Rome...More Ruins, Leaving Town...(Venice)

(Thur. Dec. 10th- Sat. Dec. 12th)

Pushing forward...more buildings. I honestly do not remember which church this was. Sad. Let's ask iPhoto where it was taken...ah ha, it says I took it near the Colosseum. So yeah, this was a small, very old church built on top of a previous church. (Photos weren't allowed inside- you can see how well I listen). Looks pretty big, but on the scale of Roman churches it was pretty modest.

We got to go to the crypt where all the walls and columns and stuff from the old church were. And below that was more, even older stuff. Tiffany didn't come with us this morning, don't remember why, but I went back after this little morning journey to retrieve her from the hotel.

This building was right across the street- I liked it every time. The rough concrete, the popped-out boxes, and then at the bottom, that reddish glassy box at the corner- was just a totally glass-enclosed room, and I thought it was awesome. Like a fishbowl.

Here is a good Smart car picture. Three parked back at the curb, one (obscured) turning left, and one just entering the photo at the left. That's six! We'll hafta see what my record was...

Tiffany and I schlepped back over to the Colosseum (right near where I had been, but I didn't know how long our morning trip was gonna be so didn't know when to meet up- the life of no cell phones). Here's the "take a picture of me for my mom" photo that I got take quite a few times here and there :) In the background is some filthy old building they used to use for watching people kill each other...

That old stone doesn't deal well with the fumes from the automobile age. Why they decided to run the road so close to the Colosseum is beyond me, except that across the street is like Nero's Domus Aurea (golden house) so they didn't really have any fudge room. When I was in Rome in 2002, I thought I had heard that they were cleaning/renovating this, but apparently not yet...

Here is a cool cross section, because it shows how many layers there are/were to the building, and you can start to see more how it was constructed, and also deconstructed. Mostly brick, but it all used to be faced with stone that was hung on iron that was fixed into the brick. The stone and the iron were pulled off centuries ago and reused, and all that's left is the holes in the brick!

A good shot of the inside. Doesn't really convey the vastness. It apparently held over 100,000 people- quite a lot considering Notre Dame Stadium holds like 80some thousand. But of course it helps that they were probably a *little* more packed together...All these used to be covered by the seating areas. And of course the bottom used to be a flat floor with all the tunnels underneath- but there's no more floor. Wish I could explore down there...I kept wanting to jump down there.

NOT the Arch of Constantine, but another one just south of it, also pretty big, but actually part of the original aqueduct. Yeah like 2,000 years old. Or much older. Also held together by steel cables... We were walking down past the Forum to the Circus Maximus and other things.

The Circus Maximus. Pretty underwhelming, yeah? I had expected like a small stadium of some kind, but its just a large round dirt path with grass in the middle...though I'm sure tens of thousands of people could sit on those grass hills, and the track is actually pretty huge. Just not that exciting.

Down at the end was a church, and on its backside was some sort of protest- and a TON of riot police. I was gonna take a picture, but I was not in the US, so you never really know about that stuff :) Lots of paddy-wagon vans for hauling people away too.

We went to the church, a small very old one called the Basilica di Santa Maria in Cosmedin (I had to look that up to remember). This is the "Bocca di Verita" or Mouth of Truth- if you stick your hand in it, and tell a lie, it'll bite your hand off. Yeah, silly superstition, but it still felt a little weird sticking your hand in there, cause imagining that thing biting my hand, well that would kinda hurt.

We walked west-ish, towards a small island in the middle of the river that has/had a hospital/school/church on it- somewhat like the island in Paris I guess. Here was an old support for a road or bridge that doesn't exist anymore.

And then we saw a car accident. With the smallest car ever. I'm not sure if the second car was involved, or just a friendly passerby, or a friend. But also, why is it facing the opposite direction? And how did the car roll? It doesn't have any impact damage on it. I thought maybe it went up on the curb but if anything that would have caused it to roll the opposite direction.

