this woman had a similar story.

I debated asking her to join me for dinner, but I’m at heart a shy girl, and I’m always fearful of imposing on other people, so I finished my meal by myself, adding a dessert after I made sure I could pay for the meal with a credit card because I was running out of Euros.

But as I was eating my dessert, I remembered an article I’d read on the flight over to Rome, about the fun of talking to strangers when traveling. When I’d read it, I thought, “Well, that’s not me. I don’t talk to random strangers when I travel!”

But then I thought, “Maybe I should.”

So I paid my bill and walked over to the next table. “Excuse me. I hate to interrupt your meal, but I heard you speaking English. I’m from Chicago. Where are you from?”

“California,” she responded, and before I knew it, I was seated at her table having a lovely conversation about traveling. She was divorced, her son was changing jobs (he had been working at the same place she was), and she had decided to finally take some real time off and visit Europe. She spoke some French and some Spanish, so she had begun her six-week odyssey in those countries. Now she was making her way through Italy.

My instinct had been right. She was a kindred spirit. She spoke at least a little of some other languages and wasn’t afraid to use them. She traveled on her own, even willing to sit at a nice restaurant alone.

But most importantly, like Ellie and me, she’s the kind of woman, who after going through some difficult times, picks herself up, dusts herself off, and heads off on a great adventure.

I could go on and on about the revelations I had that night, but maybe I’ll save those for the memoir. 😉

I’ll wrap up by saying that I spent the last hour or so of my final night in Rome, sitting on the steps of the obelisk in St. Peter’s Square, gazing at the basilica brilliant under a crescent moon, and trying to journal out all my thoughts.

Eventually, I had to tear myself away. I had a flight to catch in the morning and a suitcase to pack.

And a whole cartload of memories to enjoy for a lifetime.

Just when I thought God was telling me to slow down a bit, He sends me the “Running Russian.” Okay, so the girl doesn’t actually run, but the new Russian girl who joined our class on Monday had me doing so much walking this afternoon that I feel like I ran a 10K.

After class, she asked if I wanted to go to lunch. Sure. Why not? However, she’s a vegetarian, so we ended up at the same place we ate at on Monday. I couldn’t persuade her to go elsewhere.

She had salad again; I had gnocchi (and a glass of wine).

Then she wanted me to show her where the good shopping was, so we walked up Via del Corso. I made her take a detour down Via dei Condotti, so that I could see the magistral palace of the Order of Malta. You might remember that I saw the magistral villa last weekend. This is the palace, which is where I believe the real work gets down.

This street led us to the Spanish Steps, where I played the part of the tired old lady who needed to rest her feet for a bit. (By contrast, my Russian friend is only 18.)

Then we headed to Villa Borghese. These are gardens north of the city center. They are beautiful and quite extensive. They remind me a bit of the parks in London.

We tried to get into the art museum in Villa Borghese, but they were sold out for the day. We bought tickets for 3:00 tomorrow. (I’m trying to convince her we have to go elsewhere for lunch tomorrow.)

Then we walked across the gardens to get to Piazza del Popolo. There’s a really cool view of St. Peter’s from there.

The gardens are situated up on a hill above the piazza. My Russian friend noticed someone’s note on the pavement below us. Surprisingly, she told me she couldn’t translate the Italian. Based on her questions in class, I thought she understood more than me.

Down in the piazza below we visited Santa Maria del Popolo. It’s known for a couple Caravaggio paintings that (of course) you are not allowed to take pictures of, but it’s a beautiful church, not too big and it has a lot of angel statues.

Then we headed back toward school, but not before stopping off at Giolitti’s for gelato! (Amarena and cocco for me this time)

We arrived at school on time for the “Visita Guidata” (guided tour). Since it was all in Italian, I couldn’t understand it all, but I can tell you that she was talking about Marcus Agrippa, and we finished our walk at the Pantheon, which I always forget is actually a basilica now.

After my Russian friend and I parted ways, I headed homeward, but stumbled once again upon San Luigi dei Francesi, the French church in Rome. However, this time it was open, so I popped in just for a quick bit to discover they were finishing up the mass. In French, of course.

After some quick grocery shopping to finish off my last few days here, I finally headed home. I hadn’t seen the apartment in about 12 hours. I munched on an apple for dinner and chatted with Marcella (in Italian, thank you very much), who was also eating fruit for dinner. Yep, I’m living like a real Italian woman!

