love it when the party bus shows up

Wednesday morning the  party bus came to pick us up bright and early to take us to the suburbs of Rome where we got to experience modern architecture.  The first stop was the Jubilee Church.  At first i was taken aback, a modern church? Where are all the old chipping frescos and the cracked spolia columns?  This cant be right.  Well, to my surprise, it was.  In most churches, artists painted a fresco on the ceiling to represent the heavens above, draw your eye up to where God is looking down on you. In the jubilee church, Richard Meier chose to simply use glass as the ceiling, which symbolically acts the same way, drawing your eyes up to the heavens. 

The second location was Parco dello Sport.  This site was cool because it was still under construction, so right now it just looks like the skeleton of a giant candy kiss.  Eventually, it will be 2 candy kisses, one containing a sports arena for games like basketball, and the other a swimming complex.  Rome is also putting a bid in for the 2020 olympics, which if they get it, they will use Parco dello Sport as the olympic complex.  I hope rome gets it, so i can say in 2020 “i was there when it was under construction.”

Lastly we went back into the city of Rome for the Macro Museum.  It was fairly artsy but still extremely awesome.  Our favorite was the exhibit done with just black paint used like a black sharpie marker, doodles all over the walls. 

Now for the bathrooms in Macro.  Wow. JoJo and i walked in to a room with a mirror on both ends, and what looked like chrome refrigerator doors on the other 2 walls.  In the center was a glass cube lit up white.  The stalls were behind the refrigerator like doors and then came time to approach the white cube and figure out how to wash our hands with it.  It sensed us approaching and suddenly the white turned off and the cube re-lit itself now red.  We both screamed (tim and corin were outside waiting for us, listening, laughing). little sinks spouted out water and there were also intricately designed soap pumps.  Then you put your hands over the vents and out blew air to dry your hands.  Most awesome bathroom experience. ever.