Should have put this up earlier, wtfever
Feb. 9th, 2009 01:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwyneddUh, so I just dug out my Rome trip journal from last summer and have decided it needs posting because I like a lot of things about it and need something on this journal other than icons, gay fic, and goddamn memes. Whatevs.
I started this originally as a letter to a guy I was sort of maybe not really seeing at the time, which should explain the personal tone and any references to an active audience. No, I never mailed it.
This covers only the 3-4 days we spent in Rome, after which we hopped on a cruise ship and I got too distracted with everything to keep logging.
Drew;
The Mediterranean is spectacular. I've never seen this color of blue before - it's an astoundingly clear deep cerulean that turns purple before fading out to blend in with the sky. The wind keeps it from being too hot and if I look at the water right, I can see the odd flat spots that mean underwater topography or currents.
I'm sorry my handwriting is so terrible, but I've hardly put pen to paper since graduation. My hand is shaking from lack of use.
It's Tuesday right now, I think, about 12:30 in the afternoon, and we're in the middle of what seems to be nowhere. If I get on the top deck and use my dad's binoculars, I swear I can almost see North Africa.
---
We landed in Leonardo da Vinci Intn'l Airport around 10am Roma (4 am back home) after having left at around noon EST the day before. Our plane was Delta and thus devoid of all the spiffy features Lufthansa offered. Needless to say, I was tired, but my jet lag coping skills get better every time I come here. We chartered a "limo" (see: minivan) into town, as that was the cheapest way, oddly. Only 45€. Our driver spoke a bit of English, my mom and I spoke no Italian, but luckily the three of us found a common tongue in Spanish. His ringtone (on his cell) sounded like a rubber ducky. So cute~
The outskirts of Rome make NYC look clean and tidy - all the new developmental areas were serviceable, but dirty. There was graffiti on every available surface, except on ruins, monuments, and churches, but there were a LOT of ruins and churches.
The city is huge. It's a spectacular maze, a jumble of almost 3,000 years of humanity. Our villa was in one of the center districts, on the Campo di Fiori (Square of Flowers; famed for its produce market) midway between the Pantheon and Vatican City. I use the term villa only in its traditional use - a townhouse. It was one room, about half the size of your downstairs room. To the left and right were tiny staircases up to the bed lofts. My parents had one, my sister the other, and I took the (surprisingly comfy) couch. The kitchen was one person wide and two long, while the bathroom was about two square people total, with a sink, toilet, and small but nice shower. The room had only 72 gallons of hot water a day, and being the heavy sleeper I am, I oft got a cold shower. But that's hardly of any concern, considering we were only in there to sleep.
After we settled in, we took a quick one-hour nap, then headed to the Villa Borghese in the north of the city. It's basically Rome's central park, except not very central and I don't remember NYC having a Bernini sculpture museum. I will relate the museum to you in detail after I give you a crash course on art history. Through my mother's exquisite pantomiming, we got on the correct bus and went back home.
I figure now is the time to mention what the Roman streets are like. The largest boulevards are, at most, 4 lanes, though that's only for size measurements - drivers don't use lanes. They drive on any point of the road they want, provided it goes the right way. I'd say less than 10% of Roman streets are paved. They all still have the old Imperial cobblestones, particularly the back alleys. Parking is free, everywhere, provided you can find it, but you can literally part anywhere. I saw cars parked on corners, on sidewalks, in the medians, and in the road when they couldn't be assed to find a parallel parking spot.
And that's just cars! The fastest way to get about is by scooter. The scooterists must be insane or awesome - they very literally weave throughout traffic at breakneck speeds, zooming between and in front of cars, other scooters, and even buses. (most of the vehicles in the city have retractable side mirrors to keep from getting clipped off). Anywhere the cars can't go, scooters can. They park any place they fit, and that includes inside shops, on steps, behind cars, and on the medians. Yet we saw no traffic accidents, no scratches, and our driver told us no one gets ticketed, as the police drive and park in the same way. There are no posted speed limits, even on the highways, but no accidents - I suppose they're all on the same mildly suicidal wavelength.
(Also, when crossing the street [no one pays attention to crosswalks, not even the police], run like hell. The cars won't stop for you.)
