And it’s Doviðenja, Goodbye, Adiós and Arrivederci Europe!
Saturday 6 July
Back to Rome late yesterday afternoon after another bunfight at the airport – Europe is so busy at this time of the year and not helped if you are travelling on the likes of Ryanair – despite already having printed off our boarding cards before arriving, there were no automatic machines in Barcelona (saves costs!) to print out your luggage tags, which meant a 1 ½ hour queue with about 500 other people, just to get a luggage tag and drop your bag. So stressful and tiring. Anyway, we arrived back at Stella and Chloe’s apartment and a big welcome from their Mum with a lovely dinner and time to relax.
A nice gentle start to our day today before we headed out for a delightful evening with Clari’s friend Chiara and her daughter Greta. Clari treated us to tickets to two exhibitions being held in the Palazzo Bonaparte, a palace overlooking the Piazza Venezia. The first exhibition is by the renowned Peruvian photographer Mario Testino, one of the most innovative fashion and portrait photographers, whose images of Lady Diana, Kate Moss and Madonna, among others have become legendary. This exhibition is entitled “A Beautiful World” and its world preview has just opened in Rome. It is a new creative path for him where he has found inspiration in cultural identities of the countries in which he began to set his fashion shoots since 2007. Since 2017 he has travelled to more than 30 countries and focussed his art on their cultural and uniqueness. A short film, followed by a walk through the Palazzo’s rooms (and I have to say, these rooms with their ceiling frescoes were worth the visit themselves) and we were able to see 70 beautiful large-format images of peoples from the Congo, India, Kenya, and Myanmar to name just some of them. We weren’t supposed to take photos but we managed to snap a few….
Next up, in the same beautiful palace, on the floor above, was an exhibition of photographs by Vincent Peters, called “Timeless Time”. Vincent Peters was born in Germany and moved to New York at the age of 20 to work as a photographer’s assistant. After returning to Europe in 1995 he worked for various art galleries and in 1999 began his career at Giovanni Testino’s (Mario’s brother) agency as a fashion photographer in New York (hence the reason the two exhibitions were together at the same Palazzo). Peters’ photos of familiar faces including Christian Bale, Monica Bellucci, John Malkovich, Charlize Theron and Emma Watson were taken between 2001 and 2021 and are all captured in black and white with incredible lighting – a few more sneaky photos below! A lovely way to spend a Saturday night!
A cocktail and aperitivo at Enoteca Spiriti in the Piazza di Pietra followed, before we headed back on a still sunny evening to Piazza della Torretta - and bed!
Sunday 7 July
Another lazy start to the day – we’ve needed it after our very hectic 8-day Spanish sojourn, but we did manage to have a lovely walk out and about and popped into quite a few shops – the first day of the summer sales today so they were busy – even for a late Sunday afternoon. There won’t be too much to report for the next day or so as tomorrow is a packing up the luggage day for me as it’s my last day in Rome.
Monday 8 July
A last wander around the beautiful area where Stella and Chloe live and a quick pop into a few more shops – in case I missed anything yesterday – luckily for my wallet, I didn’t. And that’s it, the European part of my trip is now finished, and I’ll be heading off early tomorrow morning to fly to Singapore where I will meet up with Ben at the airport and we will both fly to Cambodia for our Asian adventure! Watch this space!