Not only that, but this road was a pretty low-speed road with lots of traffic. So I ruled out high-speed swerve sudden-rollover. My last question was why they didn't just roll the thing back over...considering it probably only weight like 1,200 pounds. I mean four of us picked UP a car that size in Holland. I almost offered to help roll it over, but they were on the phone, looked like they had it under control...

it was starting to get late in the afternoon, so the flocking birds were everywhere in the sky. Which after seeing the cars parked by the river, we realized meant LOTS OF POOP. And you could actually occasionally see or hear it splat around you. So we ran for cover, cause we were far from home, and not too interested in being shat on. We were on the island, and found the church, hid under the entry way, watched the birds. Pretty cool, as long as you're not standing under them.

We decided to peek in the church while we were there. Small, quiet, ornate.

After that, Tiffany and I split off from (I think) Britta Jessica and maybe Shawna. We headed into Trastevere, because I wanted to wander up the roads/paths up this large hill that I had climbed before with Chris and my dad- I remember there was a St. Peter on the Hill church or something up there. The map we had included all the roads and some paths, but they were super wind-y (as in, not straight) and it took us a while of wandering to get all the way to the top, as well as to see a couple other landmarks labeled on the map. And we were distracted a bit because I remember that evening somehow we ended up having a very long very unhappy argument/discussion. I'll definitely remember that next time I'm standing in front of the large lit fountain at the top of the hill, overlooking the city.

We did find the St. Peter church though. It was small but really pretty, and quite unusual that it had carpet. Blue. Nice. They were setting up for a wedding, which is funny because last time I was there, in 2002, a wedding had just finished, and I thought wow, how magical. The top of a hill overlooking Rome.

The next day was a group trip to the Baths of Caracalla. I hadn't been there when I was in Rome before, so I was excited to see them, since they're pretty huge (and I had no IDEA how BIG!) and pretty well known, and as old as all the other millennia old stuff around there.

And yeah, they were huge. Not only really tall, but also tons of rooms, and just covering so much space. Unbelievable.

This was a "picture for my mom".

And a "picture with you in it!" that I clearly didn't really care about being in :)

Tiffany was taking more control over photos since at this point, and for a few days, we were using her camera because my memory card had suddenly and inexplicably gone down the toilet (no not literally) and I thought I was gonna lose like 3 days of photos (which in Europe is a lot of photos!). It had been occasionally turning parts of my photos gray all semester though, so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, but still. After a lot of screwing around with multiple cameras and computers, trying to read or write to the card with varied success, I finally got all the photos off, but then something else happened and I couldn't wipe it clean to have it hopefully useable. So it was rubbish.

After quite a bit of time at the Baths (hadta get our money's worth, it was like 7 euro each (or maybe more?) Tiffany and I went up to the Forum- we had bought package tickets for Colosseum and Forum and hadta go use it within the next day. So off we went, leaving the group behind.

We started at the back, which lead us to the top, another place I'd never been before- Palatine Hill. Here's a big temple or something.

Here's the very top, the front edge of Palatine Hill overlooking the Forum. Great view! Of lots of ruins :) Makes it easier to sit there and imagine when it was an active city, real buildings, bustling people, etc...

This was some little temple-y thing and we couldn't figure out what happened here- these half circles looked like little walkways through the building, and its all sunken in that square area. Maybe it was full of water or something?

You can see Vittorio Emmanuelle II monument behind the Forum.

Another moment where I didn't really feel the need to be in the picture. So I made a face. Not bad if you ask me.

After a couple hours around here, we made our way northeast to Termini, the main Rome train station. We hadta buy our tickets from Venice to Slovenia, but we had a flight from Rome to Venice. I remembered enough Italian to go buy the ticket, though I kept saying Florence instead of Venice- luckily TIFFANY had known enough Italian that she kept correcting me saying "Firenze" when I should have been saying Venezia :)

The train station was cool looking though, despite the fact that there were huge lines and we hadta stand there for awhile. But we couldn't figure out the ticket business online and everything we found was bloody insane expensive, so we went to the station.

Afterwards we walked around more. Since we were leaving Rome soon, there were a lot of little icons on our tourist map that acted like they were worth seeing, so we tried to track a few more of em down :) Here was a place called Quattro Fontani (four fountains) that was just an uninteresting intersection of two streets, except each of the four buildings on the corners had cut corners filled in with fountains. Pretty cool, though kind of odd- no piazza or anything, so not really a place you could hang out.

Another large piazza, on the north side of Rome, a fountain of Triton. Not as touristy, for whatever reason, but a decent spot nonetheless.