The next day, my mother, in all her well-organized supremacy, got us all up at 8:30. We showered, dressed and were out the door, only to realize we'd awoken at 8:30 US time. We have no intentions of letting her forget this anytime soon. We went back to bed.
Now Friday, 8:30 am Roman time, we set out. Breakfast was fresh fruit from the Campo di Fiori half a block away, and then we walked to the Vatican to meet our tour guide (no tour really, just line avoidance). Along the way we noted a very large multi-national police force, quite a few openly armed with sub-machine guns. We scurried out touristy little American rears into Vatican City as fast as possible.
We entered the Vatican via the Borgo, a once-charming small medieval neighborhood Mussolini tore down to make a wide road that leads up to the square in front of San Pietro (St. Peter's Basilica), the largest church in Christendom. It's no boast - inside the church, there is a line showing the perimeter of the next-largest church, and St. Peter's could engulf it with room to hold mass.
Remember the police we saw earlier? Those were just stragglers. In the square were possibly more armed police and such than are employed in the whole of D.C. The shaded areas on my horrible map show the largest concentrations. As we discovered later, our very own George W. was to meet with the pope that day. How ironic - the closet I'd ever been to the president, and I was halfway 'round the world.
We waited for our tour group inside a touristy little cafe (Cafe Vaticano) and I had my first real espresso. Needless to say, I shall never drink American coffee again. The Vatican museums are enormous - the contain every piece of art or culture that the Catholic Church has managed to get its hands on, and after 2,000 years as the dominant political, social, and religious power in the Western world, that's a lot of stuff. There was an entire gallery full of random broken pieces of Greco-Roman sculpture. The Sistine Chapel was, obviously, astounding. I could have spent hours simply staring at David's hand. It is the single most breathtaking thing I have ever seen (the hand, that is). Had I tried to fully take in the rest of the room, I fear I may have rendered myself incapacitated, unable to speak for its wonder.
(and yes, I've noticed that my tone of voice tends to change to some archaic pseudo-British dialect when I'm enthralled. It's a charming personality quirk.)
After the mildly life-changing tour of the Vatican museums, we walked down to another section of the city and hopped on the metro. Now is a good time to point out that the Roman Metro is terrible. It's clean and well-maintained, but by virtue of its extensive culture, only has two lines that do little more than circle the city. As our tour guide later said, excavations to put down a building foundation or new metro line quickly uncover ruins, as is often the case in Rome. There's talk of building a metro line 20km beneath the city heart, but archeologists are afraid even that may disrupt the foundations of national symbols like the forum or Coliseum.
The two metro lines met at Termini, which is not actually Italian for Terminal - it's a truncation of the name of the ancient owner of the land it rests on, so 'Termini' is actually where we get 'terminal' from. Nifty info. We bought tickets for the 110 and ArcheoBus, both of which offered open-top tours of Rome, complete with audio guides and the ability to hop on and off whenever. (I should mention that Termini is also the hub of the bus lines). We got on the ArcheoBus, which tours the immediate countryside just along the Appian Way (its counterpart, the 110, does the same inside the city).
The Appian Way hasn't changed since antiquity, so it's walled (narrow), cobblestoned, and run through the old city gate of Appia. Lots and lots of traffic. The road is a two-way street, though that made no difference to impatient drivers. Harrowing escapes all around. We got off the bus in what seemed to be nowhere, but on the other side of the imposing wall was actually an extensive archeological park with the catacombs of St. something-or-other. I'll remember later. The catacombs were not only wicked awesome, but also blessedly cool. Our guide said that there were about 30km of passages in the catacombs, with the walls up to six or sever graves tall.
My sister now thoroughly creeped out, and I more assured in my choice of major, we headed back to the bus stop, only to see it whiz by before we could get there. Having read that they ran every 20-30 minutes, we simply went to wait. This was no easy task, as you can see in my next shoddy diagram. The safe zone was literally one person wide, and the cars really didn't bother with keeing any sort of lane (as, like in the rest of Italy, where was none). We stood there for 40 harrowing moments, side view mirrors only centimeters away, waiting for that stupid green ArcheoBus to show up. I am increasingly thankful that the sensible Europeans make rather small cars (seriously small - mini coopers look big over here).
