New Year's London Edition

Returning to London on Christmas Eve, I elected to fight the crowds and to go downtown to watch the fireworks.  Since this was my first time ever in a big city for New Year's, I wanted to take advantage of the situation.  The crowds were crazy, and it was hard work just keeping the place we had settled on to stand and watch the fireworks.  Nevertheless, we had friendly neighbors and a good time.  The DJ kept the time going by fairly quickly, and the crowd was electric during the countdown and fireworks which were spectacular.  We also got to hear Big Ben strike midnight.  After the fireworks display, everyone joined hands and sang Auld Lang Syne.  Auld Lang Syne is actually something that Brits know how to do as a part of their culture.  Everyone knows what do do when it is sung.  As I recall we also sang this song at the Christmas dinner we had here, and everyone did this same thing of crossing arms and then joining hands.  It's a beautiful tradition that doesn't really carry over, as far as I know, into America.  Americans have the song, but that's about it.  I'm not sure if this video will work, but rather than upload my own, here is the BBC footage of the event.

Rome Continued

One of the reasons I love Rome

So much for keeping up to date while in Rome.  My time there flew by.  I think Rome is my favorite city that I have visited so far.  This is perhaps partly because it is to ostensibly Catholic.  As I expressed before, you can't walk two blocks without running into a beautiful Church.  The great thing is that they still feel and function as churches, and haven't been completely reduced to tourist attractions.  They are great for praying in, and almost all reserve a chapel or two only specifically for that purpose, where photos are forbidden.  There are also nuns and priests walking the streets, and religion seems like a topic which is much closer to the top of people's minds.  I probably won't be able to keep straight all the churches I visited, but let me try to give a run down of the essential things I did in Rome.

On Wednesday, we saw the ancient, historical Roman attractions like the Colosseum, the Forum, and the Palatine.  These are basically the remains of Ancient Roman Civilization and are pretty neat.  Civilization had gotten pretty far and it was neat to think about life in Ancient Rome.  One of my favorite things there was the Arch of Titus, which has a relief showing the Romans carrying off spoils from the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.  It's an interesting look at the 'other side' of the story of the Diaspora.

Relief on the Arch of Titus

Thursday, I went in the morning to visit St. Mary Major, striking number two of four from the checklist of Rome's major basilica's.  In the afternoon, we met up with friends, having cappuccino, gelato, and seeing the Trevi Fountain, Quattro Fontane, a Barberini Residence turned museum (look for the bees, the Barberini family symbols), and various churches including San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, and Sant'Andrea al Quirinale (praying at the tomb of Saint Stanislaus Kostka).

Colosseum

Friday saw the Vatican Museum, which is quite large and how you get to see the Sistine Chapel.  The Sistine Chapel was nice, but my favorite things at the museum were the fresco rooms done by Raphael, or perhaps my favorite, the Immaculate Conception Room painted by Francesco Podesti, commemorating the promulgation of that doctrine.  Imagine a room completely covered from wall to ceiling with glorious paintings arranged around a theme and you start to get the idea.  I guess that's kind of what the Sistine Chapel is, but, although smaller, I prefer the rooms.  At the Vatican Museum, there is also a large collection of medieval religious art, probably the best that I've see, although I still much prefer Renaissance and Baroque art.  In the afternoon, we picked up our tickets for the Midnight Mass the next day, and met in line behind us a guy from Seattle who, unfortunately, hadn't actually requested tickets for himself and his siblings.  We gave him our one extra ticket, and I hope he was able to find others for the rest of his family.  At any rate, he was nice to talk to and the Swiss guard gave him tickets to the papal audience on Wednesday as a sort of consolation prize, which he in turn gave to us.  And I got saluted by a Swiss guard, before he let me go back to the secret room where I picked up the tickets!  I think this was also the day (see how quickly memory fades) when we visited the churches of San Luigi dei Francesi and San Agostino.  San Luigi is best known for its Caravaggio paintings in the St. Matthew chapel.  The Inspiration of St. Matthew and (especially) the Call of St. Matthew were the most amazing paintings I have seen in my life (the third, the Death of St. Matthew is also good, but not quite like the others).  There was something so rich, so vivid, and so interesting about them that can't really be explained or captured by even a photograph.  The Church of San Agostino also had a Caravaggio, but the most notable thing for me there was the tomb of St. Monica, the mother of St. Augustine.

