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Rome, Part I

January 10, 2012 at 9:04 pm
 

After Christmas in Sicily with my family, we flew up to Rome for a couple of days.  We did a lot of walking in those two days!  So many things to see that we had read about and studied all our lives.  All my siblings and I used the Calvert School curriculum for K-8, and every Calvert student takes Art History in 6th Grade, Sculpture in 7th, and Architecture in 8th.  We loved reviewing those textbooks together mentally as we traipsed about Roma!
The four Green siblings inside the Colosseum.

Which tourist does not belong?  As in… does not belong in this century??

 Smiling babies and carrot sculptures.  (Unfortunately Calvert School did not cover carrot sculptures.)

The Roman Forum, the old center of Rome.

 
Lena’s new favorite game.

With Romulus and Remus and their wolf-mother!

 Italian military policemen (carabinieri, or “the carbs,” as some lightly refer to them) wear uniforms designed by Armani.  These two had some special get-up, though, even for carabinieri.

 
Biggest jars of Nutella I have ever seen.
 Exploring the Roman subway system and snacking on a Nutella-filled crepe.

My mom watched Lena one evening so that my sisters, Elliott, and I could go out on the town for wine and antipasto.  Delicious!
4 :: in family, Italy, Rome, travel

hometown of Sicilian ceramics

December 15, 2011 at 3:08 pm
One of the art forms that Sicily is known for is its lovely hand-painted ceramics.  (ceramiche, cher-RAH-mi-kay)  Sadly for Sicily, I already fell in love with the lovely deep-blue-on-white patterns of Polish pottery when my family lived there.  Sicilian pieces tend to be painted in much lighter colors and more abstract designs, or painted with actual human figures, rather than sticking to nuances of a linear floral pattern as in Polish pottery.

Out of curiosity, which one do you prefer?

                                                        Sicilian Ceramics                                               Polish Pottery

Well, anyway, we live in Sicily now, and Sicily do I love!  Even her ceramics.  When my friend Becca invited me to join her and her sister on a trip to Caltagirone this week to visit the home of Sicily ceramics, I eagerly said yes.

Caltagirone is about an hour’s drive from Motta, where we live.  I admired the passing scenery, including herds of sheep (had to stop for them to get out of the road) and random castles on hilltops, like this one:

We arrived in the town of Caltagirone around 11am as crowds of school children converged on the center of town.  Caltagirone is most famous for the 142 steps in the middle of town.  The walls on either side of the staircase are lined with ceramic shops.

We ducked into a couple shops, examining plates and bowls as well as piggy banks, clocks, and spoon rests.  A shopkeeper smilingly allowed me to take some lovely photos of the ceramics in his shop, and I was getting so excited about posting them here… and then he told me not to post them on the internet.  Groan.  Since this is a friendly blog, and since no one (even a ceramic spoon) gets featured here unless they want to, I won’t post the photos.  However, here’s a stock photo of several Christmas ornaments.  They are so lovely!

Lena was hungry so I sat out on the steps with her for awhile.  These steps are amazing: each of them is lined with hand-painted tiles.  Take a look at this:

After loading ourselves down with purchases, we stopped in a restaurant on the steps for lunch.  Becca’s sister and I both ordered pasta di pistachi, a winter classic in Sicily.  The pasta is cooked in a heavy cream and sprinkled with mild, crushed pistachio nuts.  Becca has the recipe and is going to pass it on to me, meaning it will be on the menu when you come visit!

3 :: in Italy, Lena, Sicily, travel

hometown of Sicilian ceramics

December 15, 2011 at 2:08 pm
One of the art forms that Sicily is known for is its lovely hand-painted ceramics.  (ceramiche, cher-RAH-mi-kay)  Sadly for Sicily, I already fell in love with the lovely deep-blue-on-white patterns of Polish pottery when my family lived there.  Sicilian pieces tend to be painted in much lighter colors and more abstract designs, or painted with actual human figures, rather than sticking to nuances of a linear floral pattern as in Polish pottery.

Out of curiosity, which one do you prefer?

                                                        Sicilian Ceramics                                               Polish Pottery

Well, anyway, we live in Sicily now, and Sicily do I love!  Even her ceramics.  When my friend Becca invited me to join her and her sister on a trip to Caltagirone this week to visit the home of Sicily ceramics, I eagerly said yes.

Caltagirone is about an hour’s drive from Motta, where we live.  I admired the passing scenery, including herds of sheep (had to stop for them to get out of the road) and random castles on hilltops, like this one:

We arrived in the town of Caltagirone around 11am as crowds of school children converged on the center of town.  Caltagirone is most famous for the 142 steps in the middle of town.  The walls on either side of the staircase are lined with ceramic shops.

 
We ducked into a couple shops, examining plates and bowls as well as piggy banks, clocks, and spoon rests.  A shopkeeper smilingly allowed me to take some lovely photos of the ceramics in his shop, and I was getting so excited about posting them here… and then he told me not to post them on the internet.  Groan.  Since this is a friendly blog, and since no one (even a ceramic spoon) gets featured here unless they want to, I won’t post the photos.  However, here’s a stock photo of several Christmas ornaments.  They are so lovely!