Back at Termini, we got on a bus (which smelled very much like the Statue of Liberty's famous "unwashed, huddled masses"), hopped off to see a church built atop the scattered ashes of Mad Emperor Nero, whom locals believed was haunting the area, and finally got back home. We rested up for a bit whilst I perused my "Top 10 in Rome" book for good eats in our area. Luckily, there was a delightful Italian/French restaurant called Brie about 20 feet from our house. Within, I had the best pasta ever created by the hands of men, and I'm not even a big pasta fan.
It should be noted that the Italians don't cook their noodles to the near-liquid state we do - they cook them chewy, which is different and very good. Despite my father's suggestion that we booze around town 'till 9 pm (real party monster, my father), we went back home and to bed.
My father snores like a very large mammal in pain with a chronic respiratory infection, who is also a lumberjack. Very trying to sleep, it was.
We got up the next day at a reasonable time and headed into town with pastries in tow. We grabbed the 110 bus and, after a brief espresso break for my sister and I whilst my parents ran back for the camera, continued onward. Our next real stop (not counting another whoopsie) landed us at a very large, ornate piazza that boasted no less than three churches, two of which were not only carbon copies of one another, but also side-by-side. After staring at the freaking obelisk in the center (there are a lot in Rome - 13. The one in front of St. Peter's is from the reign of Ramses II), we visited the unique church (Santa Maria della Popolo, "Of the People") which was again absolutely spectacular and home to two stunning works by Caravaggio. Our hike to the bus stop accidentally lead down the shopping street, with names such as Gucci, Prada, Dior, and D&G lining the door frames. I ducked and covered. Amusingly, there is a designer line called "David Hamilton"*. I took pictures.
The next chunk of the say was spent at some of the big attraction - namely, the Triumphal Arch and the Coliseum.
Fun trivia fact: the Coliseum's real name is the Flavian Amphitheater. It was called the Coliseum by locals because of its proximity to a colossal statue of Nero that is long since gone. Naturally, I screamed a bit when I entered the Coliseum, nerd that I am, and blathered on to my parents the whole time about every bit of info I had regarding the place.
The only stupid American moments came from two groups of fellow countrymen. The first was a group of large women, ranging from about 12 to 50, and by large I don't mean round, pudgy, or rather overweight - I mean frighteningly obese and "how in the world did they climb up those stairs." Now is the time to note that I saw approximately four large Italians this trip, and they were merely overweight. The second incident was a 14-year-old boy who took one look at the breathtaking ruins before him and said, with a long-suffering why-do-I-have-to-be-here sigh, "Why don't they just turn this into a football stadium already? They could convert it no problem."
99% of the American tourists were nondescript and well-informed, but it is people like those mentioned above that make me mildly embarrassed to admit my nationality. I could always just assume a British accent.
Our feet were quite sore, even this early in the day, so we elected to skip the enormous archeological complex/junkyard known as the Roman Forum and return during the two days we have in Rome after the cruise. We went to St. Castilgle (sp?), which is a rather morbidly amazing church. With no room for a cemetery and not enough money to decorate, the monks in the middle ages began using the bones of their predecessors to add some flair. The walls are covered in spectacular patterns formed entirely with human bones. Some monks are even interred in the designs, all of them robed and some still with skin. We spotted two live monks on the way out and my mother off-handedly remarked that perhaps they were saving a spot. Sigh.
Our last stop of the day included Santa Maria della Minerva (the only Gothic church in Rome, built on an ancient temple to Minerva) and the Pantheon. To our horror, however, the Pantheon was inaccessible due to a wedding being held inside. It was also added to our list of things to hit on the return trip, along with the interior of St. Peter's (loooooong lines). We grabbed another delicious meal (caprese = best thing ever. It's fresh tomatoes and sliced mozzarella soaked in olive oil and herbs), this time actually on the Campo di Fiori, went to a pub so my mother could try limoncello (the local liqueur - lemon rinds are soaked in 90 proof alcohol for a while, and the resulting liquid is refined. Very strong, very good) and we headed home. We packed and prepared to leave. The next morning, we had our last breakfast in the Piazza and took another "limo" out of town and to the port of Civitavecchia, which was about an hour and a half away. Needless to say, the Italian countryside is gorgeous.