And if that wasn’t proof enough of my authentic Roman experience, my laundry is currently hanging outside on the clothesline!

I knew it would happen sooner or later. I’d get a headache from studying all this Italian. Today was the day. Since it’s Monday, classes tend to change, and new people can start.

I have the same teacher, but we’re in a different room. Since all the women in my class left, the men (the French guy, the Korean guy, and the British guy) and I were joined with another class. Two of the girls I recognized from last Tuesday’s dinner. There were eleven of us all together. But then during the morning break, we got two brand new people who had just arrived and taken the test this morning. So now there are thirteen of us in class.

I don’t know if it’s hearing Italian spoken in all these different accents or if the class is just getting too tough for me, but I felt a headache come on in class. The discussion part of class is just really, really hard for me. I started thinking about how Elizabeth Gilbert said it took her until almost the end of her four months in Italy to feel like Italian had opened up for her. Before I left for Italy, I asked a friend how long he lived in France before he felt comfortable with it. Again, it was about four months.

So the sad truth is that after two weeks, I still won’t be able to do much more than buy bus tickets, order food, and ask where the bathroom is. But that’s not terribly surprising. Isn’t there that basic “rule” that you have to do something for at least 10,000 hours before you become an expert? I’m a long, long way off from being an expert in Italian.

After class, I talked with one of the new girls. She’s very young and from Russia. She asked me right away if I spoke English. Si, yes. Then she asked in English if I knew a good place for lunch.

So a little while later, we were eating at a small restaurant, and here’s the crazy thing: We’re in the same level Italian, but I was the only one of the two of us to even try Italian with the waiter! Of course, with me all she wanted to do was speak in English because she said she didn’t have a very good English teacher back in Russia. It certainly is interesting hearing about people’s experiences in their home countries.

After lunch, I came home for a bit to work on homework and to take an ibuprofen for my headache. Then I took a short nap. By the time I was ready to head out again, Marcella was just coming home.

I took the Metro to the Barberini stop and visited the Museum of the Capuchin monks. This is where thousands of dead monks’ bones have been used to decorate a series of small chapels with elaborate designs. You’re not allowed to take pictures inside (and they really are quite strict about their rules here), so I have none to show you except the outside. You can find pictures online, however, if you’re interested in the macabre. Personally, it was a lot less creepy than I expected.

After that, I walked to Santa Maria della Vittoria. It’s a smaller church, but well known for a statue of St. Teresa of Avila designed by Bernini.

The statue depicts the moment St. Teresa had a vision of an angel piercing her heart and filling her with ecstatic joy. It was quite controversial at the time because some people thought it looked like St. Teresa as having a little too good of a time.

Unfortunately, the statue is placed up kind of high, so you’re looking at it from below.

I had an hour left to get back to school for our evening activity, so I walked over to San Crispino, the gelato place Elizabeth Gilbert mentions it Eat, Pray, Love. No disrespect to the people at San Crispino, but this was an awfully small portion for 3,50 Euros!

Also, the gelato was covered up, so you couldn’t see what anything looked like. The flavors I had (honey and vanilla with bourbon) were fine, but not worth the extra price. I suspect they get a lot of business just based on Gilbert’s book. So far, I prefer Giolitti and Old Bridge for gelato.

Tonight at school we had their “tandem night.” Everyone put on a name tag with the languages they speak. Then we headed over to the area around Castel Sant’Angelo where there is a park-like setting and tents are set up to sell food. (Think neighborhood street fest if you’re from Chicago.) People bought beer and/or wine, and some of us also got some food (pizza, fries). Then those who were interested played at the free outdoor foosball and ping pong tables. I talked with my Polish friend Ela and a university professor from Belgium. Again, I can’t get over how incredibly international this school is. I met two sisters from Romania this evening and a young woman from Holland.

As we were sitting there enjoying our drinks and the beautiful evening (seriously, I’ve lucked out on weather; it’s been way cooler than you’d expect Rome to be in late July), I realized that we were basically in the same spot I stood in with some of my pilgrimage pals for the Canonization Mass. How funny that I was back in the same place but for something totally different!

My blog title today refers to two separate things. Not that Italians are joking about ecumenism!

