Blog Archives

All roads lead to ... ROME!

10/30/2015

We saved Rome for last.

All I can say is ... there is so much there! And I just about stopped taking photos.

It was kind of over whelming. I was so busy looking and reading. Most of the photos below are taken from Wikipedia. I'll let you know which photos are actually mine.

So, we saw all the big, important and famous sites like the colosseum.

We climbed to the very, very top of the Basilica in the Vatican for the best view of the city. It was clear that day and not too, too crowded. Very wonderful.

The Vatican Museum is open, I think, one evening a month. It just happened to be during our visit. Fewer tickets are sold for these evening viewings, so we were lucky and got to see the Sistine Chapel with a smaller crowd and hence got to stay inside longer to get a good long look at that amazing ceiling. The walls are nothing to sneeze at, too.

What really surprise me though was the size of the museum not including the chapel. We spent about 2 1/2 hours looking at everything else before arriving at the famous chapel. And I felt like I was rushing past everything. This is a place I want to see again.

But, Rome is filled with so many beautiful churches on almost every block. We stepped inside as many as we could. Here are two I want to show you. This is St. Ignatius, a baroque style church finished in 1650. You can see how magnificent it is with a dome above the alter, like most churches of this style ... BUT ...

It is a faux dome! It is really a flat circular ceiling with a tromp l'oeil interior dome painted when the building project ran out of money. It amazes me that they couldn't afford a dome, since they seemed to be able to afford everything else.

Such a funny feature in such a gorgeous church.

This is the interior of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere. We had to go here since she is the patron saint of music and I studied music so long and so seriously Also, in my Catholic days, she was my patron saint when I was confirmed.

This church is older, founded in the 5th Century. The church that is now standing was built in 822 and then parts were rebuild and added to in the 18th Century. Things are SO OLD in Italy!

I wanted to show this church because I love this mosaic behind the alter. First I found it refreshing to look at after so much florid and ornate Renaissance and Baroque art. The more simple and clean lines appealed to me. It shows Jesus in the middle with an assortment of saints. But take a good look at the one on the left. Take a look at his halo. This is Pope Saint Paschal I and he got a square halo because he was alive at the time this mosaic was made.

I never knew that tradition.

ps, I took this photo!

This is not a church. It is the inside of the Borghese Gallery housed in the Villa Borghese built in 1644. Read this Wikipedia page for the history.

It has a huge and wonderful collection of great paintings and sculptures and another surprise fashion exhibit. In almost every room were gowns designed by the contemporary Italian designer, Azzedine Alaïa

The garments were cleverly set in each room, sometimes blending in and just looking like part of the permanent collection.

It took me a while to make my way through this gallery.

Now, a couple random comments.

I don't think I've ever eaten so much wonderful food as I did on this trip. I'm really in love with Italian food. The pasta and pizza are great, but there is so much more than that to love.

They have really bad breakfasts though, just a cup of espresso and, if you are lucky, a croissant. A few times we were given packaged bad buns ... slightly stale. So, this sign cracked me up. They are trying to cater to tourists, but still not quite right.

I took this photo and the other 2 below, but that's it!
I did actually see everything else shown though.

I really wanted to see the famous Trevi Fountain before we left so I could throw a coin in it to make sure I will come back to Rome. And LOOK! It was under repair. Completely fenced off with no water. I threw a coin anyway. As many others much have done, since there were coins everywhere. I sure hope that money is given to a good cause.

Speaking of causes. The migrant/refugee problem is real in Europe. This sign was posted just around the corner from the place we were staying. What a small world we live in.

So, I'm actually not finished with Italy. I bought a few cool things that I will blog about next week.

Have a lovely weekend. The leaves here are really pretty.

1 Comment

Pitti Palace - Florence

10/28/2015

4 Comments

People who know me and especially my husband know that we often come back from vacations needing a vacation. My husband is an avid, enthusiastic traveler and reads and reads and researches a place way before we get there. This means that I don't have to do a thing and get to be surprised as we visit each site.

So, the very first thing we visited in Italy was the Pitti Palace in Florence, which now is a huge and wonderful art gallery with Florence's largest public garden, which is free for locals, as it should be. After all, it's their Central Park.

It was commissioned in 1458 by the Florentine banker Luca Pitti, a principal supporter and friend of Cosimo de' Medici. Check out the Pitti Palace Wikipedia page to see more history and some of the more famous art works housed there.

Well, anyway ... when we got there they just happened to be having a special exhibit of 20th Century gowns belonging to famous Italian women.

Really fun to took at.

I tried to take notes one which gown belonged to whom and the name of the designer, but

didn't do a very good job and now just have a bunch of neat photographs.

Who knows if they will ever be useful.

BUT THEN ...

We walked into this set of dark rooms.

And LOOK what was there ... oh the joys of being surprised!

The burial dress of none other than ....

Which makes total sense since she bought the palace from the Pitti in 1549 for the Medici.