At the end of the evening of Tiffany and I walking around, we met back up with all my classmates, at a restaurant around the corner from the hotel, where we were meeting our professor. The owner knew the owner of our hotel, who knew our professor. We got a per-person cost for a family-style dinner, with salad and appetizers and dessert and wine and stuff. A bit expensive, but tasty, and fun, a good way to end our semester together.

Here was just our last remaining snacks from our room that would come with Tiffany and I tomorrow. The little bitter Italian sodas, some small pre-wrapped desserts that came with our breakfasts each morning.

The door to our hotel- actually leads into a small interior courtyard, and then we'd get on another old service elevator up to our floor. Cool door :) During much of the day the large doors were open but in the morning and at the end of the day we went in and out this small door that made it look like a castle. It took a ginormous key too!

The rest of the day (after we slept in and took our time getting out of the hotel) we had planned for travel- getting to Venice by plane and then Slovenia by train. By the time we got to the airport in Venice, it was dark and we weren't really sure where the airport was relative to the city. Of course we assumed it was relatively inland, as we assumed about the train station. We got a shuttle to the train station, and after getting dropped off and told we had to cross a bridge over a CANAL to get there, we realized the train station was RIGHT IN THE CITY! So, it was lucky that we had two hours to kill before our train left.

Here I was standing outside of the train station, the same station I came into with my dad and Chris from Rome- I remembered it as soon as I saw it, right there on the water.

Too bad it was kinda chilly and we had all our bags, but we walked as much as we could, dragging bags over the cobblestone :/ We did take some time to get some coffees, though we didn't end up getting gelato, because the places were closing so we got some coffee to go (to keep us warm).

A dark photo of Tiffany crossing one of the many bridges over canals- most of them had steps, that we had to drag wheeled bags up and down and up and down. It was uh, Tiffany's bag :) I just had all my bags strapped to me, though that much weigh for a couple hours of walking wasn't much better.

Then we went and got on our train. The unfortunate part of going to Eastern Europe is that at some stop the conductors switched over, so we got a bunch of conductors speaking Hungarian I think, because the train ended in Budapest. They spoke a bit of English, and definitely Italian too. We managed.

Here was our train car. Those facing seats. We were lucky enough to have it alone for a couple hours to nap.

Here we were enjoying our last bit of Italian food, some sandwiches made of salami and fresh mozarella :) After someone else joined our car and laying-down-on-the-seats time was over.

It was a relatively painless train journey, only a few hours, and not that late- we would still be getting in early enough to get a full night's sleep before starting adventures in a new country.

Rome...Holy Stuff...Tiffany Arrives...

(Sun. Dec. 6th- Wed. Dec. 9th)

Back in Rome. Ta-da. I don't really remember what I did Sunday but it might have involved finishing my remaining school work so I was free when Tiffany got there. We had to set up another rollaway bed, which despite me and my roommates, and my friends down the hall, saying exactly what was going where and how to set up the rooms (and even that WE would do it) turned out to be quite the ordeal because Michelle (the owner) really had her own idea about how to do things. So we hadta rearrange after we let her do her thing. Geez.

Tiffany arrived that Sunday night at Fiumicino, which, while being the Rome airport, is quite a ways outside the city. I looked at multiple ways of travel since it was like 1.5 hours depending on the type of transportation, and costed a LOT. I ended up taking the subway to the train, the train to the airport, and a different train back which dropped us off in Rome but uhhhhh, kinda far from our hotel :) Aaaaaand she had a wheely bag. Normally I wouldn't mind pulling it (except that they NEVER make the handles long enough for normal height men) but Rome, more so than even the average European city, is COVERED in cobblestones. Yeah pull a wheeled-suitcase over cobblestones for 45 minutes. OR EVEN FIVE. I was getting pretty annoyed to the point that I couldn't even focus on the task at hand- getting some dinner. I wanted to get home and get rid of the thing.

Tiffany could tell I was annoyed and distracted, and also not wanting to stop for food till we were at least closer, since I still wasn't precisely sure how far away we were until we go to the river, cause we were quite a ways south in Trastevere (means "across the river"). So I think maybe she was there an hour or less before we had our first quabble :) It was definitely weird to see her, who I used to see and talk to every day, after not having seen her for 4 months. Took some adjusting to, for me anyway (apparently not for her).

