(Rome)...Pompeii, again, also :)

(Sat. Dec. 5th)

Woot. Time for another repeat visit from 2002, but no matter. I chose it. A lot of my friends wanted to go to Pompeii, and though yes I'd been already, I wasn't an architecture student traveling with architecture student friends at the time. So I thought I'd really enjoy it, and learn a lot from it. Both were true.

We did a round-trip day: a few hours down to Naples, another almost hour to Pompeii, however many hours there, and then the same trip back. Not bad for one day. I brought my computer, determined to do school work and photo stuff rather than nothing for the whole time. We got up pretty early. My friends slept :) I was pretty sure I could check my bag at the door, and willing to take the risk anyway. Can't waste the time sleeping!

What was past Pompeii was one of my favorite places in the world, Sorrento. Probably due to unique circumstances at the time, I had a bloody fantastic time when I was there with my dad and my brother. We went to Pompeii, we did a lot of relaxing, a lot of eating, a lot of wine drinking, and had a room with floor-to-ceiling shuttered doors onto a balcony that overlooked the Adriatic waves lapping at the rocks a hundred feet below. We had just spent a week walking around all day, sleeping in places with no A/C, and having 50 lb. backpacks on our backs. So we enjoyed ourselves there.

Anyway, as we got near Pompeii, I at least considered for a minute staying on the train a little long and heading around the coast to Sorrento. I mean I could see it, around the bay across the water! But I stayed.

And we arrived. Pompeii!! Scavi means ruins. And below it says, apparently there was also the "house of mysteries" that I don't remember visiting before. Well we'll hafta do that...

As soon as you enter, you realize that its basically an entire town, whose ground plane at least was nearly totally intact...and many of the houses were intact all the way up to the roofs. You see the town walls, walk up the road made of large smooth stones (the predecessor to cobblestone) and through the gate in the wall.

And here you are- immediately in large open-wide public spaces- forums (fora is really the correct plural :) and temples and town square type places. You can see the bases of all the columns, which are all made of brick...

If you look closer, you can see how the columns were made. diamond-shaped bricks around a center brick, all stacked together, mortared, and then the columns were faced with limestone or marble.

This is the largest public open space near the front (all the sports/theater facilities were off to the side of the town). It was a large open grassy area that was originally surrounded by an arcade, or a long barrel-vault-covered walkway with two stories of columns. At the end was a temple of some god(dess).

Here is a great example of how intact the place was. This is inside someone's house, with existing frescoes on surviving plaster spread over the walls (and spread pretty thick!). And on the floor is a mosaic of two guys doing...something. I dunno what.

Here's a good example of one of the many, many let me emphasis, town streets. On each side you can see what is basically the sidewalk, then a giant curb, then the street, DEEPLY rutted from chariots (we're talking STONES here, cut in grooves from that many chariots).

To cross the street they had tall stones that you could walk across, which allowed the chariot to drive through still but a person to walk *above* the street, since they were often running with water either from rain, or else from the giant cistern at the back edge of the town, at the top of a hill, that they could open to let water run downwards down the streets into the town to wash the town streets- since they didn't have gutters or drains or sewers. Pretty sophisticated though!

When we got to the back, we got in one of the (multiple) amphitheaters to get a photo op. My friends were posing and yelling at me to get over there and get in the picture :)

Here again, the big stones for crossing. Four! That's a wide street.

I don't often pose photos, preferring just to get action shots- even not caring if people are looking or smiling. But on the flipside, I do enjoy an occasional posed shot that is just perfect.

Here for example. Crossing "Abbey Road". If only we were wearing all white, and barefoot. If you don't get the reference, at least Google Abbey Road, click "Images", and maybe you'll see what I'm talking about.

And then the girls hadta get their own photo.

At some point, we found out that part of the town was the shady area. If they did drugs back then, they sold em here. Our professor had told us about this area of Pompeii, but I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't see it.

