I’ve been wanting to get started on some blog recaps of my trip to Rome but haven’t been quite sure how to go about it. Like most writing, the best way is probably just to sit down and get started!
We left on a Friday for Rome. This was a family trip with Louie’s family: his mom, stepdad, brother, and us. We all got to the airport to check in for our flight, first to Detroit, then to Rome, and found out that Louie’s stepdad wasn’t going to be allowed to go. PSA: make sure your passport expires more than 3 months after your trip to Italy. Otherwise you have to fly to a one-day passport center, get your passport, and then meet your family later. With the weekend, that meant that he wasn’t going to be able to join us until Tuesday at the earliest, which was a huge bummer and got the vacation off on the wrong foot. We were terribly sad to leave him behind, but there wasn’t a better option.
(not so sad that we didn’t take a “we’re going to rome!” selfie. Is it a selfie when it’s of two people?
)
The flight was noneventful after that. We landed in Detroit and made an easy connection with the international leg of the trip. Louie and I were sitting together and tried to sleep mostly, but mostly failed at that. Oh, one of the good things we did on the airplane was request an “asian vegetarian” meal on the Delta Flight. It ended up being really tasty compared to what the regular meal looked like (and what I recall airplane food being.)
We landed in Rome in the morning. It’s odd after flying all night and trying to sleep and then feeling like it’s the middle of the night, when it IS, but it’s also the morning. All that to say, jet lag is no joke.
After clearing customs, and struggling to find out way out of the airport: welcome to Italy and all the signs for the exits point to exits that are closed…we made it to the cab line and took a cab to our hotel (we determined this was cost effective versus the train for four people).
We were spending the first portion of our trip at the Hotel Suisse at the top of the Spanish Steps. We arrived too early to check into our rooms but we were able to drop off our luggage and go sightseeing. And by sightseeing I mean, in desperate search of espresso.
Excellent espresso. Do have it at the counter, not at a table.So many people out and about!
We arrived on a beautiful Saturday and I believe everybody in Rome was out and about plus all the tourists that had just arrived. We walked around to a variety of different piazzas and every one was just jammed with people.
Column of Marcus Aurelius—okay this was slightly less crowded than the other areas, but mostly because it was really sunny.The Pantheon. We didn’t go in at this time because there were approximately 70 million people already inside.The square around the Pantheon.Piazza Navona.The Spanish Steps covered with azaleas.
Piazza del Popolo.
We walked up to the Villa Borghese then. (At some point we had gone back to the rooms to take a short nap and then headed out again. I had been so exhausted I thought I was going to throw up so this was very necessary for me. I felt slightly better after a nap and shower so was managing to hang on for more walking and dinner…)
View of the Piazza del Popolo from above
Cool building on our street, Via Gregoriana. It is a library!
Anyway, after wandering all over the city, it was time for dinner. The first night we had a wonderful meal at a restaurant called Colline Emiliane. They make their own pasta and it was just wonderful. In retrospect this was actually one of my favorite meals! I didn’t take pictures of my food on this trip because it seemed tacky, so you won’t have that, but I had spinach and sausage stuffed ravioli, veal, lots of bread and a delicious Pinot Nero wine, among other things that I can’t recall. Italian food is just the best, isn’t it?
After dinner we went back to the hotel and crashed.
So that’s where I’ll end my first recap of the trip. I hope you’ll forgive me if I have decided to draw this out a little bit. I know that later I will enjoy looking back on my blog and reading them so this is the best way to do it! I might cover more than a day next time, who knows. It’s my blog and I’ll do what I want to 😉 and hopefully you will enjoy reading about my trip! There are three parts to traveling as far as I’m concerned: planning the trip, actually traveling, and then writing about it and looking at pictures afterwards.
The weekend was stressful and busy but fun. Saturday was needlessly stressful due to some weddings and things, but the evening was super fun, and Sunday’s quartet concert was fun too. Friday night we went to the symphony with my friend Jen and her husband Chuck and went to Small Batch afterwards for drinks and a snack.
