Rome, 6/24/04
I've seen precious little of said power and glory so far, but then, I just got off the damn train and got a hotel. At 6 pm. Since I checked out of my hotel in Ravenna at about 9 am, that ought to tell you about what I did with my day. Spent it in train stations and on trains, pretty much. The 9:30 train to Bologna wasn't too bad, and got me there in plenty of time for the 10:46 Eurostar to Rome. Unfortunately for me, I wasn't taking the 10:46 Eurostar to Rome, I was taking the 1:46 Eurostar to Rome. So, like any self-respecting traveller who's lugged a suitcase full of clothes, a laptop, and a backpack up a bunch of stairs, and who's found a nice convenient, comfortable concrete floor to camp out on, I camped out until the train got there. Meanwhile, I read the first two books of the Illiad, summaries of same, and about 250 pages of yet another Bernard Cornwell novel, this one about the Hundred Years War. I also nursed a Pepsi and some Pringles I picked up in Ravenna.
It's worth noting that Bologna must have the worst station in Italy or something, because every, and I mean EVERY train that went through there got delayed by at least 10 minutes. The poor bastards on the 10:46 Eurostar didn't leave until 11:46. So, in amongst laughing at various unfortunates, listening to station announcements in Italian that I didn't understand a word of, and reading, I passed a few fairly pleasant hours, until my own Eurostar pulled in, on time but on the wrong platform.
Whereupon I got to be bored out of my mind for a few hours. I was pretty much tired of reading at that point, and I desperately needed a drink, because that Pepsi was basically IT for the day. Not to be, unfortunately. Combined with the girl across the way with the most annoying cell phone ring EVER, which went off every 10 minutes or so, and which she let play EVERY TIME, it was a fairly annoying sort of trip. So I was pretty glad when I stepped off the train and set foot in Rome.
Feelings of goodwill didn't last long, because Rick Steeves is pretty much the worst cartographer in the history of mapmaking. Guided by his, uh, efforts, I wandered around lost up north of the station for a while, lost in a sea of hotels, looking for one of the three decent ones. After an hour or so, I finally found one, except it was booked full. But she was nice enough to call around, and found a place with rooms left, which I am now sitting in. Finally cool again, because lugging all my crap around Rome for an hour in the sun isn't exactly cool work. Can finally swallow again, after being excessively parched and getting that particularly annoying thing where mucous goes down your throat and dries out there. Fortunately, I'm not actually starving, which probably comes from eating pretty much nothing for a week, which is a particularly bad habit of mine when travelling, especially in places where I don't speak the language.
All of this brings us to basically three morals. The first is something I talked about earlier: Rick Steves' hotel ideas are pretty good, but his maps are pathetic. Simple things like, yknow, street names would vastly improve them. The corollary to the first is to book the damn hotel in advance, sort of unlike what I did for my entire trip. When it works, it works. When it doesn't work, it REALLY doesn't work, and today it REALLY didn't work. The second is to pack light, because basically nothing is less fun than hauling all your stuff around not knowing where you are. Actually, it's not much fun even when you DO know where you are, since train stations and the like tend to have a LOT of stairs to lug suitcases up. Third, when you get something to drink, get an extra or two, and put it away for later, because you'll probably want it. Snacks too, but especially the liquids.
Also, suitcases on wheels are the devil. But I may just be saying that because I have way too much stuff in mine.
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Rome, 6/25/04
And, well, here we are. Rome. ROME, dammit. I forget how long it's been since I first wanted to come here - a third of my life? Half my life? Years, anyway. And here I am. At last, in one sense of the word, but I suppose I'm fairly fortunate to be coming here at 23, and not at 43 or 63 or something. Anyway.
I started my morning with a metro ride down to the Colloseo station. I could have walked, but basically Roman drivers are the craziest people on the planet, and I say that after both London and Paris. Cars will sometimes stop when you cross the roads, but those bastards on scooters? They don't stop for anything at all. So walking in Rome involves great acts of faith, which is probably one reason why there's zillions of churches everywhere. So I took the metro.
And in a sense, that was a good thing. Because it's like this. I'm walking out the door of Colosseo station, and I look up, and right across the road is...yep, you guessed it. Colosseum, right in front of me. And the Arch of Constantine. RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME ACROSS THE ROAD. That's even better than coming out of the metro station in Paris and having the Arch de Triomphe right there.
I didn't start at the Colosseum, though, for reasons I shall talk about rather later. Instead, I walked around the Arch of Constantine for a while, took some pictures, and then went into the Forum. Center of ancient Rome. Yup, that's me. I'm there. Woot.
The Forum is sort of a sad place, now. Awe-inspiring, of course, majestic in its own special sort of way, but sort of sad. The buildings have more or less all fallen down now, and apart from the arches at either end, a few columns, and half the Basilica of Constantine or so, it's pretty much all rubble piles. Still if you stand there long enough, you can get a sense of what it might have been like, once. And that picture is a pretty grand one.
