Day Eighteen

After a restless night in a hot hotel room, we headed out to a place that makes Parmigian-Reggiano cheese. We saw the process from start to finish, with the Dairy Master keeping a watchful eye on us, the cheese and his workers. The process is very cool and is quite sensitive as the qualities of the milk can change from day to day based on many fluctuating variables. It is neat to watch the Dairy Master inspecting the cheese at various stages because he is so in tune with how it should smell, taste, feel and look. Then we went into the warehouse where the cheese is aged....heaven. My clothes smelled like cheese for the rest of the day! There were 90 kilo wheels of cheese stacked all the way to the fifty foot high ceilings!!! IT WAS AWESOME!!! Afterward we were treated to a tasting of both young and old Parmigiano-Reggiano. At the Tuscan meal we had Parmigiano-Reggiano with honey, I had never had it this way, it was so damn delicious, so I stocked up on cheese wedges to bring home and share...

After the cheese factory, we went to Bologna and were let loose in the city for about seven hours. I toured an archaeological museum filled with egyptian artifacts, a palace that was once the main building for an old university of Bologna and another palace that now houses some of the most beautiful Bolognese art. The best thing about Bologna, I got into all of these museums for FREE! How cool is that?  Oh, maybe I spoke too soon, the best thing about Bologna may be the Lasagna alla Bolognese, which the waiter absolutely insisted I must pair with a glass of local red wine.....it was phenomenal.

Day Six

Last night was a ton of fun. We visited the Centrale Montemartini museum, It is a collection of many old Roman busts and sculpture housed in what used to be an old steam power plant. The statues are scattered about the two HUGE 5000 kw dynamos. The contrast between the ancient and the (relatively) modern is striking. I think this was one of my favorite sites so far. Afterwards we headed out for a night on the town to celebrate the completion of our first week in Rome. We went to visit one of the girls' apartments for some drinks and then headed out to mingle with the people.... We found a great vantage point in Campo de Fiori for people watching, a favorite past time of the Italians, though they people watch in a very different way than we tend to, particularly the men. They are pretty intense, they tend to stare in a way that feels a little invasive for us Americans. It is fun to follow the girls in our group and watch the unrestrained rubbernecking of the Italian men as they pass. They seem harmless for the most part though from what I can tell. Then we wound our way through the streets to Piazza Nuovana which was relatively mellow compared to the craziness of Campo de Fiori. We bought a few beers and hung out next to some centuries old fountain just shooting the shit and getting to know each other a little better. We have such an amazing and diverse group representing so many backgrounds, I am lucky to be involved with such people, it really adds to the richness of this experience. We decided to call it a night around two o' clock in the morning and walked some of the girls home to their apartment. As we turned a corner near the house, the Pantheon suddenly loomed over our heads, the oldest continuously functioning building in the whole world, and here it was, on our casual walk home after a night of drinking.

The interior of the Centrale Montemartini

One more note for today before I head out for Pizza. We were discussing some of the history of our neighborhood this morning and I noticed that my friend Dana had a really cool graphic of the location of the UW Rome Center. It stands on the same location as the ancient Roman Theatre of Pompey, which is where Julius Caesar was assassinated. Steps from my front door, the great Roman Emperor was killed, WOW!  Check out her post here, and the cool graphic with it....