We had awkwardly close seats as usual. I wasn’t super impressed by the Rachmoninoff (Piano Concerto no. 3) balance wise, but I blamed where I was sitting, but our friends had better seats and they said the pianist was hard to hear as well. I find so many times I’ve been to symphony concerts (not just in St Louis) and don’t hear enough of the soloist. I don’t recall that from ushering back in the day in Cleveland, but it’s possible my standards are higher these days, who knows!
Saturday night at the Tavern of Fine Arts with my Irish group. We had a good time. Olivia, the flute player, is moving away in a few months so we won’t be able to reprise, but it was a lot of fun and I’m glad we were able to play the show again.
Sunday afternoon the quartet (Perseid Quartet) played in Edwardsville at the First Presyterian Church. It was a small crowd, but a good one, and I was tired but had a wonderful time performing. Two of my students attended, and I have to say: I LOVE when students come to my performances. It really makes me feel honored and appreciated, and I also hope that I inspire them!
I didn’t take any photos but I stole this one from our quartet facebook page. Most of my “in performance” photos are from my good friend April who is never shy about taking photos during a performance.
This time of year is just busy, isn’t it? I do feel like this was a particularly stressful weekend to “cross off” and the next two are not as bad. We’ve finished all of our scheduled quartet performances so now we are back to brainstorming and planning (if you would like to offer us a spot on your concert series or a place to perform we would definitely consider it!) and that’s always fun. Planning means new possibilities, and that’s one of my favorite things. And honestly I think until fall, things truly have settled down a bit. (Famous last words, I’m sure, and I shouldn’t forget about July’s piano-violin recital, but there’s nothing toMEMORIZE on there at least.)
Speaking of planning. Italy. I’m just so excited, though it doesn’t seem real! I’ve got the Rick Steves book on Rome, since he was my lifesaver in Paris, but I have barely looked at it yet. (Plus most of the planning isn’t really up to me, and that’s fun too, but we do have some decisions to make). I have 3 more concerts left, a gig, and a student recital in addition to my regularly scheduled activities (teaching mostly). It’s been a wild ride this spring, but as I was driving to a 9 am rehearsal in Edwardsville I was thinking, yes, I’m a little tired, but I’m managing, I’m having enough time to exercise, eat well, and occasionally see friends, and more importantly, I’m having a blast performing! It took me a long time to get to this point in St Louis, and I’m pretty happy about it. And what’s funny is that I’d LOVE to play even more, and I still try to figure out how to squeeze more into my life, even as I come here to the blog and complain about my lack of balance and how busy I am. I might be crazy?
We decided to go out for Vietnamese food last night. We tried a new-to-us place called Linh Mi Gia and were NOT disappointed. The food you see pictured was delicious (I have such a weakness for the broken rice/pork type dishes). This is one of my new favorite restaurants for Vietnamese, and I definitely will go back and try a few other things.
The big news: I am going with Louie’s family on a trip to Italy in May. I am so excited! We will be going to Rome for sure and the rest is TBD. I’m so thrilled to be going to Europe again and feel so lucky!
Until then, life is crazy as usual. Thursday my quartet played a concert at the Kemper Art Museum at Washington University. I had been really stressed out about it because we were playing about 7 pieces by student composers and they ranged from difficult to exceedingly difficult. We also played Shostakovich’s String Quartet no. 8 (again) after all of that. The concert ended up feeling like it went really well, and the crowd was appreciative.
As you can see it was a really neat space to play in, and we had a full house.
The less good thing happening is that our white cat, Chloe, has been diagnosed with diabetes. Poor kitty. She has to have twice daily insulin injections, which has been a challenge. I’m sure it will become part of the regular routine (wake up, get attacked by loads of overly hungry animals who were sure they were going to die, feed animals, give Chloe a shot?) but it’s been one more added stress. She doesn’t seem to mind the shots other than an initial discomfort, and I’m sure that she must be feeling better than ever with the medicine!
So I’ve been doing an instagram challenge, taking/posting one photo a day. I’d read that it makes people become better photographers, or that it will change your life. Well, I’ve definitely become a worse photographer, because sometimes I’m at the end of the day and realize, oh no, I didn’t take a picture yet! Plus the added stress…did I get a picture today? Does stealing one from somebody’s facebook count? I guess I’m learning something about myself (that I mostly like to take pictures of my food and cats) (or that I’m pretty boring) and it’s a good challenge. I imagine I’ll look back on the year and feel super accomplished.