Having walked the Forum for a time, I eventually passed under the Arch of Septimus Severus and took the steps up the Capitoline Hill. Anything Roman that might have been there once is now gone, sort of. In place of the Romans are a bunch of Rennaisance buildings, two of which are a museum, and one that's pretty much the final word on Roman sculpture. If you've ever seen that big marble head of Constantine, well, that's there, along with half the rest of the statue. Romulus and Remus with the she-wolf? That's there too, along with a copy on a pedastal outside. Dying Gaul? Yup. Commodus all dressed up as Hercules? That too. All that and a couple three or four hundred more statues, and uncountable random inscriptions and things. All very impressive.
Speaking of inscriptions, they put "SPQR" (Senatus Populusque Romanus) on EVERYTHING here. And not just Roman stuff, either. There's plenty of Rennaisance inscriptions that bear the title, and even the manhole covers have SPQR on them. It's kind of funny, really.
In any case, having been through the Capitoline museums, I went out past a very famous bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, past an enormous marble monument to the first King of Italy, and thence to the Column of Trajan, who in typical fashion still doesn't have his own statue on top, but that of St. Peter. Poor Trajan. Builds all this stuff, and never gets to keep his name on it. But it's a nifty column. From the Column, I took a fairly roundabout route, because it's sort of off in the distance as modern Rome works, to the Pantheon. You approach from the rear, which is a decidedly uncool brick thing, but the marble front is quite amazing, and the interior...wow. Let's just say I need my pictures to do justice to the interior of the Pantheon, and leave it at that.
From the Pantheon, I went back down to the Forum, on the way to which I got asked by some random tourist how to get to the Pantheon (heh). Browsed the Forum some more, because yes, it really is that sort of place, and then went up to the Palatine Hill to check out what's left of the palaces of the emperors. Foundations, mostly, and a few walls. It's sort of like the Forum, where if you have enough imagination, you can see what it might once have looked like, and come away amazed.
And from there, I finally went to the Colosseum. Why last? For one, the metro stop was right there, and I was tired and roasting and hungry by that point. For two, you can buy a combo ticket at the Palatine which covers a fairly big chunk of sites, and allows you to bypass the enormous lines at the Colosseum. So with ticket in hand, I cut the line and went in. And, well, saw the ruins. And walked around for a bit. And, well, that was that. It's the Colosseum, and it's big and it's impressive, but there's not much to do there, and it didn't really put a big goofy grin on my face like the Forum or the Capitoline museums.
And then I went home. A bit early, but I figure 9 to 3 solid sightseeing is a lot for one day. But I got my power and glory, anyway. And with both Ravenna and the major sites in Rome now seen, I've basically fulfilled one of three or four major travelling ambitions for my life[1].
[1] - The whole list being Rome/Ravenna, Constantinople, Japan, and Washington DC. I'd throw in some of the major European capitols, except I've seen the bigger chunk of them already. I'd like to hit Paris again sometime, along with perhaps Egypt and a few of those other assorted European capitols.
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Rome and the Vatican, 6/26/04
So, today I did the Vatican. And by that, I mean that pretty much from about 9:30 or 10 to about 2:30, I was in or around St. Peter's Basilica. One might, if one were inclined to understatement, which one is, might say that St. Peter's is a fairly big church. One notices this straight off in the piazza outside, when one notices that the line, and it's a big line, is sort of small in comparison to the building. It gets better inside, when the audioguide handily points out that there are nice little markers on the floor to show you where the next few largest churches in Christendom would fit inside.
The damnable thing about my trip inside is that there was a very handy map given to me with the audioguide which points out pretty much anything worth noting, but which I forgot to take a picture of, so I'm going to have a lot of pictures like "Well, I THINK this is Urban VIII, but I can't really remember." You might think that one of my two guides would fix that, but the LP guide isn't worth jack for that, and Rick Steves only points out like 12 things of almost 50 the audioguide has. Nevertheless, I'll hit a few highlights.
Aside from the fact that you walk inside and just sort of stand in the door for a minute or two going ooOOooOOoo (with or without multicolored blinking text for the Alsheroki among us), I was rather immediately amused by this woman kneeling smack in the middle of the porphyry coronation marker, whereupon people like Charlemagne were crowned various things like Holy Roman Emperor. Speaking of whom, there's a rather nice statue of him just outside the atrium. They've got one of Constantine seeing the cross in the sky on the other side, too. Speaking of the atrium, it has, amongst other things, the Holy Door to one side, which they apparently only open every 25 years to mark Papal Jubilee years.
From there, I went up the right side, where I passed Michelangelo's Pieta, which although I'm not an art historian, I seem to remember is sort of famous or something. ;) Also has a very famous dome overhead, but I managed to forget everything about it in amongst the other 45 commentary items or so. Anyway. The whole place is sort of a shrine to Rennaisance and Baroque artistry, much of it under the patronage of Urban VIII, and much of it done by a guy named Bernini. There's assorted papal monuments all over the place, and assorted very good paintings which are actually mosaic copies of the originals, which I had no idea of until the audioguide was like "Oh, by the way, they took the original painting and gave it to somebody else. That's a mosaic." I love mosaics. There's also the altar, which is sort of cool by itself, but also happens to have a great big canopy overhead by Bernini, which is really really cool.
