Author: emma grace

a walking tour of roma / rome pt. 3

emma grace1 Comment

On my first full day in Rome, my study abroad program took our group on a walking tour of the city. Because our school sits atop Colle di Gianicolo (Janiculum Hill), the first part of our walk was downhill. We experienced the dazzling panoramic view of the city from Terrazza del Gianicolo (Janiculum Terrace) which no photos can do justice to. On the terrazza sat Il Fontanone dell'Acqua Paola, an enormous stone fountain built in the 1600s and fed by the same aqueduct we'd drank from earlier that day. From there we descended further, crossing the River Tiber into the city center.

the end of the (tram) line / rome pt. 2

emma graceLeave a comment

Tram 3 runs an impressive forty-six stop line, passing through my neighborhood of Trastevere. I hop on at Pascarella and ride just three stops to the Ministero dell’Istruzione. The Ministero is a grand, imposing building, all white stone and stoic columns. It’s the kind of building that can’t be ignored on one’s first, second, even third glances, and yet it eventually and inevitably fades into the scenery of all the other grand Roman sites.

sampietrini / rome pt. 1

emma grace6 Comments

The Via della Madonna dell’Orto (via is the Italian word for street) is paved with sampietrini. Chiseled from basalt found in the hills outside the city, they’re small, squarish stones, graphite-colored, and they fill the roads in uneven rows. If we weren’t in Rome, they’d be called cobblestones, but instead, they are sampietrini: “little Saint Peters.” There are supposedly as many stones in the streets of the city as there are souls saved by Saint Peter.

BANG!

emma grace1 Comment

We’re being taught BANG!, a tabletop game set in the mostly-mythical Wild West world of duels and sheriffs and gold. Half of us have never played, so even starting the game has turned out to be a chaotic process, but it’s been fun so far. At the start of the game, I drew the card of the “Renegade,” so my character’s goal is to be the last woman standing—an unexpectedly strategic role for a game that comes in a bullet-shaped canister.