One last thing about Rome - the aqueducts still work in most areas and every city block has a free-flowing fountain of clean, fresh, and rather good-tasting water. Save a bottle and you'll never run out of water.
END ROMA
I started this originally as a letter to a guy I was sort of maybe not really seeing at the time, which should explain the personal tone and any references to an active audience. No, I never mailed it.
This covers only the 3-4 days we spent in Rome, after which we hopped on a cruise ship and I got too distracted with everything to keep logging.
Drew;
The Mediterranean is spectacular. I've never seen this color of blue before - it's an astoundingly clear deep cerulean that turns purple before fading out to blend in with the sky. The wind keeps it from being too hot and if I look at the water right, I can see the odd flat spots that mean underwater topography or currents.
I'm sorry my handwriting is so terrible, but I've hardly put pen to paper since graduation. My hand is shaking from lack of use.
It's Tuesday right now, I think, about 12:30 in the afternoon, and we're in the middle of what seems to be nowhere. If I get on the top deck and use my dad's binoculars, I swear I can almost see North Africa.
---
We landed in Leonardo da Vinci Intn'l Airport around 10am Roma (4 am back home) after having left at around noon EST the day before. Our plane was Delta and thus devoid of all the spiffy features Lufthansa offered. Needless to say, I was tired, but my jet lag coping skills get better every time I come here. We chartered a "limo" (see: minivan) into town, as that was the cheapest way, oddly. Only 45€. Our driver spoke a bit of English, my mom and I spoke no Italian, but luckily the three of us found a common tongue in Spanish. His ringtone (on his cell) sounded like a rubber ducky. So cute~
The outskirts of Rome make NYC look clean and tidy - all the new developmental areas were serviceable, but dirty. There was graffiti on every available surface, except on ruins, monuments, and churches, but there were a LOT of ruins and churches.
The city is huge. It's a spectacular maze, a jumble of almost 3,000 years of humanity. Our villa was in one of the center districts, on the Campo di Fiori (Square of Flowers; famed for its produce market) midway between the Pantheon and Vatican City. I use the term villa only in its traditional use - a townhouse. It was one room, about half the size of your downstairs room. To the left and right were tiny staircases up to the bed lofts. My parents had one, my sister the other, and I took the (surprisingly comfy) couch. The kitchen was one person wide and two long, while the bathroom was about two square people total, with a sink, toilet, and small but nice shower. The room had only 72 gallons of hot water a day, and being the heavy sleeper I am, I oft got a cold shower. But that's hardly of any concern, considering we were only in there to sleep.
After we settled in, we took a quick one-hour nap, then headed to the Villa Borghese in the north of the city. It's basically Rome's central park, except not very central and I don't remember NYC having a Bernini sculpture museum. I will relate the museum to you in detail after I give you a crash course on art history. Through my mother's exquisite pantomiming, we got on the correct bus and went back home.
I figure now is the time to mention what the Roman streets are like. The largest boulevards are, at most, 4 lanes, though that's only for size measurements - drivers don't use lanes. They drive on any point of the road they want, provided it goes the right way. I'd say less than 10% of Roman streets are paved. They all still have the old Imperial cobblestones, particularly the back alleys. Parking is free, everywhere, provided you can find it, but you can literally part anywhere. I saw cars parked on corners, on sidewalks, in the medians, and in the road when they couldn't be assed to find a parallel parking spot.
And that's just cars! The fastest way to get about is by scooter. The scooterists must be insane or awesome - they very literally weave throughout traffic at breakneck speeds, zooming between and in front of cars, other scooters, and even buses. (most of the vehicles in the city have retractable side mirrors to keep from getting clipped off). Anywhere the cars can't go, scooters can. They park any place they fit, and that includes inside shops, on steps, behind cars, and on the medians. Yet we saw no traffic accidents, no scratches, and our driver told us no one gets ticketed, as the police drive and park in the same way. There are no posted speed limits, even on the highways, but no accidents - I suppose they're all on the same mildly suicidal wavelength.
(Also, when crossing the street [no one pays attention to crosswalks, not even the police], run like hell. The cars won't stop for you.)
The next day, my mother, in all her well-organized supremacy, got us all up at 8:30. We showered, dressed and were out the door, only to realize we'd awoken at 8:30 US time. We have no intentions of letting her forget this anytime soon. We went back to bed.
