September 19, 2024
The Italian movie theaters are incredibly small. I walked out of class and it was pouring down outside. It’s been raining a lot lately, but I don’t mind because I had the incredible foresight of getting an umbrella early. Also because Rome looks gorgeous in the rain. When it rains in San Diego, it’s mainly a lot of wet trees and concrete sidewalks. I found that beautiful too, but there’s something special about glittering cobblestones and little coffeeshops glowing orange and offering a dry place to stay. Well, I was standing outside with my cheap umbrella and I really wanted to see the new Beetlejuice. All of my friends were busy but I didn’t mind going alone. The fun thing about being here is that I can do so much alone, without even a car to my name.
I loved Beetlejuice 2! I felt like it kept the original whimsy of Beetlejuice, the humor and colorful characters it was so known for. They kept the “waiting room” with the hilarious dead extras which was one of my favorite sets from the original. And Winona Ryder and Jenna Ortega were an amazing mother daughter duo! I teared up at the intro scene because it was so nostalgic and the score was awesome!! A few things did feel a little off though…
Slight spoiler ahead: Throughout the movie, Lydia’s dad Charles Deetz haunted the storyline, but his face wasn’t shown. I found it a bit strange that he was only there through an animation or a headless appearance. It felt a bit intentional that his face wasn’t shown, especially when Lydia’s stepmom is such a main character. I thought maybe the original actor didn’t want to do much or he just aged badly. Come to find out, he was convicted as a sex offender in 2003. So, Beetlejuice 2 creatively avoids having to bring him onscreen. Of course, in the absence comes the iconic guest stars Monica Belucci and Willem Dafoe. Unfortunately, to me, their comical characters seem a little underdeveloped and underused, serving to add some flash and humor to scenes but not much more to the plot.
Anyway, that was my review for Beetlejuice 2 that nobody asked for. I saw it last week and did some fun adventures since then. I went to a park called Villa Doria Pamphilj, a popular park for running and picnicking in the center of Rome’s Monteverde neighborhood. I walked there with a new friend and while it was sort of an uphill journey, the Monteverde neighborhood was so cute and fun to walk around that it was very much worth it. She said it was her favorite neighborhood of Rome and I can very much see why. When we got to the park we saw dog walkers, babies in strollers, friends running, and water fountains with faces of bears. It was like a Roman Central Park. Being summer, the grass was a little dry and brittle, not it’s usual luscious green apparently, but still lovely to find a nice spot under the trees to sit at. The villa itself was really breathtaking with it’s maze and towering white pillars. “It’s a real life Saltburn house!” my roommate calls it.
Have you ever seen a gigantic marble foot up close? That’s what I ended up finding after I walked to the Musei Capitolini at the top of the Capitoline Hill. It’s an iconic museum in a square designed by Michelangelo himself. Apparently, it was one of the first public museums in the world. I didn’t know all of this when I got there, of course. I have free days on Wednesdays so I want to devote them to seeing a museum or at least some art. It would be more catchy if they were Museum Mondays. Art Wednesday is kind of boring. Mid-Week Museum Day? Hump Day Art Day? That just sounds elementary. Any ideas?
For this Midweek Mystery Museum (working on it) I found myself at the base of some majestic stairs at 10 in the morning after a half hour trek (later I would discover Public Transportation). My suburban mind couldn’t wrap around what I was seeing. The large staircase was flanked on either side by larger than life statues of young men on horses, leading to the square itself, which had hypnotizing patterns in the ground that were surrounded by palaces.
It was a hot day so most people sat in the shade to enjoy the view. I joined them and brought out my sketchbook and some watercolors to paint the view. I’m still experimenting with watercolor painting but it was pretty relaxing to be there. A bride and groom walked by in full wedding attire for a photoshoot. Everyone was smiling at their obvious joy and the white of the brides trailing dress reflected the light. I was a little blinded but it was romantic to see. I was able to apply for a “MIC” card at this museum which students in Rome can use to enter many public museums in Rome! It was only $5 and I had to fill out an application. Inside, I saw the head and foot of the ancient colossal statue of Constantine.
It’s funny that a few days later I decided to watch “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and there were several scenes of Matt Damon exploring Rome. I recognized the museum he was in as the exact one I went to last week! Definitely copied me.
I was surprised by the sheer number of frescoes and murals in the huge rooms, illustrating scenes of Rome’s history and mythology. There were countless statues and artifacts, so many that I didn’t even see them all. The museum also had a section that displayed famous statues like the She-Wolf with Romulus and Remus as well as this huge statue of Marcus Aurelius on a horse. I asked a nearby worker if these were the real statues or recreations and she almost looked offended. “No! All original. Only original.”
The museum day was a success. Besides that I had classes which are all pretty artsy. That weekend, I had signed up for a sailing trip without expecting much. I assumed that we would be relaxing on the sailboats, enjoying the views and then getting dinner. At the orientation for the trip, I found out that we would actually be learning to sail the boats!
We arrived in the small coastal town of Anzio early Saturday morning. It was a charming town that is more known for fishing rather than tourism. Rome is pretty overrun with tourists so it was nice to see local people just going about with their lives. We had some of the best gelato ever in this town, everyone raved about the Biscotti flavor.
We immediately went to the sailing school and met the instructors, who were all very lively and young. One of them, a guy named Edo, rolled up a whiteboard and started teaching us the parts of a sailboat. I genuinely did not know much about sailing but learning the names of the ropes and the sails was actually pretty straightforward. Or maybe he was just a good teacher! There was the mainsail, the hull, the rudder, and the one we worked with the most, the jib.
The jib is the smaller sail on the sailboat that greatly affects the amount of wind power the boat gets by moving left or right. To switch the direction of the jib, you had two ropes. On my boat, we had a girl on either side of the boat who would pull the rope for the jib to move it. The part that really keeps you on your toes is the “boom.” It’s a big metal piece of the bottom of the sail. Our instructor Gabriele (a talkative Italian guy who claimed to be 18 but looked 25), said it’s called boom because that’s the noise it makes when it hits your forehead!! I was VIGILANT to not get smacked by the boom. I genuinely looked over at it way more than I needed to because I was paranoid to be hit. I was on jib duty, which was fun because I felt like a real sailor pulling the ropes. I steered the boat once or twice, but the “tiller” was very sensitive to the smallest movement so I would have the boat tipping wayy too far.
Instead, my favorite part of sailing was getting to sit in the front to balance the weight of the boat. There’s a oval shaped seat up front that feels like sitting in a bathtub. From there, you can see the other sailboats drifting on the water, the green-blue of Anzio’s water, the old city that survived WW2 behind us. It was warm in Anzio, unlike Rome’s recent rain, and there were no clouds to be seen. I could hang my legs over the edge and feel the sea spray. And the weekend stretched out for seemingly forever.