I did finally recover from my cold (look at me, following up on things) though I have had low-grade congestion all week. I’m thinking that it is allergies at this point: I feel mostly good, except a little tired still, but that gets better each day. This weekend I was able to do a fair amount of relaxing and sleep in one day. I’ve got some really fun performances coming up and so much to do before Italy, but I’m walking around in disbelief (something awesome happening to me!) and with lists in my head—I have been trying to stay on top of things by using my to-do list on my phone a lot, plus I totally made a packing list for Italy. I want to fit everything in my smaller suitcase and not overpack for once in my life, but I also don’t want to miss anything. And generally I don’t mind overpacking—for instance, if I’m flying to a destination where I will be picked up from the airport in a car, and then spend the whole time somewhere, I’d actually rather have brought too many clothes than not enough. I’ve often been in Phoenix and regretted not bringing more clothes or shoes. But this is different because it’s international travel, it’s possibly five people squeezing into a car with five suitcases, and that means to pack as light as possible.
Did I mention Rome?
I was there in the summer of 2001 for a couple of days. It was on a tour of Italy with the Erie Youth Symphony (speaking of lucky and amazing things happening to me—I just got asked to go along to fill out the section!). I just found these photos online at Snapfish and wondered at first why my albums only had 24 pictures in them…haha! That was back when photos cost money to see. I’m lucky I have them online! I remember trying to figure out how many rolls of film to bring along. What a wonderful trip though. I wish I’d been a blogger then or kept a better journal so I could reminisce more…well, things have changed now! You know you’ll be hearing all about Italy after it happens!
I haven’t been a world traveler as much as other people I know…no summers in Europe traipsing about, but I do like to travel, and I especially hate staying in one place for too long.
That’s a metaphor too. And a joke, of course, but whatever. Most of what I write is at least 72 percent facetious.
It’s tricky, getting divorced. Are you allowed to talk about it with people? Are you allowed to look back on things you did together and think fondly on them? Do you just throw away everything that happened in your life beforehand and start over? I think different people do it differently, of course.
For instance, while I was married we took a wonderful trip to Paris. Since my marriage ended does that mean I can’t look back fondly on Paris? I’d say heck, no, because the end of my marriage brought me enough pain, let’s not also sear out all the good things that happened!
If I were a real blogger I’d do a post looking for page views, entitled something like “5 can’t miss things to do in Paris” or “How to find a good hotel in Paris” or “How to dress in all black like we are told the Parisians do” but I’m not doing that. (Or I will say that you can get a hotel here or read about Paris fashion here.) I’m just sitting here on my couch after spending a day in Warrenton with the band and another day in St Peters and wishing I could go somewhere other than Missouri or Illinois (which is right across the river from St Louis, in case you weren’t aware, which I wasn’t until I moved here…)…and that naturally makes me think of Paris. Since that was my most recent, and most substantial adult trip abroad. And I loved every second of it and I want to go back someday.
That’s me in front of the Eiffel Tower, in case you weren’t sure.
Things to love about Paris: cheese, wine, the metro, people watching, and loads of history around every corner. It’s an amazing city and I’m sure spending years there wouldn’t be enough. But I’ll settle for another week or less someday.
Things to love about having been married: being able to kill a conversation by mentioning your divorce, occasionally remembering the good times and that you did, once, love that person enough to get married to them, and then, well, if you did anything super awesome, don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. Life is long, life goes on, and sometimes memories are what get you through a long week.
I am so behind on wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving! So Happy Thanksgiving and all that. I hope you had a wonderful day. I had a great trip to Philadelphia to visit my boyfriend’s family. My mom grew up within a few hours of Philadelphia so I’d been there a few times before but not in a long time.
The view from the hotel room. The old home of the Philadelphia Orchestra.
The end of the Thanksgiving day parade. We popped over to see it and caught a few floats, a band, and Santa.
Saw the liberty bell. Mostly this seemed like a photo op 🙂
Louie and his brother at the Rocky statue outside of the Art Museum. Evidently the steps in front were used in the movie. I haven’t seen it, nor did I run up the steps.
Awkward city selfie.