We finally walked all the way back to Campo dei Fiori, and got food there- close enough that I knew where we were and how to get back and how long it'd take, and could settle down and relax and eat :) We got some, uh, pasta, and some wine, and took some time to talk and enjoy the fact that we were having pasta and wine in a piazza in Rome together. It was chilly, but they had lots of those umbrella tree-looking space heaters that bars and restaurants have in their outdoor areas these days.

We headed to bed, more or less, after we finally got back. Monday was another morning meeting with Alexander to walk around the city. Tiffany was interested in tagging along and he of course said it was fine if she did.

Here's a little peek at the Pantheon as I walked by. I couldn't resist. C'mon, its awesome, its huge, its a giant dome with a HOLE in the middle, and its 2,000 YEARS OLD. What's not to love. Right around the coner to the left there is a McDonalds. Yeah.

It was a particularly dreary Monday, but oh well. We were walking around Rome (and as we'd find out, it was much warmer than Prague!). This time we were going north a bit, meeting at Piazza del Popolo (piazza of the people) that was where a couple diagonal streets intersected- part of the master plan of the city that was put in place I think by Mussolini, but honestly I forget now. Big wide diagonal streets though.

And here's the piazza, looking south from the middle where a giant water fountain resides. I can't believe I didn't come here with my dad and Chris! You can see the three streets going off into the distance, and the two identical churches (except for non-matching bell towers) that were apparently built by someone to commemorate his two daughters, or something. I could be really wrong about this info because it was awhile since we were there hearing stories about it. Oops.

Turning around and walking north though through the piazza revealed something unexpected- Modern Rome. I don't mean modern Rome as in contemporary Rome, as in Rome today, I mean Modern with a capital M, mid-century, 50s and 60s Rome. Interesting.

And here it is, for starters. Black steel, external expressed structure, yep its all here. I imagine it was pretty hard for Romans to stomach at the time. Still not terrible attractive per se, but certainly quite visually interesting at least.

We made our way farther north in the drizzling rain to some campus of buildings of some international school, where they had different buildings for different nationalities, where like foreign diplomats or something would send their kids. If I'm remembering this correctly... They had like a Belgium building, Austria, etc., and I think the buildings were usually done by an architect of that nationality.

But the coolest thing we saw there was MINI HORSES!!!

After the little campus of buildings (they weren't that interesting to look at) we moved on to a neighborhood, also Modern, some contemporary as well. Here's one that responds to a job in the street down below.

And around the corner, another Fiat 500 (Cinquecento) which was my favorite car in Europe but mostly found in Italy...they had dashboards that were the color of the body, in this case a cream white. And tan interiors. Loved them. See, it was raining.

These little guys are coming to the US like NOW, which is awesome. Gonna be making electric ones next year. I'm in, if I need a car, don't buy a Mini, and can't afford a Tesla.

Look at it! Kickass!

And now, the photo of "where three or more Smart Cars are gathered". Notice how one just parked its nose into the curb. That's how short these cars are.

You can tell that the architecture we were seeing, while interesting, was visually underwhelming. But we were seeing a different part of the city, more middle-class, more every-day, more like a normal lived-in neighborhood, not the Rome you usually think of.

Two Smarts in the foreground, two in the background. Score.

We kept walking north, near the Olympic Village that Shauna and I had already visited, and to this that we had already visited as well- a Zaha Hadid renovation/add-on to an existing building to make a museum. Yep, that big concrete block up there is part of it.

And here's the side. We couldn't get in cause it was closed. DAMMIT! Very uh, concrete-y and swoopy. It looks like woven strips from up above. Tiffany was a trooper for putting up with architecture tours all day long.

Guess what. Smart Cars. We were walking back, it was evening after a long day, this was a tiny piazza, with three Smart Cars. Rockin. Lots of yellow-ish lights in Rome. Makes it feel older and more mysterious or romantic at night.

There's Tiffany in her long, white-ish (gets dirty fast) coat, enjoying the three Smart Cars.

Back in Campo dei Fiori at night, trying to figure out dinner for the evening, there was some plastic furniture lit from within. I dig it.

Tiffany and I kept walking more that evening, back to Vittorio Emmanuele II, where we discovered the Christmas tree!