Now Friday, 8:30 am Roman time, we set out. Breakfast was fresh fruit from the Campo di Fiori half a block away, and then we walked to the Vatican to meet our tour guide (no tour really, just line avoidance). Along the way we noted a very large multi-national police force, quite a few openly armed with sub-machine guns. We scurried out touristy little American rears into Vatican City as fast as possible.
We entered the Vatican via the Borgo, a once-charming small medieval neighborhood Mussolini tore down to make a wide road that leads up to the square in front of San Pietro (St. Peter's Basilica), the largest church in Christendom. It's no boast - inside the church, there is a line showing the perimeter of the next-largest church, and St. Peter's could engulf it with room to hold mass.
Remember the police we saw earlier? Those were just stragglers. In the square were possibly more armed police and such than are employed in the whole of D.C. The shaded areas on my horrible map show the largest concentrations. As we discovered later, our very own George W. was to meet with the pope that day. How ironic - the closet I'd ever been to the president, and I was halfway 'round the world.
We waited for our tour group inside a touristy little cafe (Cafe Vaticano) and I had my first real espresso. Needless to say, I shall never drink American coffee again. The Vatican museums are enormous - the contain every piece of art or culture that the Catholic Church has managed to get its hands on, and after 2,000 years as the dominant political, social, and religious power in the Western world, that's a lot of stuff. There was an entire gallery full of random broken pieces of Greco-Roman sculpture. The Sistine Chapel was, obviously, astounding. I could have spent hours simply staring at David's hand. It is the single most breathtaking thing I have ever seen (the hand, that is). Had I tried to fully take in the rest of the room, I fear I may have rendered myself incapacitated, unable to speak for its wonder.
(and yes, I've noticed that my tone of voice tends to change to some archaic pseudo-British dialect when I'm enthralled. It's a charming personality quirk.)
After the mildly life-changing tour of the Vatican museums, we walked down to another section of the city and hopped on the metro. Now is a good time to point out that the Roman Metro is terrible. It's clean and well-maintained, but by virtue of its extensive culture, only has two lines that do little more than circle the city. As our tour guide later said, excavations to put down a building foundation or new metro line quickly uncover ruins, as is often the case in Rome. There's talk of building a metro line 20km beneath the city heart, but archeologists are afraid even that may disrupt the foundations of national symbols like the forum or Coliseum.
The two metro lines met at Termini, which is not actually Italian for Terminal - it's a truncation of the name of the ancient owner of the land it rests on, so 'Termini' is actually where we get 'terminal' from. Nifty info. We bought tickets for the 110 and ArcheoBus, both of which offered open-top tours of Rome, complete with audio guides and the ability to hop on and off whenever. (I should mention that Termini is also the hub of the bus lines). We got on the ArcheoBus, which tours the immediate countryside just along the Appian Way (its counterpart, the 110, does the same inside the city).
The Appian Way hasn't changed since antiquity, so it's walled (narrow), cobblestoned, and run through the old city gate of Appia. Lots and lots of traffic. The road is a two-way street, though that made no difference to impatient drivers. Harrowing escapes all around. We got off the bus in what seemed to be nowhere, but on the other side of the imposing wall was actually an extensive archeological park with the catacombs of St. something-or-other. I'll remember later. The catacombs were not only wicked awesome, but also blessedly cool. Our guide said that there were about 30km of passages in the catacombs, with the walls up to six or sever graves tall.
My sister now thoroughly creeped out, and I more assured in my choice of major, we headed back to the bus stop, only to see it whiz by before we could get there. Having read that they ran every 20-30 minutes, we simply went to wait. This was no easy task, as you can see in my next shoddy diagram. The safe zone was literally one person wide, and the cars really didn't bother with keeing any sort of lane (as, like in the rest of Italy, where was none). We stood there for 40 harrowing moments, side view mirrors only centimeters away, waiting for that stupid green ArcheoBus to show up. I am increasingly thankful that the sensible Europeans make rather small cars (seriously small - mini coopers look big over here).
