Sunday March 13, 2011 Day 256
Our goal this morning was the Ara Pacis Museum for a Marc Chagall Exhibit called The World Upside Down. Chagall is famous for his gravity-defying paintings that feature flying farm animals, Jewish folk musicians and wedding scenes. He created an inverted, ravishing world where he puts object defying the law of gravity, transfigured animals that don’t belong to any existing species and human bodies extended in a wave-like motion. His work is not to everyone’s taste but, despite this, the museum was quite crowded.
After a late lunch, we visited the Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, one of four museums which make up the National Museum of Rome. The museum had an amazing display of mosaics. Additionally, there were frescoes, stucco and mosaics from an ancient villa - found when building floodwall for Tiber River. They were destroyed before they all could be removed, because of urgency of flooding. Such a balancing act between the need to salvage valuable ruins and protect the living! In the basement was the Museum's numismatic collection, showing the evolution of currency in Italy.
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| Check out this purse I saw walking down the street. |
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| Mosaic |
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| Mosaic |
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| Mosaic |
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| Splendid mosaic |
On our way back home, we stopped by the African restaurant and made a reservation for 8:00 tonight. We retired to our hotel room, pooped, and napped and navigated until time for dinner.
When we entered the restaurant, we were greeted by the waiter, who led us to a table in an empty restaurant. I guess the reservation was unnecessary tonight. We mulled over the menu and selected something - this being our first experience eating in an Ethiopian restaurant. I did notice last night that many of the patrons were eating with their fingers, and I recalled a discussion in Cutting for Stone about how Ethiopians eat their native food. When our food was brought out, the server showed us how to eat it by tearing off a piece of the bread at the bottom of the plate (piled with meat) and using it as a pincer to grab some meat and put it into our mouths. Fascinated, we tried it, and we ate our meal without utensils, although forks were provided to us. The food was fabulous. It was nicely spicy without being hot, and the meat was really tender and tasty. Further, the servings were more than enough and I left some on my plate. The dessert was not quite so good - it is more that we are not accustomed to it, I think, but our overall impression of the meal was outstanding! I would eat Ethiopian food another time - several times, in fact!
1 comment:
I didn't actually see the legs on the purse that was walking down the street. That would have made the picture even better. ;-P
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