Before I get into the two topics in the title, a quick note about my Italian classes. Since classes change just about every week at my school, we had to say good-bye to three of my classmates today. Someone snatched a photo of the women from my class. Here we are: (from left to right, the German lady, me, the Australian girl, my Italian teacher, and the Swiss lady).

After class, I grabbed some gelato at a place that my Polish friend Ela recommended yesterday.

Then I headed back to the apartment for a short break. It had occurred to me that I’m almost halfway through my adventure, and I still haven’t seen some major sites, like Castel Sant’Angelo. I decided it was time to make a list of the remaining places to visit. By 3:00, I was ready to head back out again for the “ecumenical” part of my day.

I hopped on a bus and headed fairly far southeast of my apartment. First stop was the Protestant Cemetery, where the English poets John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley are buried. In Italian, the name of the cemetery is “Cimitero Acattolico,” which if we were to translate literally would be something like “not Catholic.” Kind of funny.

Keats is buried in a quiet corner of the cemetery.

Shelley is in the much more crowded section, way up at the top of a hill.

The cemetery is a beautiful spot and a nice break from the busyness of the city.

A 10-15 minute walk up some steep hills brought me to the Catholic part of my ecumenical afternoon. I visited the Piazza of the Knights of Malta. Some of you may know that I have started the application to become a Dame of Malta next year. In the piazza is the Order’s magistral villa.

Through the keyhole of the door, you can see into the gardens.

I couldn’t get my camera to focus really well, but if you look through the keyhole, you can see the dome of St. Peter’s perfectly framed through the trees in the garden. Cool fact: The Order of Malta is sovereign, so when you look through the keyhole, you are seeing three sovereign entities as the same time: the Order of Malta, Rome, and the Vatican.

After that I visited two basilicas that are really close to each other.

San Alessio, where they were getting ready for a wedding:

Santa Sabina:

Then I headed back to school for a special evening class on the history of Italy’s unification. Again, it was all in Italian so I understood only pieces of it.

After that, I headed out for dinner and ended up at a wine bar, where I had some delicious pizza and wine. I put some Italian to use here, too. I think the waiter only said one thing to me in English, but I answered in Italian, so he used only Italian after that. 🙂

The table was along one of those cutesy narrow Roman roads, so I got to spend an hour people watching as I ate. When I was ready to go, I asked for “Il conto, per favore.” The waiter responded, “Certo!” (Certainly) However, he didn’t bring me the bill right away. Instead, he returned after a few minutes with a plate of biscotti and some limoncello. Perfetto! Okay, Mr. Waiter, I guess you can persuade me to sit her for another half hour while I enjoy my dessert! (Which was free, by the way!)

After dinner, I went to St. Peter’s again. I sat around the obelisk and sipped from my water bottle as I watched the sun set. It occurred to me that I was doing what Elizabeth Gilbert had discussed in Eat, Pray, Love; namely, what the Italians call “il bel far niente.” (The beauty of doing nothing.)

Oh, but wait, I promised you Italian jokes!

The first happened near the Order of Malta. Nearby is a gift shop run by the Benedictines. I almost didn’t go in. It was a little out of the way, in a spot I wasn’t entirely sure I was supposed to enter. But something drew me near (God’s grace?) and I found in the gift shop something I’ve been looking for for a friend for a few days now. Good thing I stopped in or I might never have found it.

Anyway, the shop owner spoke to me only in Italian. At first, he was with some other customers and he said something to me about needing something. I think he needed to show the other customers something outside the shop because the three of them all walked out.

By the time he returned, I had found what I needed for my friend, plus another item. I stood waiting at the counter when he returned, and he said, “Prego,” and gave me a rather apologetic smile. I held up one item unsure of its price.

Me: Questo e cinque? (This is five?)
Him: Si.
Me: Questo e cinque anche? (This is five, too?)
Him: Si. (Then he laughed.) Tutti e cinque! (Everything is five!)

He waved his hand around the store, and I laughed with him, realizing I may have just enjoyed my first real, spontaneous joke in Italian.

The second joke came at the wine bar where I had dinner. The waiter’s shirts had the following written on the back:

La birra costa meno della benzina. Invece di guidare, bevi!

Yay, my second Italian joke of the day! The beer costs less than gas. Instead of driving, drink!