Don & Geralynn's Second Report From Roma

Today is a travel day from Siena to Rome. We got up, did the laundry and cleaned up our apartment, then took the car to the station. We decided to take the bus to Rome because the train required a transfer. The bus was less trouble and quicker for this trip.

Don had a good time visiting with the bus driver, swapping driver gossip and telling war stories. He has a real knack for communicating, without knowing any of the language. The driver even told him, “ I can’t understand English when other people speak it, but I understand you very well!”

The drive through the countryside was smooth and quick, and when we pulled into the crowded, busy Tiburtina station in Rome, we lucked out and got a taxi just as it pulled into the station. The driver worked hard to find our obscure little street, Vicolo de Renzi, in the Trastevere section of Rome, and when we got there, it was so narrow he couldn’t pull into our street, so we walked our bags a hundred feet to the door of our apartment in Rome.

The murmur had a body, Gabriel, who finally decided he had better come down and find me. Then he led the way up, past the construction materials to our home for the next week. Our little apartment is funky culture all the way. Gabriel showed us the quirks—special potty flushing techniques, hot and cold water handles backwards, inoperable lights, etc.-- and then we were on our own. The door to the apartment is so narrow Don has to turn sideways to get in. Also the shower is pretty small and he keeps hitting his shoulders and elbows on the walls. The bedroom floor slopes downhill, but not too dangerously. About half of the lights don’t work. On the up side, there is a good coffeemaker, the beds are very comfortable, there is a shower, and the location is GREAT.

After getting settled we ventured out into the neighborhood to scout around and get the lay of the land. Of course, being a holiday (again!) no grocery store is open. The Trastevere area is a very old, medieval section of Rome. Most of the buildings here were built between 1300 and 1700. That is one of the reasons for all of the renovation in our building. The streets and buildings are a hodge-podge, stacked one on top of another, with little courtyards to give light. The streets go every which way, dead-ending suddenly, or heading off in a completely different direction than you thought you wanted to go.

We strolled around the area, got maps and bus info from the nearby Tourist Information booth, bought some pizza from the nearby takeout store and called it a night. As our heads hit the pillow we heard the church bell chime ten and were reminded of our stay in Andlau next to the bell tower. These bells are softer, though, and after midnight the put them on “very soft” until 8am.

We decided we would start out with the Vatican, and get that over with right away, so we walked up to Piazza San Pietro. The plaza was packed, and hundreds of people were rushing, running, pushing and shoving past us. Something was happening! It turns out that on Wednesdays the Pope comes out and blesses the people in the square. All of the

Vatican--St. Peter’s Basilica, the Sistine Chapel, the Vatican Museums—would be closed until after this happened. It didn’t look like it was going to happen any time soon, so we strolled over to the Castel Sant’ Angelo, an ancient fortress and museum. After the museum we went back to the apartment for a bite to eat and a rest.

In the afternoon we ventured out again, to the ancient section. We stopped to look at the Sacred Area of Largo Argentina, where ruins dated from the 3rd century BC are being excavated amidst towering office buildings and busy traffic-clogged streets. This is where Julius Caesar was assassinated by Brutus et al. We visited the Pantheon and took the walking tour of the area.

Later we took the tram to the end of the line, looking for a supermarket and did some grocery shopping before returning home for dinner and a movie. Flavio, who owns our apartment, is a film maker. He is in New York on a project right now. He has a huge selection of videos. We watched La Dolce Vita in Italian, and tried to interpret it all.

We got up and took the bus to the Vatican this morning. First we visited the Basilica, which is ornate and awesome. This enormous building is impressive, much bigger and more ornate that we imagined. We admired the graceful Pieta statue carved by Michelangelo, visited the underground crypts where the popes are buried, and were impressed by the enormous dome, also designed by Miclelangelo. To get a better view of the paintings in the dome, we hiked up the 300+ stairs to the upper gallery, where we could get a closer view.

Once down to earth again, we headed for the Vatican Museums, but the line was about 3 blocks long, and the museums are only open until 3:45, so we decided to return first thing tomorrow.

