When in Rome.......

Woohoo - finally got to see some of Rome. Didn't get to go in anywhere, except to see the resting site of the Pope! That was awesome, but at least we got to know where everything is, so it will make it easier when we go back.

I'm going to start with some stuff that I wrote down in the morning before we went, then will just start to ramble about the day.

Oh Wait! I think I am going to start a word of the week, at least for this week. It is allora. I think that is how you spell it. I am calling in anyone who lives in Italy to see if I am right when I say they use this word when we buy something and are done. I THINK they say a lot of times, "allora?" If this is the right word that I looked up, it meant, then or well then or even so.. I never know how to answer, when used in the context of like "is that everything? I think I just end up lamely saying "si." Is there a correct response for that?

Ok, enough rambling about allora.

Here is some stuff that I wrote down yesterday:

I know this will be hard to believe, but it is 6 am and not only am I awake, but am showered and dressed, and even waiting across town at the bus station.

Just what do you ask could make me get up this early? Money? A man? no, Roma! Today is our spoon-fed tour of Rome. We've been there several times and not once seen a monument, etc. I decided it was much safer to let someone else do the driving and show us around. I just want to sit in an airconditioned bus! Especially because it is supposed to be in the mid 90s today.

Waiting at the bus station, Jess and I had our first stand up at a coffe bar coffee today! Long overdue, but in a way it is sort of intimidating, all the men elbowed up against each other, and if we were going to make a stupid mistake, better to do it with less people around. Since it was so early, we decided to go for it. We belly up and Jess says "Due cafes" (doo-ay) and lo and behold, he gets us two espressos! They are simply called cafes here, I think if you want a cup of american coffe, you ask for american coffee, but I have been told they just water down the espresso for you and put it in a bigger cup. NEVER would I dare order, or want to order that here. Instead the cafe here is in tiny cups as you probably know, with a little spot of almost foam on the top. I have learned to put a lot of sugar in it, and Jess decided to ask for "latte" (milk) in hers after she tried it. Very strong stuff.

So now we are very proud, no longer cafe virgins. :-)

A few minutes later while we wait outside, a young, CUTE, blondish guy comes up and asks if we are here for the tour. We both say yes, thinking he is here for it also. Well, he is in a way, he is our tour guide. (God has smiled upon us)He was from Belgium and spoke French and English. His name was Antonio, but the tour guide place I had called had said his name was Antonino. When I mentioned it to him, he sort of scowled and say if we preferred. But we could tell it must be their pet name for him, (like little anthony) so we chose to call him Antonio.

We walked around the corner and there was our bus, sort of a short version of one of the huge tour buses. Yeah! Airconditioning. We sat it the front two seats and until I figured how to bring UP the armrest, every time we took a right turn I was trying to nonchalantly hang on to whatever part of the seat I could, to keep from falling off it and onto the floor. First I put the seatbelt on. I felt stupid, but hey... Then after we had picked up a few more of the people going I saw how someone brought up the armrest, and then all was good!

My memory may be a bit different from Jess' as far as the people we picked up and what countries they were from, but...

I knew the place I had called to reserve this trip has said they usually pick up people at Lake Trasimeno, but they would have the bus come to pick us up in town.
Now we went in that direction and stoppped three different places. The first in a tiny little town, we picked up a man and his wife who I think were German. Second stop A family that again I think was German. Somewhere in here was someone French because I remember Antonio taking that group aside to explain things in French. Anyway, the third group again was a family and I know the two girls were from Holland because we talked to them quite a bit on the trip, they knew English well.

After picking everyone up, we head to Rome, via Tuscany, which was fun. We saw LOTs of sunflower fields, which I never managed to get a decent picture of, sorry.

At about 9 am we stopped and everyone got something to eat and drink, went to the bathrooms etc, then on to the city.

Last time we went to Rome there was a bus strike, which is what caused all the problems on our Ikea trip. We should have just gone home when we knew that.

This time there was a train strike. Luckily we weren't using the train, but traffic was really bad, and we unded up getting there 1/2 hour late, which is when we found out this was a walking tour.

DAMN! There goes the air conditioning.

