There is an old adage that goes along the lines of saying it is not the destination that matters, but the journey. I'm starting to take personal offense to that statement. Rome is beautiful and makes me want to take pictures of everything, and the destinations always take my breath away (sometimes because of the amount of stairs I had to climb). However, my journeys are becoming more and more like Bilbo Baggins. On two such journeys we literally made it to the end of the line, and when I say end of the line, I meant the busses stop working and the real adventure to get back on task begins. But, just as Bilbo stays loyal to Thorin and the dwarves, I will stay loyal to my professors and keep on journeying, not matter how lost I become in the eternal city.
This weeks solo excursion was no different from the previous ones. By that I mean the journey was a journey from the hobbit mostly because map reading was no one's forte. Looking back had we went left twice, we would have gotten there in five minutes. But, who wants to hear about how we took two lefts and made it to the Palazzo Barberini? No one. Instead we walked right up a hill. In my head I was jumping fences yelling that I was going on an adventure. In reality I was trudging up a street looking for sketchy alleyways to walk down in hopes of getting closer to the Palazzo Barberini. Eventually we found that one alley way, the perfect alleyway to use to get to another street. This is where we encountered our Smaug. Smaug presented himself in the form of four runner in incredible shape (seriously hats off to them). They moved toward us. We moved toward them. We walked. They ran. Sensing they would not stop we put on our rings and became invisible. Just kidding. We moved close against the wall and let them pass. But it was dramatic and scary at the time.
Undeterred by our near death experience, we forged onward coming to a literal crossroads adorned with four fountains. We went right and almost as if it were in slow motion we saw our destination. However, we had one final battle: the battle of putting our bags away and finding the gallery. We were victorious. After a short time we had found the coat room and the gallery.
The museum was beautiful. The stairs reminded me of those in Albany's Capitol building, but made entirely out of white marble. The walls were adorned with statues of pagan figures like Heracles. The palace also had the three bees around the building. The motif could be found everywhere as it was on the crest of the Barberini family. Going further into the palace we were met with galleries of paintings. I personally think it should have been the gallery of shade. The paintings were mostly catholic in content, however the faces of the characters in the paintings were truly extraordinary. They were expensive of love, confusion, pain, and shock. My favorite expression was all the portraits smirking or "throwing shade". All of these works of art were stories and all the expressions clues. It was here in this gallery that I found the treasure I was looking for and had a perilous journey for.
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