After the Colosseum we strolled through the Palantine, which is the area where the aristocrats of ancient Rome had their homes. Legend tells us that this is the hill where Romulus and Remus were raised by a wolf, and Romulus went on to kill his brother and found Rome. Mud huts dated from the 8th century, BC are said to be where they lived.

Next we went through the Roman Forum, looking at more ancient buildings, arches and towers. We were flagging by now, after all of our hiking in the morning and more in the afternoon, so we grabbed a bus and went home for a rest.

Back at our apartment we read and watched the news and listened to the little girl, Sofia, in the courtyard. Every afternoon she comes out on her wrought iron balcony overlooking the courtyard and calls across the way, “Vittoria! Vittoria! Come out and say hello.” If Vittoria is home she comes out and they call across the courtyard, telling the news of the day and playing make believe games.

Don has been having trouble sending our first report. Computers! Computers! We thought it had been sent several days ago, but apparently not. So he sent it out again, and it still didn’t go. His theory is that, because our mailing list is so big, it is being kicked back as spam. So he spent a couple of hours dividing up the mailing list. Maybe today it will go.

Today we jumped out of bed and headed out for the Vatican Museums bright and early. The Vatican crew has perhaps hired consultants from Disney to work out their line-hiders. They have done a masterful job of diffusing the crowd, who all are trying to find the Sistine Chapel. First you have the line that crawls along the high walls of the exterior of the museum. Then you go into the building and walk down a long passageway to the ticket counters.

Once into the museum proper, you must wend your way through centuries of artifacts, starting with the Egyptian findings 2000 years before Christ, going up stairs and through huge halls, past the Estruscan displays, and down a ramp and along mysterious hallways, being tempted by ancient Greek stellae and medieval tapestries, through a narrow passageway, up a circular ramp, past interesting old maps and globes from the early days of exploration of the world. At the end of an elaborate maze and miles of walking, you get to the Sistine Chapel. Don and I surmise that the entire hike up and down and through the maze is just a very subtle line-hider, surely designed by some clever Disneyland consultant.

We wanted to go to the Sistine Chapel first, on the theory that it would just get more crowded later, so we followed the signposts and went directly there. We rented audio tour systems, and found them very much worth it because we got descriptions and background information we would not have had otherwise.

The ceiling of the chapel is everything it is reputed to be, and more. The frescoes have been renovated recently, in 1996, and the vibrant colors and dramatic scenes are amazing. Michelangelo painted dramatic scenes of the creation of the world and man. So much has been written about the paintings and most everyone has seen pictures of them too, so it is hard to find something original and descriptive to say about them. I will say that, even though the works are high up on the ceiling, there is a real 3-d effect to them. I especially like the scene where God is reaching out, touching a finger to Adam, bringing him to life. To me this evokes a deep feeling of great hope and joy in the potential of humanity. If you have never seen
pictures of the Sistine Chapel or visited in person, do a search and take a look. We spent about an hour examining the 33 different sections of the ceiling, plus the additional paintings on the walls. The front wall of the chapel has a magnificent painting of the Last Judgment, with the bad guys spiraling down to Hell and the good souls being welcomed into Heaven. It is a kind of Dante’s Inferno interpretation.

After leaving the Sistine Chapel we wanted to go back to the start and spend more time on the Egyptians, Etruscans, et al. However, the maze is very effective. It channels you along big galleries of popely things, and on to the exit, and if you are not careful you find yourself out on the street, finished with the museum. Luckily, we found a nice guard and told him we weren’t finished and were lost. He put us in a secret elevator and took us back to the start of the maze again. We spent the rest of the day examining the extensive holdings of the Vatican museum, getting lost many times. Even though we had a map of the museum in our tour guide, it was sometimes just impossible to get to where we wanted to go. We would
stop and ask a guard, pointing to the place we were aiming for, and the guard would just look solemn, shake his head, and point us on our way to where we didn’t want to go. We ended up finding the Etruscan display by sneaking backwards through the crowds. If the guards caught you at this you could be reprimanded, so we had to be stealthy.