We met our other tour guide that would be staying with us for just the morning part of the tour. She had a closed up red umbrella that she would hold up in the air and we were to follow that. I felt like a first grader following Mary Poppins, and asked Jess where the rope was with the knots in it we were to hold onto. The umbrella turned out to be not such a bad idea. Not only because in huge crowds it became a very good way to find her, but also because it was the norm for a tour guide to have something to stick up above the crowd for the people to follow. We sow scarfs at the end of wire pointer sticks, sunflowers, just about everything you could imagine.

I still felt dumb following this lady inside the Termini station and down to the subway. We stopped there to go to the bathroom again, but out of two bathrooms, only one was working, and after the second person went in, the light about it started flashing and there was a loud beeping, it too was out of order.

It was another bathroom you had to pay 50 cents for, BUT it was a self cleaning one! After every person it would close, and the entire thing was sprayed down inside with water and cleaner, when it opened up the entire thing had been sprayed down, pretty nifty!

We found out we would be taking one of the two subway lines in the city over to the Colosseum. This (the subway)is where they told us to be wary of gypsy children, that you should hang onto your purse, etc not to get pickpocketed.

Of course me, who never wears a purse, had decided to carry my huge Indian purse so that I had everything I needed. Now I had to figure out a way to keep it safe from those dang gypsy kids that I could just picture would wrestle me to the ground, tearing it out of my arms while I screamed for help.

Anyway, Mary Poppins marched us onto the subway train with her red umbrella, and we are all clutching everything we brough to our breasts looking scared. All the regular people on the train were really trying not to laugh out loud at us, and I saw quite a few smiles when they looked at us.

Of course it turns out there was not one gyspy child or pickpocket on our train (Mary Poppins said it was proabably due to the bus strike, or they were all on vacation with the Italians) Either way I kept a veeerrrrry close eye on the old lady sitting down next to me (I was standing) and I was ready to smack the life out of her if she even tried to get her old bony fingers on my purse. (poor woman)

Finally off, safe and sound, went outside and right there was the Coloseum. WOW!
Mary Poppins walked us across the street and into the shade (which she said was free) and started to tell us about the history of the Colosseum.

Where we found out there was no mass slaying of Christians. Turns out that is not true, that Nero who supposedly did that, was dead by the time they had even started to build it.

More facts (hopefully I am giving you correct information!)

The Colosseum used to be covered in marble, but along the way one of the other civilizations was into recycling and stripped it of the marble as well as the steel pipes that held the marble on. What was left was pitted with holes where they had pulled out the pipe. We also did not get to go inside, which was a big dissapointment, but is ok, for 42 euros we got the whole path of where we needed to go to get to these sites, plus a HUGE amount of information.

Anyway, no massive killing of Christians, and everything stipped off the outside, which turned out to be true of a lot of the places we visited.

We also saw our first gypsy beggar woman. Just like you would think, hunched over and in rags. I wander if it hurts to hunch over like that all day long? Jess got a picture of her. Jess has uploaded all our pictures, to another site. I'll give you the link later. Also there were men dresses and Roman gladiators, and they invite you take take a picture of them, after which you'll need to pay them money. We were warned in advance not to do it unless we were willing to pay. Several people were taking their pictures while they weren't looking. I'm not sure if Jess got one or not.

We went on to the Roman Forum, which was in effect a small city, showing different aspects of Roman life. The path the Emperors went down during their victory parades when they had conqeured(sp) somewhere. An interesting thing our guide told us of was that during these victory parades, there was a young boy who rode with the Emperor and held a crown of flowers over his head and was to whisper to him things like "You are mortal, you are just a human, you too can be killed" Which I thought was cool, so that he didn't start to think he was so much better than anyone else.


Hrere again most or all of the marble stripped off, and what was even more interesting that a lot of it has been colored in its day!!!!!!!! I am going to have to look online now for artist's renditions of what they all loooked like intact. It must have been amazing.

It was getting pretty darn hot by now, and I was really longing for that bus, but....
She told us that of the many fountains, you could fill your water bottle with fresh spring water. We ended up doing that several times during the day.

Another piece of information I though really fascinating was the fact that all these different empires ended up builing on top of the empires' building. She said in many spots there were 8 or 9 layers deep of things that could be excavated, though most would not be. I could just pisture all the amazing things that we could possibly be standing on top of. Amazing! There was one spot where they were doing some excavation, but she said doing this was really expensive.

Next stop was the Capital building, which we told was actually one of the newer places. I guess the unknown soldier is buried there. Again, we did not go inside this trip.