Lena was hungry so I sat out on the steps with her for awhile.  These steps are amazing: each of them is lined with hand-painted tiles.  Take a look at this:

After loading ourselves down with purchases, we stopped in a restaurant on the steps for lunch.  Becca’s sister and I both ordered pasta di pistachi, a winter classic in Sicily.  The pasta is cooked in a heavy cream and sprinkled with mild, crushed pistachio nuts.  Becca has the recipe and is going to pass it on to me, meaning it will be on the menu when you come visit!

2 :: in Italy, Lena, Sicily, travel

love from Sicily

December 1, 2011 at 6:49 pm
Well, we’re here!  Finally back in sweet Sicily, a lovely land that turned lush and green with autumnal rains in our absence.  Right now Elliott and I are in the library on base, enjoying the internet for the first time in 3 days.  Lena is crawling around as quickly as she can, smiling at the librarians and other visitors.  A couple just walked in that haven’t seen her in 4 months and stopped to marvel at how much she’s grown up.

Four months!  It has been 4 months since we first arrived on the island.  A month and a half in Sicily, and then two and a half months in the U.S. for Elliott’s training… and now we’re back at last to set up house here.

House.  Well, folks, you should see it.  It’s chaos right now.  We arrived in Sicily on Tuesday, slept for 12.5 hours that night in the hotel (!), and then on Wednesday morning the movers arrived with all our boxes.  They brought everything crate by crate (7 in all) to our front door, and each crate was strapped in the back of a little pick-up truck because that was the largest size of car that could make it up the narrow streets of our Italian town to our front door.  The entire process took from 9am-4:30pm because of the long lull between when each crate was finished and when the next one arrived.  We thought we were all set at about 3pm but then realized we were missing some “valuable items.”  The movers insisted we go through every box after that to find the valuable things, and we finally found them after we went through each box the third time.  Our house looks like a bomb exploded in it.  Gaaaah!  But at least we can live in this state for long, so it’s highly motivating for us to get moved in quickly.

Today Elliott and I made a huge dent in organizing our kitchen (the most important room in the house, of course) and it looks so much better.  I also met up with friends for a playgroup; it’s so good to see those friendly faces again and get back into the community.  We also did a massive grocery shopping trip and–

— sorry, Lena found someone’s hair clip on the library floor and was eating it.  Gross.  Rescued.

Anyway, life is up in the air right now.  We have no internet yet, which is why we’re at the library at 5:45pm.  I also have no cell phone, but that should change soon, we hope.  But we can see shepherds herding sheep on the hills from our bathroom window, and we heard a distant cock crow this morning as we woke up with the sunrise streaming into our bedroom.  I can watch horses graze and Mt Etna smoke gently from my enormous kitchen window.  We really are living in Italy.  It’s a dream.  It’s happening!

4 :: in family, home sweet home, Italy, Sicily, thoughts

love from Sicily

December 1, 2011 at 5:49 pm
Well, we’re here!  Finally back in sweet Sicily, a lovely land that turned lush and green with autumnal rains in our absence.  Right now Elliott and I are in the library on base, enjoying the internet for the first time in 3 days.  Lena is crawling around as quickly as she can, smiling at the librarians and other visitors.  A couple just walked in that haven’t seen her in 4 months and stopped to marvel at how much she’s grown up.

Four months!  It has been 4 months since we first arrived on the island.  A month and a half in Sicily, and then two and a half months in the U.S. for Elliott’s training… and now we’re back at last to set up house here.

House.  Well, folks, you should see it.  It’s chaos right now.  We arrived in Sicily on Tuesday, slept for 12.5 hours that night in the hotel (!), and then on Wednesday morning the movers arrived with all our boxes.  They brought everything crate by crate (7 in all) to our front door, and each crate was strapped in the back of a little pick-up truck because that was the largest size of car that could make it up the narrow streets of our Italian town to our front door.  The entire process took from 9am-4:30pm because of the long lull between when each crate was finished and when the next one arrived.  We thought we were all set at about 3pm but then realized we were missing some “valuable items.”  The movers insisted we go through every box after that to find the valuable things, and we finally found them after we went through each box the third time.  Our house looks like a bomb exploded in it.  Gaaaah!  But at least we can live in this state for long, so it’s highly motivating for us to get moved in quickly.

Today Elliott and I made a huge dent in organizing our kitchen (the most important room in the house, of course) and it looks so much better.  I also met up with friends for a playgroup; it’s so good to see those friendly faces again and get back into the community.  We also did a massive grocery shopping trip and–

— sorry, Lena found someone’s hair clip on the library floor and was eating it.  Gross.  Rescued.

Anyway, life is up in the air right now.  We have no internet yet, which is why we’re at the library at 5:45pm.  I also have no cell phone, but that should change soon, we hope.  But we can see shepherds herding sheep on the hills from our bathroom window, and we heard a distant cock crow this morning as we woke up with the sunrise streaming into our bedroom.  I can watch horses graze and Mt Etna smoke gently from my enormous kitchen window.  We really are living in Italy.  It’s a dream.  It’s happening!

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4 :: in family, home sweet home, Italy, Sicily, thoughts
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