St. Peter of course gets a lot of mention. Amongst other things is a statue of him which gets rubbed by the pilgrims, and a big statue of his throne by, and I know this will come as a huge surprise, Bernini. Times like this I wish I was an art historian. Don't get that feeling often, but.
I also saw something of an entirely different sort. Smack in the middle of the basilica, almost under the dome, some mother had her kid on a leash. Now, the idea of kid leashes usually pisses me off anyway, but to see it in the center of a church, of all places, REALLY pissed me off. Christianity's supposed to be all about compassion and love and whatnot, and you've got your kid on a freaking leash? Gah. And the poor guy's kneeling there like a whipped dog, no less. Hell was invented for things like this.
Anyway. Back to the serene and happy part of our tour. Without going into a whole lot of detail on the monuments, of which there were many, for a great many popes and a few other random folks (the Stuart kings of England have one, which I thought was amusing), I'll just mention the dome and the cupola.
Now, for the most part, the trip to the dome isn't too bad. I say this because I took the lift halfway, but then I figured I earned the Spiral Stair Climbing Merit Badge a while back. Nevertheless, most of the stairs are pretty much straight. Pretty much. The 5' diameter spiral staircase wasn't too bad. The 2.5' spiral staircase, on the other hand, was a bit extreme. And the stairs where the walls curved because we were on the very uppermost part of the dome, well, that was a bit strange. And it was all frying up there, which since the lower level was pretty cool, was very unpleasant. Nevertheless, somewhere in the middle of all that, we got to walk around the interior of the dome, and see the decorations up close, and they rock. Then we climbed the rest of those stairs, and went up to the cupola, where one can see pretty much all of Rome one cares to see. It's not quite the Eiffel Tower, but as far as Ye Olde Randome Churche goes, very nice.
And that was pretty much that. I tried to do the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel, but they were closed by the time I got there. As for the rest, you'll just have to believe me that it's awesome until I can show the pictures.
From the Museum, I decided that, well, it was only about 3:10, and since I spent the really warm parts of the day inside the rather cool basilica, and so wasn't dying of heat stroke at the moment, it might not be a bad idea to hit a few of those random sights I thought I was going to see the day before I left. Since if I want to do the Vatican Museum, the National Museum, and some random stuff besides, I'm going to have to run like hell to do it all.
So I set off down the road, leaped on the metro, which I might quickly note is a really crappy and unclean metro, which barely goes anywhere useful, but happens to be one of three metros I've seen where the doors on the carriages automatically open (but only on the A line). After a short wait, I arrived at the Spanish Steps, which was/is apparently THE hookup spot, and THE place to see beautiful people, of whom I saw basically none while there, but a few on the metro of all places. Go figure.
From the Spanish Steps it's a short walk to the Trevi Fountain, which is basically the ultimate in saying "Yeah, well my fountain is cooler and more awesome than YOUR fountain, so nyah!" Again, wait for the pictures. From there it's another short walk to the Column of Marcus Aurelius (or maybe just the Antonine Column, I'm not really sure), which is almost exactly like Trajan's Column, except not quite as famous. On a building nearby, I saw a clock with SPQR on it. Like I said, it's on EVERYTHING.
That done, I decided to go see if Augustus' Altar of Peace was open from restoration, which it isn't, and is surrounded by a 6' tall metal fence besides, but the Mausoleum of Augustus is nearby, or what's left of it. What's left of it is bigger than some hills I've seen, as it happens. The Romans were into big.
After the Mausoleum, it's a short trip up the street to the Piazza del Popolo, which I'm sure has some patriotic meaning or another, but I really have no idea. In any case, it's pretty cool. Big churches all around, the obligatory Egyptian obelisk in the middle[1] surrounded by lion fountains spitting water, and with a big park on one side. Out back there's some sort of monumental thing in the middle of the road, which I'm going to take as a monument to Napoleon, because it looks like one. Guidebooks are useless, so whatever.
And that done, I went back to the hotel, because it was 4:30 and I was starving. Which involved a side trip to the Termini mall for a McDonald's run and a grocery run. The first featured a screaming little kid, who I almost throttled because he was very obviously being pretty unreasonable about the whole thing. The second featured a totally berserk checkout clerk, who screamed at this poor American girl in front of me in line about something to do with a water bottle (in Italian, which she of course didn't speak and so had no idea what to say back), complained to the guy behind her in line, who I'm sure could totally give a shit, and then complained to who I assumed was the manager. And when I walked back by 10 minutes later, he was STILL complaining to the manager. I'm not sure what his problem was, but he was obviously not having a good day.
And on another note, Hot and Spicy Pringles are pretty good. Not quite as good as the Spanish Salsa ones, but good.
[1] - And I should note that there's Egyptian obelisks EVERYWHERE around here. Piazza del Popolo has one. The Spanish Steps have one. There's a big one in the middle of the Piazza San Pietro outside St. Peter's. There's one on the back of a marble elephant near the Pantheon. There's a few more I haven't seen yet, too.
Posted by Dwip at June 27, 2004 6:43 AM