It was a fun trip and I’m glad we went. We saw a play (QED at the Lantern Theater), had Chinese food in Chinatown for Thanksgiving, saw a movie (Rosewater), and tons of sightseeing—the liberty bell, various neighborhoods, Reading Terminal Market, the Macy’s with the giant organ. The Art Museum was really neat even though we only had about 1 1/2 hours there. Hopefully I’ll be back!
Then it was home and off to St Joseph, Missouri for a band show. This was our farthest show and I’m glad of that.
I stole a few of those photos from my friend and band mate Anna’s facebook page. How beautiful is that theater on the outside?
I’m spending today being a bit lazy even though I have quite a bit to catch up on. I am feeling like drinking a ton of coffee and just being generally lazy…reading…even though the house is a huge mess and I probably ought to practice. I feel like I started the semester so behind and now I’m just trying to tread water and waiting for the Christmas break in order to catch and make actual progress in my life. That’s the story you’ve been hearing for months at least, right? I really do think after Christmas things will be better. I’m working on saying no more and learning what projects I want to take on.
One “little” thing I haven’t mentioned. I’m in St Louis right now. I have a lot of thoughts about all that is happening, here in St Louis, and in the nation. I think we can all benefit by trying to put ourselves in other people’s shoes. There isn’t enough empathy in the world, and not enough people try to imagine the world that people other than themselves live in. I think we all need to do better, going forward. I know I will try. I hope you all do too.
I’m drinking coffee, and I’m just gonna finish blogging about my trip so that we are all happy. Let’s do this!
We left Chattanooga after lunch and headed to the Great Smoky Mountains. We had made a reservation at the Cades Cove Campground for two nights. I was pretty nervous about camping—I hadn’t been since I was a kid. As a kid, I had camped a LOT. We camped on beach trips, weekend mountain trips, randomly, and most interestingly, for two multi-week road trips from South Carolina to the National Parks of the West. One trip went basically from South Carolina to LA, another went more northwest all the way to Banff, Canada.
Standing on the four corners. Louie, you’ll notice my inappropriate footwear. I will always wear sandals in the summer unless it is absolutely imperative that I don’t. (edit to add, I’m not sure where these pictures went, but they are gone for now.)
Leslie and I at the Badlands. Did I ever mention I had a perm and perhaps even a slightly awkward phase in middle school?
Jesse (my brother) and I in Sequoia National Park. Fashion was my strong suit.
But anyway. Enough old pictures, right? Sometimes I’m amazed at what my parents accomplished with three kids, honestly. We must have been really annoying to travel that far with.
Louie is really into camping and I promised him I’d give it a shot. One difference between my childhood camping and today is that I had a pad to put under my sleeping bag, so that seemed promising already. I remember many nights sleeping on the ground of the tent and having a small rock or tree root exactly where I wanted to be sleeping and having to avoid it.
We had packed some camping supplies—all the requisite sleeping equipment, a camping stove and cooler, camping pots and pans. We hadn’t packed some other things like plates or bowls, and of course a trip to the grocery store was in order before we got the campground. Now that I’ve been I know what we forgot and what will make our lives better if we camp again (though Louie mentioned backpacking and I started to get nervous again…). The campground would have running water and toilets, but no HOT water or showers…
We made it to the National Park before 6 pm, with the thought of maybe doing something active, but we decided to just set up the tent, forage for firewood and make a fire. It ended up being a really nice relaxing evening. We talked to a ranger and got an idea of the hike we wanted to do the next day, and we were ready to go!
I should go into more detail of our talk with the ranger. We asked, what would you do if you were just here for one day? Well, she freaked out that we weren’t spending enough time in the park, and then recommended a hike that would have been a 2 hour drive away (each way!). We finally got her to give us an idea closer to the campground (that we could walk to) and didn’t really think about the fact that a “13 mile hike” is indeed a fairly big deal. My thought process when she mentioned the distance was that 1) Louie didn’t seem concerned and 2) I run half marathons! That’s not far! Also the ranger told us that we would see a bear up there. The park has a problem with bears—you can’t leave ANY food out and you have to put your trash in special trash bins.