Famous fresco of Plato and Aristotle in one
of the Raphael rooms of the Vatican Museum

Saturday was Christmas Eve and was mostly spend anticipating Midnight Mass.  We began standing in line around 6:00pm for the 10:00 'midnight' Mass, and they started letting people in around 8:30.  Although the event is ticketed, there are still more tickets than seat, but thanks to our early queuing efforts, we got seats.  We were probably 3/4 of the way back in the nave (which is still farther away from the altar than the back row of probably any church in the world), but perhaps a half dozen seats away from the aisle, so we got a relatively good view of the Pope Benedict during the processions.  During Mass we sat next to three Americans we met waiting in line.  Two were a Texas couple stationed in Germany, where the husband works as a lawyer for the Airforce.  He said he applied to Notre Dame for law school, but instead he met his wife at the school he eventually went to.  The other was a woman from New York who works for the advertising industry and was touring Italy.  Although none were Catholic, they still for whatever reason thought that the Vatican would be the best place to celebrate Christmas, and we were happy to answer their questions about Catholic things.  I'm really glad we all entered the line when we did, because meeting and sharing Christmas with them really helped to make it special.  I'm glad I know as much Latin as I do, because not only was most of the Mass in Latin, but the language next to it in the program to help people understand was Italian,.  Latin also helped me pick out bits of the Pope's Italian homily, although I read a translation the next day  As a bonus, the first reading from Isaiah was in English.

The nativity scene in St. Peter's Square

Christmas Day we went back to the Vatican for the Pope's noontime Urbi et Orbi address and blessing, where he says 'Merry Christmas' in dozens of different languages.  Groups from some countries were holding up their flags, although no American flag was to be seen.  The largest cheers seemed to come from the Spanish speakers, when the Pope said 'Feliz Navidad.'  This was no doubt augmented by the fact that we were right behind the Brazil contingent.  I know the Pope expressed concern over excessive glitter and commercialization of Christmas in his Christmas Eve homily, but I was amazed by how little the holiday was commercialized in Rome.  I didn't even realize it at first, but there were very few signs for Christmas sales, Christmas dinners and the like leading up to Christmas.  In comparison, London started rolling out the Christmas marketing before November.  On Christmas Day, a high percentage of places were closed and public transportation was severely limited, so most people can spend time with families.  I think the Italians understand how to do Christmas the right way.  One thing that is really important to the Italian celebration of Christmas is the nativity scene.  That makes sense, given that St. Francis is credited with creating the first one.  Almost every church we visited in the days following Christmas had one up, although some were much better than others.  Even the McDonald's in Assisi had one of sorts...

St. Stephen's day saw a visit to basilica three of four: St. Paul's Outside the Walls.  I really liked this church.  It had nice mosaic works, including roundels of all the Pope's.  Fortuitously, it also has a St. Stephen's chapel.  The afternoon consisted in a failed attempt to see the inside of the Pantheon, which was closed in the afternoon because St. Stephen's day is a national holiday.  It was another impressive structure that gave a flavor of ancient Roman life, this one preserved basically in its entirety.  I would see the inside on Friday.  Oddly, there were a couple of more modern, Italian nationalist monuments inside, including one to the ever popular Victor Emmanuel.  Inside was also the tomb of the artist Raphael, with the brilliant inscription ILLE HIC EST RAPHAEL TIMUIT QUO SOSPITE VINCI RERUM MAGNA PARENS ET MORIENTE MORI, which, not bothering to double check the translation myself, I am told means 'Here lies Raphael, by whom the mother of all things (Nature) feared to be overcome while he was living, and while he was dying, herself to die.'

