Friday 16 May: A new saint and a new restaurant

Good opened an hour late this morning because the worker opening it had been out partying the night before and was hung over. Gary and I walked through the ‘hood as we waited, admiring the new anti-fascist graffiti stenciled on several walls. Flickr has a pic-a little girl tossing a swastika in a garbage can. Very cool! We took a peek inside Santa Maria in Trastevere while we waited. Good finally opened, we had coffee and got online to upload pics and check our mail.

In the afternoon we decided to check out a local church was had not yet seen, Santa Cecilia in Trastevere. As the story goes, the ancient Romans tried to execute Cecilia by steaming her to death in her own sauna (there is a Roman house with a bath complex under the church). When this didn’t work, they cut off her head but did such a bad job that she lived for three days. Thirteen centuries later, in 1599, workers were renovating her church and discovered her body completely uncorrupted, in its original robes and position. The architect and sculptor Maderno was present, and made a life-size statue of her body as he saw it. It’s lying in a black marble niche in front of the altar, and we wanted to see it. Cecilia is also the patron saint of music, and there are pictures of her playing harp and organ all over the church.

That evening Gary and I decided to have a traditional Roman dinner, so we went to Lagane e Ceci right around the corner. Our waiter Alessandro was very accommodating, and brought us a huge sampler of Roman favorites for antipasti. The grilled and marinated vegetables were great, but I especially liked the trippa alla romana (tripe with tomato and celery—Google it if you don’t know what tripe is!). Gary particularly enjoyed one dish until he discovered that it was veal brains! The lamb liver was also fantastic. Gary had bucatini all’amatriciana, hollow tubes of pasta in a spicy sauce with bacon, and I had giant rigatoni in a ragu of lamb and pork. After dinner we were so stuffed that we just headed home to bed.