From Borghese to Trevi

From a superturbocharged first day, our level of activity slowed down with each passing day we spent in Rome. We became less ambitious with each day's itinerary, hitting the snooze button more times and dawdling longer and longer in our blessedly cool, thick-walled, marble-tiled apartment. 

So by the time our fourth day rolled around, it was nearly lunchtime by the time we set off for Villa Borghese, the sprawling gardens-turned-public park that once belonged to the powerful and wealthy Borghese family. We stopped for lunch at the Piazza del Popolo.

The Galleria Borghese was the "party house" of Scipione Borghese, a nephew of Pope Paul V. Borghese used his wealth and influence to amass a truly stunning collection of art. I was excited to finally see the works of artists I had only seen in books, such as Caravaggio, Titian, Raphael and Rubens.

Tickets for the museum need to be reserved well in advance over the phone. An Italian colleague of Marlon's had helped us call the Galleria Borghese to reserve tickets for that day's 1 to 3pm time slot. The administration is strict and will shoo everyone out after the allotted 2 hours are over.

The Galleria Borghese is simply jawdropping from the first step in. Unfortunately, photography is forbidden—but if it wasn't, I'd be all over it with my camera.

Scipione Borghese was one of the earliest patrons of master sculptor Gianlorenzo Bernini, whose signature is all over Rome. It was in Galleria Borghese that I came face to face with the true genius of Bernini. His Apollo and Daphne is, without exaggeration, the most beautifully sculpted piece of art I've ever seen in my life. I must have spent half an hour just looking at it, and could have easily stayed longer. 

His Pluto and Proserpina in the next room is completely different, but just as captivating.

Photos from the Galleria Borghese website—they simply don't do them justice!

After our museum visit, Marlon and I decided to just take it easy and cool off under the shade of the trees around the Villa Borghese. 

Our curiosity was piqued by the small, funny "tandem bike" buggies that rattled by us every now and then. "That looks like fun!" Marlon said. So we had to give it a try.

The buggies turned out to be electric riscios (rickshaws), that, along with regular bikes, can be rented on an hourly basis. 

Marlon and I rattled around the park for a good 45 minutes or so until we spotted something so tempting, we just had to park our riscio, get down and enjoy it.

A public fountain! After four days of broiling heat and constant walking, I can't tell you what a treat it was to perch on the lip of this fountain and dip my poor footsies into this clear, ice-cold water. It is a miracle of Rome that the water in its fountains is always shockingly cold no matter how hot it gets.

I was obviously not the only one who felt this way. But I just couldn't bring myself to take it to the next level!

Refreshed and rejuvenated, we returned the riscio and headed to the Piazza Spagna, or the famous Spanish Steps, starting all the way at the top for a sweeping view...

... stopping for a photo op, naturally...

... until we ended up all the way at the bottom, with the rest of the 48,000 tourists and their mothers who were there. #mobbed

Everyone was taking photos of this fountain just because it was there, so I did too. #sheep

Just a few streets away was the great granddaddy of all fountains, the Trevi. I didn't expect it to be so... BIG!

The Trevi Fountain was completely mobbed, too. The crowd was overwhelming, so I just found an empty spot to sit down for a while before even taking a single picture. I may have lost count of how many people did the "tossing a coin into the fountain" pose, but I give all them an O for Originality!

Night at the Musei

Just for peak season this year (Easter till early fall), the Vatican Museums opened their doors to the public on Friday nights. What used to be a very expensive privilege became a brilliant way for Marlon and I to beat the debilitating daytime heat and experience the Museums in an unusual way.

So I signed us up for a two-hour night tour of the highlights with an official Musei Vaticani guide. At €24, tickets from the Musei Vaticani website itself were the cheapest ones around. We were lucky to nab tickets only days before our visit.



Our official Vatican guide, Alexandra, was not only extremely knowledgeable and thorough, she also had amazing voluminous hair despite looking rather dead on her feet at 10pm. 

The Musei Vaticani house the vast art collection of the Catholic Church, a treasure trove that's been amassed over centuries.