Alao there was a fascinating tall column with pictures inscribed in circles around it fromtop to bottom. It was standing by itself. What the encriptions were, were telling the tale of going out and conquering a place, the story from beginning to end.

In the past there had been a building around it that had openings on each floor facing the column so that you could read it all by following the nuilding to the top. Again it had been colored before. It made me want to get out some watercolors and just wash over it so that you could see better.


Next we were walked through a bunch of streets to the Trevi fountain. Tons of people at the fountain, as well as street vendors, gypies and more Roman galdiators. Mary Poppins said to throw a coin in you had to do it over your right shoulder with your back to the fountain. Jess and I dissagree on whether or not you are supposed to look to see where it lands in the water. We both did the coin toss and got water from a fountain. In the pictures there is one of how big the crowd there is.

Next we walked thorugh a lot of back streets where a ton of little shops were as well as people selling outside. About every 5 feet was a place to get your name written in Chinese. We didn't get to stop to look, Mary Poppins was going at a pretty good clip during this part.

We came out at the Pantheon, which is a pretty amazing building, the top half is a perfect dome, that if you were to turn upside down would just touch the floor. The very top is open because of the way it was made, anything put there would collapse. At noon the sun shines right in, in a circle and of course when it rains, it comes in. They had built the building with little drainage holes in the floor.

There was some restoration going on, so we had to go back outside to talk, but there was some amazing frescoes, or maybe they were just pictures, inside.
By this time I was a little overloaded with information, but I remember that everything was spaced perfectly. The columns outside were probably 20 feet high and they were spaced the exact distance apart from each other. The were made out of single pieces of granites, some coming from one of the Italian island, weighing tons, ferried over and brought across land etc.

Also, the dome itself had squares inside squares. The most inside square had been colored blue to represent the sky, the others had been covered with bronze, which had been removed at some point and put onto the ceiling in one of the arches at the vatican buildings. St Peter's arch????

Anyway, by then we were just hot, hungy and tired. We broke for lunch. They gave us about an hour and 1/2 to eat and Rome around. Jess and I found a chinese restaraunt that said it was airconditioned, but airconditioning in Italy is just NOT the freezing cold it is in the states. In fact alot of times you go outside and outside feels cooler than it was inside. I keep hoping one day I will find a freezing cold restaurant.

Anyway, we found a chinese restaurant that offered the four course meal for 6.50 euros.

Jess had a chinese pizza for first. a ball of dough with I think mayo and broccoli inside? I had wontons for first. Second we both had Shanghai rice which was delicious, no soy sauce needed for pretty much anything we have ordered in Chinese restaurants here.

For third I had sweet and sour chicken. I THINK there were tiny bits of chicken in the dough someonwhere, but it tasted great. Jess had a chinese omlet? it was almost like a panakoken, but small, and I think had chicken mixed in. She'll have more details in her blog.

Fourth we both had fried fruit. bananas and pineapple deep fried in a dough.

It may sound like lot of food, but really, with the exception of the rice, the portions were perfect sized.

Water to drink and we were off again.

Next stop, the castle of St Angelo. Looks like a big Noah's arc to me, but was brilliantly beautiful to walk up to. You cross a bridge that has huage stone angels on both sides.

The story behind this was that I think an emperor built is as a mausoleum for his wife, and then future emperors etc started buying their own there.
At some point it was used as a fortress, and even one of the Pope's lived there, hiding all the richest of the Catholic church inside and even emprisoning poeple trying to bring down the church. There is also a tunnel that goes from there to under the Basilica!

Next stop, Vatican city! yes! That was awesome, to look up and see thewindows of the former Pope's apartment, to be able to go inside and see the cryptsof all the Pope's including Pope John Paul! Jess andI both loved this. You did have to go through metal detectors. And the place I really came to see, the Sistene Chapel, we didn't get to see. That's ok though, I want to spend a LOT of time there.

Anyway, that was the end of the tour, got back on the bus, and drove back, getting home about 9:30, when our bus didn't run any more. So we took a taxi and put up our aching feet and went to sleep! Day off today, Going to a local town, Assisi tomorrow, early in the mornign Ihope, temps up in the mid 90s again.

Here is the link to all the pictures. Enjoy!!!

http://journals.aol.com/itvixen/RomePictures/