Dusk in Assisi

Tuesday, we visited Assisi, the stomping ground of St. Francis.  Assisi is absolutely beautiful, with the main city situated on a hill.  I didn't realize Italy was so mountainous, and seeing Assisi helped me to understand the spirituality of the saint, who is known for his communion with nature.  We made the long walk further up the mountain to see Eremo delle Carceri, a hermitage where St. Francis would withdraw to pray and contemplate.  It was very peaceful in the cave of St. Francis and throughout the grounds, although there were too many tourists.  As a whole, I found Assisi to be a very peaceful place.  We also visited the Basilica of St. Francis, where the saint is buried, but only managed to see the outside of San Domiano.  We saw a number of the other churches there and got to watch the sun set behind the mountain across the valley.  The post-sunset sky was particularly amazing, like a vivid watercolor painting.   High above the watercolors and distant hills was a crescent moon and a solitary star (perhaps a planet?), while the dome of the Church of Santa Maria delgi Angeli was illuminated in the valley.

The Pope at the Wednesday audience

Wednesday was the Papal audience.  There isn't much to say about that, other than it was held indoors, the Pope addressed pilgrims in several different languages, and that we were seated directly in front of a large group of slightly obnoxious school girls, who did many different cheers while waiting and even during the audience.  The important thing is I got the Pope's Apostolic blessing.

Ostia Antica

Thursday we visited Ostia Antica, the ancient port city of Rome.  The city was largely abandoned after the Tiber changed course and was preserved when flooding caused the city to be buried.  The ruins were awesome, and gives you a great idea of what an ancient Roman town was like.  There are more ruins than you can really see in one day, and we got to see the city's capital building, amphitheatre, forums, baths, public toilets, temples (although these seemed to be the least well preserved), and a well-preserved thermopolium, which sold hot food and drink.  One of the paths we walked down had been labeled something like the 'street of the taverns' which I fancied was the nightclub district of Ostia.  It was amazing to think of all this as someone's everyday life, and I made me wonder all sorts of things about Roman culture.  How much did it cost to use the baths?  How did the baths even work?  Did vendors rent a spot in the forum?  What sorts of drinks did the thermopolium serve?  It was neat to see many similarities to our own civilization reflected in ancient Rome.  For lunch we went out for seafood near Ostia, which is a popular thing to eat near the coasts in Italy.  For dinner, we went out for pizza.

Pizza made by Italian hands

Friday was a day for finishing up what we could of seeing Rome.  We started by seeing the Gesu, a beautiful baroque church which is the mother church for the Jesuit Order and holds the tomb of St. Ignatius and the hand of St. Francis Xavier, the later of which is displayed prominently in a reliquary.  We went next to Santa Maria sopra Minerva, considered the only Gothic church in Rome, although even it had a number of Renaissance elements.  As I related earlier, we saw the inside of the Pantheon.  We finished by visiting the final major basilica, St. John Lateran, and buying cannoli afterwards from a nearby vendor.

Complementary Swiss Chocolate

3:45am Saturday saw us rising to get to the airport.  I mention the traveling only because I actually enjoyed it.  Swiss airlines was awesome.  The flight attendants were always smiling and seemed genuinely happy.  After flying budget airlines (and mind you this was the cheapest flight we could get) it was nice to actually get complementary food and drink, which actually tasted pretty good.  They also gave us Swiss chocolate, which tasted great, and since we had two legs of the flight, happened twice.  We got to see the sunrise from the air, although it was obscured by clouds.  Stopping over in Zurich, I actually got to see snow on the ground for the first time all season (save on the peaks of the mountains around Assisi), saw awesome mountains, and added Switzerland to my country count, and got a Zurich stamp in my passport because it was the point where I left the Schengen Area.

All told, it was a fantastic trip trip.