(We started at the horse, went up the Anthony Creek Trail to the Bote Mountain Trail to the green line which is the Appalachian Trail. Then off to the right for a bit, back across Spence Field, down the Russell Field Trail back to the Anthony Creek Trail.)
Note to readers: it is far. Especially when you add on another 1 mile spur to try to see something the ranger mentioned that you couldn’t exactly recall what it is or how far she said. And another 1 mile or so finding the trailhead. In a nutshell, I’m pretty sure we hiked around 15 miles, which I’m pretty sure is the longest I have ever traveled on foot in a day. And that was up and down mountains, which is even harder than running in downtown St Louis. If I had known how hard it would be I probably wouldn’t have done it, which is just as well then.
The views up the Anthony Creek Trail were really nice!Lots of bridges across the creek like this one.There’s something about trail signs that I really love.This was the top. Basically.
We were on the Appalachian Trail, and it was honestly, really beautiful. We got caught in some rain on the way up the mountain (thank goodness I had thrown in some emergency ponchos) and everything at the top of the mountain was foggy and green. We couldn’t see much of anything, which was pretty cool in itself because we felt like we were alone in the world. Except for the other hikers we saw and a family of turkey vultures or wild turkeys.
On the way down (when we were exhausted, dirty, sore, and pretty sure) we ran into another couple we had seen many hours earlier (this hike took us from 10:30 am to about 6:30 pm and we walked the whole time, worried about getting home before dark). We chatted with them briefly, they then went ahead of us and then we heard them crying out in excitement.
It turns out a black bear had gone right across the trail in front of them, crossed the creek and was in a tree on the other side. It didn’t see us, but we could see it. The others wanted to see it more up close, but the other woman kept saying “it moved so fast!” and I thought, well, it could be RIGHT BACK HERE any minute now. I was pretty terrified, especially because people always joke, you don’t have to outrun the bear, you just have to outrun the other people, and I didn’t think I could. On the other hand, they say there’s safety in numbers and that as a group you have a better chance of scaring the bear away (making loud noises, throwing rocks) than on your own. Nonetheless, I was eager to get away from there and managed to pull Louie away—he was trying to get a picture.
(didn’t know this at the time, but awesome, right? This is backwards from what we did, for the record.)
We made it back to the campsite. Worst part: no showers. I had fallen down once, nothing major, but my legs were covered in mud. I managed to clean off a bit and then we enjoyed hot dogs and wine by the fire. I can’t believe we managed to hike that far—it was seriously amazing and difficult, and probably a little stupid, but I was so happy about it. Oh, and I didn’t know this but do now: black bears climb trees. Of course they do.
The next day we needed to go home but we decided to drive around Cades Cove Loop first. The Smoky Mountains Park is different than many other parks in that people did live in the area before it was a National Park, and Cades Cove is one of those areas. People were bought out and forced to move. Some of them were allowed to stay for the rest of their lives but their children could not. The history was fascinating. We saw a bunch of old houses and churches, and in fact, some churches that were built AFTER the house that I live in now (1906) which I found very interesting, because my house had electricity and plumbing from the beginning and these did not. Being in a city was so very different from being in the mountains!
The Cades Cove Loop is a one way road, and it was really nice to drive around and SEE the mountains. The day before we’d be in the mountains and hadn’t really seen them, and now we were down looking up. I actually prefer that view—once you are on the mountain it is harder to see them!
We left the first cabin and then the traffic was totally backed up. I was annoyed at first, and then we realized that it was because everybody was looking at a black bear in tree a little ways off the road! We pulled over and Louie got out to try to get some pictures. I think he did, but he hasn’t uploaded any shots yet. I stayed in the car because I felt I’d seen it enough from the road and thought it would be safer this way.
For our last park adventure, we decided to drive (well, not me, but Louie was driving) out of the park on Rich Mountain Road, a one way gravel road that was closed in the winter. The ranger we spoke with assured us that while it wasn’t a shortcut, it would be passable in a car and was a nice drive. I don’t think we realized QUITE how slow going it would be (probably about 10 to 15 mph) but it was an amazing winding road up the mountain and then back down again on the other side.
All in all, we had a most wonderful week of vacation, and I wish it could have been longer. We made it home safely and not terribly late, and I look forward to our next adventure!