This is the famous portrait of her by Bronzino.

And look, look, LOOK! There is it in my Janet Arnold book!

Complete with patterns! I've been wanting to make this gown for a long time.

Please, please, please Simplicity ... let me make this one! I don't think it would be as hard as the Tudor gown I did 7 years ago.

Cosimo's burial clothes were there, too!!

It's so fun to see that those capes really were big almost circles AND

To see all the points (little ties) at the bottom of the doublet used to keep his beeches up and I never knew what was inside a cod piece before ... but look!

Makes sense to me.

4 Comments

Siena ... ahhhh!

10/26/2015

0 Comments

My Italian holiday ... part 2!
This is the view from our balcony in Siena, which was my favorite city ... just because. It doesn't have the most famous attractions, but it is a lovely place that still lives in medieval times. It is an incredibly relaxing place to visit and the people are lovely.

Also, they have a couple great restaurants.

It is built on a hill, like many small Italian cities and towns. The old part has very narrow (and STEEP!) streets that are mostly free of cars. We had a book with walking tours, so over the course of our 3 days, we learned a lot about the history there.

This is the famous Duomo (Cathedral) from the outside, which is very grand ... but ...

the inside is breath taking ... literally. When we visited we got the audio headsets that explained everything. Every section of the floor tells stories from the Bible, in addition to all the paintings and sculptures.

All the striped columns and arches look like Middle Eastern architecture to me.

So ... here is what was in a window I saw during one of our walks,

really excellent reproduction armor!

You can even follow these guys on Instagram!

And this isn't surprising since twice a year, in the middle of town, they have this horse race called the Palio, which is a tradition going back to the Middle Ages!

The city is divided into 17 wards, each with it's own colors and mascots. And they dress in Medieval style clothing, bang on drums and wave lots of flags ... so cool!

We didn't see the actual Palio, but did see a group of boys practicing the drum and flag routines.

Read the Wikipedia page if you want to know more!

They race around this tiny town square called the Piazza del Campo, which is a very pleasant place to hang out on a normal - non race - day. We did.

But LOOK at this photo. Part of me would love to attend one year, but the other part tells me I would be crazy to do so. I'm not good in crowds like that.

Another interesting thing I saw in Siena while visiting their town hall, Palazzo Pubblico, were all the frescoes on the walls of the main room called The Hall of the Nine. These are allegorical paintings of good and bad government.

Siena was governed by a group of nine men, the Nove or Council of the Nine. These were common business men and were replace every two months, one of the first places to be governed by the people, not a monarch. Siena flourished at this time.

And here is what they did to that Town Hall on our last day. A bunch of men with several ropes and pulleys hoisted a smile to make the building look happy!

What will they think of next!

0 Comments

Back from ITALY!!

10/23/2015

2 Comments

So, I kind of dropped off the face of the earth for a few weeks. (did some of you miss me?) It is always my intension to post blogs while traveling, but it just didn't work this time, for several reasons. One I had JUST gotten back from teaching at the American Sewing Expo and didn't have time to prepare a bunch of blogs ready to go and my blog writing website on my iPad was giving me trouble in Italy, so I just gave up, zoned out and ate WAY too much food.

We were in four different cities. I'm going to talk about this one first. It is a tiny town called Vernazza the second of five little towns that hug the coast between Genoa and Pisa. They are very close together, about a mile apart and all together are call Cinque Terre. A nation park surrounds the towns and the main activity is walking the paths up and down along the cliffs between towns which are VERY steep.

Which is a good thing because the other activity is eating.

OMG, did we eat well and often and a lot! That orange drink is an Aperol Spritz. So refreshing after a long steep climb.

A little Italian beer also is good after a long and steep climb. You can see the back side of the room we stayed in through the bars of the railing.

And in true Schewe fashion we were the first ones up waiting for the restaurants to open so we could have our morning coffee which, of course, was terrific.

This is the view from our little terrace. You can see how high we had to climb to get to our room.

But, it was totally worth it for the beautiful view looking the other way. That's Monterosso in the distance, the first town of the five nearest Genoa.

We visited Florence, Siena and Rome ... so more next week.

2 Comments

Identifying fabrics

10/5/2015

2 Comments

Burning a small piece of fabric can really help figuring out what the fiber content of your fabric is. I'm not an expert, but I can certainly tell wool from cotton from polyester. And with the help of a chart like the one below, I can identify even more.

The chart is from Ditzy Prints. It is much easier to read on that website. Click here!

Don't use a match to do a burn test. The smell is an important part of telling which fiber is which. If you use a match, the match smell will mask the fiber smell. Use a candle or a lighter to instead AND hold the fabric with tweezers or tongs.

Watch this 1940's film to see how it's done.

2 Comments

All roads lead to ... ROME!

Pitti Palace - Florence

Siena ... ahhhh!

Back from ITALY!!

Identifying fabrics

From Andrea

Archives