Back at Termini, we got on a bus (which smelled very much like the Statue of Liberty's famous "unwashed, huddled masses"), hopped off to see a church built atop the scattered ashes of Mad Emperor Nero, whom locals believed was haunting the area, and finally got back home. We rested up for a bit whilst I perused my "Top 10 in Rome" book for good eats in our area. Luckily, there was a delightful Italian/French restaurant called Brie about 20 feet from our house. Within, I had the best pasta ever created by the hands of men, and I'm not even a big pasta fan.
It should be noted that the Italians don't cook their noodles to the near-liquid state we do - they cook them chewy, which is different and very good. Despite my father's suggestion that we booze around town 'till 9 pm (real party monster, my father), we went back home and to bed.
My father snores like a very large mammal in pain with a chronic respiratory infection, who is also a lumberjack. Very trying to sleep, it was.
We got up the next day at a reasonable time and headed into town with pastries in tow. We grabbed the 110 bus and, after a brief espresso break for my sister and I whilst my parents ran back for the camera, continued onward. Our next real stop (not counting another whoopsie) landed us at a very large, ornate piazza that boasted no less than three churches, two of which were not only carbon copies of one another, but also side-by-side. After staring at the freaking obelisk in the center (there are a lot in Rome - 13. The one in front of St. Peter's is from the reign of Ramses II), we visited the unique church (Santa Maria della Popolo, "Of the People") which was again absolutely spectacular and home to two stunning works by Caravaggio. Our hike to the bus stop accidentally lead down the shopping street, with names such as Gucci, Prada, Dior, and D&G lining the door frames. I ducked and covered. Amusingly, there is a designer line called "David Hamilton"*. I took pictures.
The next chunk of the say was spent at some of the big attraction - namely, the Triumphal Arch and the Coliseum.
Fun trivia fact: the Coliseum's real name is the Flavian Amphitheater. It was called the Coliseum by locals because of its proximity to a colossal statue of Nero that is long since gone. Naturally, I screamed a bit when I entered the Coliseum, nerd that I am, and blathered on to my parents the whole time about every bit of info I had regarding the place.
The only stupid American moments came from two groups of fellow countrymen. The first was a group of large women, ranging from about 12 to 50, and by large I don't mean round, pudgy, or rather overweight - I mean frighteningly obese and "how in the world did they climb up those stairs." Now is the time to note that I saw approximately four large Italians this trip, and they were merely overweight. The second incident was a 14-year-old boy who took one look at the breathtaking ruins before him and said, with a long-suffering why-do-I-have-to-be-here sigh, "Why don't they just turn this into a football stadium already? They could convert it no problem."
99% of the American tourists were nondescript and well-informed, but it is people like those mentioned above that make me mildly embarrassed to admit my nationality. I could always just assume a British accent.
Our feet were quite sore, even this early in the day, so we elected to skip the enormous archeological complex/junkyard known as the Roman Forum and return during the two days we have in Rome after the cruise. We went to St. Castilgle (sp?), which is a rather morbidly amazing church. With no room for a cemetery and not enough money to decorate, the monks in the middle ages began using the bones of their predecessors to add some flair. The walls are covered in spectacular patterns formed entirely with human bones. Some monks are even interred in the designs, all of them robed and some still with skin. We spotted two live monks on the way out and my mother off-handedly remarked that perhaps they were saving a spot. Sigh.
Our last stop of the day included Santa Maria della Minerva (the only Gothic church in Rome, built on an ancient temple to Minerva) and the Pantheon. To our horror, however, the Pantheon was inaccessible due to a wedding being held inside. It was also added to our list of things to hit on the return trip, along with the interior of St. Peter's (loooooong lines). We grabbed another delicious meal (caprese = best thing ever. It's fresh tomatoes and sliced mozzarella soaked in olive oil and herbs), this time actually on the Campo di Fiori, went to a pub so my mother could try limoncello (the local liqueur - lemon rinds are soaked in 90 proof alcohol for a while, and the resulting liquid is refined. Very strong, very good) and we headed home. We packed and prepared to leave. The next morning, we had our last breakfast in the Piazza and took another "limo" out of town and to the port of Civitavecchia, which was about an hour and a half away. Needless to say, the Italian countryside is gorgeous.
One last thing about Rome - the aqueducts still work in most areas and every city block has a free-flowing fountain of clean, fresh, and rather good-tasting water. Save a bottle and you'll never run out of water.
END ROMA