There is a nice, well stocked cafeteria in the museum, so we stopped for lunch. I headed straight for the salad bar and made myself an enormous salad—only 5000 lire, about $2.35. What a deal. After lunch it was more museum, with the Rafael rooms a highlight. Don likes the Rafael paintings better than the Michelangelo. We spent some time searching high and low for the medieval maps room, and ended up in the modern art gallery. After spending most of the day looking at paintings by the masters, the modern art looked thin and insubstantial. We left the museum at about 3pm, with a satisfied sigh.

In the evening the Trastevere comes to life. There are hundreds of little restaurants and shops lining the narrow cobbled streets. We decided to pick one and have dinner out this night. We went out for a stroll at about 8pm. That is a bit early for things to start happening, but each little restaurant was setting up their outdoor tables and umbrellas, encroaching further and further into the street, until it was questionable whether a car could pass without snagging at least one diner as he sipped his wine and slurped his spaghetti.

By 8:30 the area was hopping. Hundreds of couples were strolling along, accordion players were serenading, sidewalk vendors were hawking their wares, shops were bustling with business. We picked a cute little restaurant on the next block from our apartment and settled in for our meal. Don and I got a chuckle out of watching the two waiters, actually hucksters, and the owner, lure couple after couple into the restaurant. Pretty soon all of the outside tables were filled. Six feet across the street was another restaurant, with the same tables and charms, different only because the tablecloths were green checkered instead of our red checkered ones, but completely vacant save one couple. We felt so sorry for them, wondering how they ever managed to stay in business.

Today is a business day. We went to the bank, checked out the hours on the Laundromat, and then headed to the train station to buy our tickets to Porto Recanati, our next destination.

The train station is quite impressive in its own right. It is huge, very busy and seems to get everything done in a very efficient manner. We were able to buy our tickets by answering questions posed by a machine. After pushing the buttons, and feeding in our cash, our tickets popped out and we were through.

We thought it would take a lot of the day to get this handled, so we had the rest of the morning and all afternoon to spend on something interesting. We ended up at another museum, this time of ancient, pre-Christian history. There was a very good display of early written records—carvings on stone tablets, etchings on bits of hammered metal, and even some papyrus. Artifacts from 8 centuries before Christ, and the interpretation about the evolution of society from family groups to city states were well presented in both Italian and English. This was an unplanned and interesting add-on to our visit to Rome.

Enough of the tour talk, for a bit. I feel I must tell a bit more about our apartment to do it justice. Before I do, though, I want to make sure that everyone understands that this is just color. The place is great. We couldn’t ask for a better location as far as night life and proximity to the points of interest.

Bathroom mirror

With that said, I will now tell about our bathroom. Before it was a bathroom it was one of those little, not-really-for-use balconies that you see sometimes at hotels. It measures about 2 feet by 8 feet. The shower (2ft x 2ft) is at one end, then there is a door from the kitchen (no glass or wood in the door panels, so it does no good to shut them), then the sink, and buried far back in the corner is the toilet. As I have mentioned before, it is hard to soap up your body in the shower, without bumping into the walls. Also, depending on which way you are standing, it is easy to hit the water control and suddenly be doused with an icy splat of cold or a blistering sear of hot, or no water at all because you bumped it off. Shampooing is a real challenge. Then we also have a very nice window in the bathroom, looking out to other apartments, and making it quite exciting (for the people across the way) when we get out of the shower and dry off.

Now, getting to the toilet has also been a challenge. You see, the bathroom washbasin sticks out about 18 inches in the 24 inch space. We have to head for the potty in plenty of time, because somehow we have to slip our bodies through those 6 inches without losing it before we sit down. When we do sit down our knees hit the plumbing pipes under the sink, so we have to sit kind of kitty-corner. So far no accidents, though.

Today we planned to do laundry at the Laundromat nearby. We had checked the hours and were proud that we were able to read the sign in Italian, which said open at 8am closed at 10pm, 365 days a year. This morning I took the laundry down, but lo and behold, this must be the 366th day of the year, because the store is all shuttered and dark. Well, I will try again later.