The magnitude of the collection is mind-boggling in itself. The Museum's various galleries (only some of which are open at night) hold everything from ancient sculptures and priceless paintings, to more unusual things like maps and tapestries. 

Not all the art was centuries old. We only just breezed through the contemporary section, but I glimpsed large-scale works by the likes of Dali and Matisse, among many others. 

If you think the art is overwhelming, the decoration and ornamentation of the galleries themselves will make your head spin. By the end of the evening, I literally felt like my eyeballs were going to pop out (it's a very... interesting feeling). There is art in every possible nook and cranny, masterpieces everywhere from floor...

... to ceiling.

My friend Jec asked, "Is it more mind-boggling than Versailles?" I snorted. The Vatican Museums make Versailles look positively minimalist.

And yes, I had to wrestle with that a bit. After my very emotional afternoon at St. Peter's, thinking about the value of the art and—oh, you know this one—how much good it can do for the suffering of the world brought me crashing down. 

I know any of us in such a position to amass all these these treasures would keep them for as long as we possibly could. But this is an all too human instinct from a Church that professes to be divine. I wonder if a Musei Vaticani auction is something we will ever see in our lifetime. 

Since they are not exactly easy to sell, the masterpieces that are fixed to the buildings themselves are somewhat easier to think about. 

These are some of the Vatican Museums' greatest treasures: ceilings and walls adorned with frescoes by Raphael.

I was glad to have my wide-angle lens, but these pictures cannot even come close to doing these ceilings justice.

How Raphael brought theology, history and even mathematics and philosophy together in his art was simply genius.

At the point where my eyeballs were about to fall out of their sockets, we entered the world's most famous chapel with the world's most famous ceiling. I managed to snap this photo before I saw the sign forbidding photography. 

It's just as well that photography is not allowed; sometimes we forget to experience things with our own eyes, and not through a viewfinder or lens.

So I just threw my head back and stayed that way, eyes glued to the ceiling, for about 20 whole minutes. I tried to drink in as many details as I could. I simply didn't want to forget. And I don't think I ever will.

Nails Art Designs

 So I was stumbling upon some websites and I came across a picture of some really beautiful artwork which really caught my attention and it really managed to hold my seeking attention for quite a longer period and guess what? Well its certainly a Nail Art. Well as far as I can see through my Fashion Seeking Material Eyes, I would say that I loved every bit of that artwork.

 Nails Art

 Nails Art with ice cubes 

horror  Nails Art

 Beauty of nails

Peony in pencil

I never liked peonies before. I always associated them with Chinese paintings and bad tattoos. I'm not a fan of either.

www.hubpages.com

But ever since I first found them in the market here in late April, they've become my favorite flower. I love the huge blossoms (statement blossoms?), especially the ones that are colored intense shades of fuschia and coral. And I love how the petals don't dry up or simply drop off, but fade slowly to white, each blossom at a different pace. Death by ombre, what a way to go.

The only thing that I could conceivably hate about peonies, I discovered during my last Monday sketching session. And that is the fact that they are a real b*tch to draw.

I almost gave up a couple of times. Now I know why the Chinese have stylized their shapes, otherwise these would never make it into traditional motifs. The repetition would have driven the illustrator (at least, a lesser one like myself) totally nuts.

Luckily, we have scanners and printers today. So, working with some fluorescent papers I bought for my Singapore job hunt more than three years ago, I reproduced the sketch I made to create my own peony print. I used Mod Podge for the first time and had awful wrinkles everywhere. Thankfully, most of them disappeared with a little ironing.

The fluo on black kind of reflects how I've been feeling about having these flowers at home: they were the only visual bright spots for me during the first two dark, dismal weeks of "summer." Summer, I'm beginning to suspect, is a figment of the imagination over here, with as tenuous a connection to reality as corporatese, or marketing jargon. 

Ah, enough about this fictitious summer. If I can't get it outside, then I'll just have to find some way to enjoy it in my home. In petals or on paper, by nature's hand or by my own.