After walking around and heading back, we heard lots of chirping up in the trees, smelled something kinda stale but moist, like when you go in a cave and can smell the bat droppings...and sure enough, the birds we saw flocking before like to roost in the trees near the river.

Under which people like to park. But probably don't like having their Mercedes' pooped ALL OVER. We later saw cars covered in plastic. How gross is that?

I'm missing a day, so I have no idea what we did Tuesday. Maybe it wasn't interesting. Cause I know that Wednesday, we had big plans for a Papal Audience, that Kat was so nice as to get tickets for us for. I initially thought it was a mass, which took me awhile to figure out that it wasn't- surprising, since there were giant youth groups there waving flags and singing songs beforehand- I thought they were just exuberant and irreverent. I also thought it was a pretty special opportunity, until I found out it happens twice a week. Oh well. We saw the Pope. Il Papa. Not to be confused with il papa, which means "the potato". How did THAT ONE happen, back when the language was forming?

Here's the building where they have the Papal Audiences. HUGE. Built by Italian concrete engineering genius Pietro Nervi. FanTAStic roof.

But kinda large columns up there on stage.

By the way, security, as you could imagine, was pretty stringent getting into this thing. They wouldn't even let liquids through- like it was the airport- and I hadta leave my flask (THAT I GOT FOR WATER, HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAFTA SAY IT) behind, but they promised I'd get it back. We'll see about that.

Here's the Pope sitting up there on stage, in front of a pretty crazy sculpture. It wasn't until well through the cardinals standing up there greeting different countries and peoples, in different languages (6 total I think) that I realized it wasn't gonna be mass. Everything was repeated in English, Italian, German, Spanish, French, and I think Russian maybe...I forget. There were some prayers though at least.

We went back through security, and amazingly, there was a guard holding my flask, and he even RECOGNIZED me, approached me before I saw him, to give it back. Amazing! Mille grazie! I did actually say that to him. "A thousand thanks".

It was time for one of the main events. St. Peter's. We went in at ground level of course, but the real interest is climbing the dome. Climbing things for views is always worth it. Always. Look at the little ants down below.

And here's across the dome. You can see now that the words around the dome's edge are in fact 6 feet high, as tours mention- you'd never believe it from the ground. Unreal.

Then we got further up into the dome itself, en route to the roof. Rockin. This is one of my favorite climbs I've ever done- inside the shells of the dome, where both sides start to curve. This isn't a trick of photography. That's why Jessica and Tiffany leaned back, and Britta stood up straight. It got hard to walk around in a circle up curving stairs with curved walls...

And then we were in a tiny spiral staircase, too tiny for a railing apparently, so it had a ROPE up the middle. YEAH. Felt adventurous :)

And here, the view, WORTH IT, of Vatican City and surrounding Rome, from up on the roof of St. Peter's. Those statues down on the front of St. Peter's are 12 feet tall. And of course St. Peter's Square is ENORMOUS. Its also an ellipse, with water fountains at each of the centers, or foci (its a math thing).

From the ground now, thats the dome that we were up in and around.

Here's another breathtaking thing: A statue of St. Peter. Bronze sculpture. I forget how old, but LOOK. We're talking solid bronze here. Metal. Hard. And yet his foot had been touched so many times that the finger oils alone had worn his foot down from sculpted toes to a rounded knob. That is AMAZING.

Tiffany and my shadow, cast across the cobblestones of St. Peter's.

That night after dinner we came back to Vatican City area to go to my favorite place- Castel Sant'Angelo. Had many uses over the years, including castles, dungeons, place the pope lived, etc. Its round, and has spiral ramps inside. Pretty awesome. And secret passages.

These spiral passageways were wide enough and gradual enough that they could take horses with buggies (or chariots, or whatever) up into the middle.

These two pigeons were apparently staying warm on the light. It looked cool.

Here was a drawbridge (still like inside the walls of the castle, cause there was also a central courtyard).

The original Michael the Archangel statue that graced the top of the castle, before it was replaced by a bigger, more awesomer one. (more curvy S...I said CONSUMMATE Vs!! Sorry...obscure joke)

And, once again, the view is always worth the climb. We spent awhile up here just looking. St. Peter's off to the right.

And be-deep-be-deep-be-deep THAT'S AAAAALL, FOLKS! Next up...more Rome.