We walked in a particular building that was apparently a brothel. No way. There were many small rooms, complete with stone beds (with stone pillows) and each room had pictures above it- as if you could choose the room based on uh, what you wanted. Like...you know...what position. Below is a less-graphic example.

This is what our professor had told us about. Apparently an image is a reliable way of communcating across languages, since at one point this was a trade town on the sea with Greeks and other nationalities coming through. So sure, a bunch of penises (peni? penisi?) was the perfect way to say "Hi, I'm a brothel! We service you here!"

There was also a water fountain, pressurized just by the water coming down from the mountain. Doesn't dispense water anymore, but it DOES still suck on Dave's thumb...

After rounding the back of the town and seeing the other side of the city walls (the place is flipping huge) we found the House of Mysteries. Didn't seem too mysterious. I also found a pen someone dropped, back outside the city walls, and I have it still- its my Pompeii pen now :)

The "Villa dei Misteri" did have some frescoes even though it didn't have many mysteries.

Despite the fact that we were there for hours, we did hafta start hurrying at the end- partly because I need to get back to the check-in place to get my laptop (it closed before the park did) and partly because we hadta make our train back to Rome. Or we'd be spending the night in lovely Naples.

Near the end, which was near the entrance, we found one of the main attractions- the cast plaster people. This guy was basically rapidly buried in place by volcano ash, and then his body decomposed and left an empty hole in the ash, which excavations found 2,000 years later and they made impressions of the spaces, and found people in contorted positions- freaky!

If you can ignore the bright red light (Shauna turned on her pre-flash red light on her camera so I could take an illuminated picture of it...or maybe Jessica did that, I forget) you can see that this is someone's face, in a grimace, with teeth and everything. So they were obviously buried (and killed) very quickly to have died in positions like this. Unreal.

Also nearby in another little villa was my favorite courtyard. Many of the houses that were in this good shape we weren't allowed in. I composited this from a bunch of photos, because I couldn't back up since I was right against the wall. So I took a bunch and Photoshop put them together (hence the jagged corners). I love this little space though. Smaller than it looks in this stretched out photo.

Here's another famous symbol of Pompeii- the dog mosaic. It says "beware of the dog" in Latin. Can you believe that? Some things never change...

This was way cool. The bathhouse. Frescoed inside, with the tradition calidarium and frigidarium (hot and cold water rooms) and cool skylights in the barrel-vault roof. Very dark, but nothing MY camera couldn't handle :)

Another cast of a dying person. Complete with grimace and a belt I guess. How morbid!

This guy presumably (and unsuccessfully) shielding himself from the falling ash...

Back where we began, this was the main public forum that used to be surrounded by two stories of colonnade. The main temple (I think to Minerva) is at the end of the forum. Its a cool space, decent grass...how did the grass survive the volcano ash...

Clearly, it was getting dark. And we hadta get outta there . Beautiful sunsets, and this is the only photo that got CLOSE to capturing it- and believe me I tried a bunch of different exposures and stuff.

Success! They gave me back my laptop, and no one had stolen it. We went to wait for our train back to Naples, and a few people got some delicious looking pizza on the way. There was also a sweet stand of lemon-y stuff, mostly limoncello. Most limoncello is made down in the south, specifically Sorrento, and we saw lots of it for sale when I was there with my dad and Chris- so whenever I see all this limoncello stuff, it reminds me of them. They also make it with oranges and tangerines and stuff. Tasty, but liquor-y :)

And that concludes our day trip to Pompeii. We headed back up to Rome, I tried to work on pictures and school work more, and it was almost time for Tiffany to visit too...

(Rome)...Scootering to Tivoli!!

(Fri. Dec. 4th)

Time for a new first in life. Riding, driving, a scooter. Been wanting to do this since 2002 when I came to Italy. And we decided to do it. More importantly also, we decided to go out to Tivoli, where Emperor Hadrian built a massive complex, because he wanted to live in the countryside and not the city. Considering it took us 1.5 hours on modern roads to get out there, Lord knows how long it took him to get to Rome by horseback or chariot or whatever.

And yes, it took us 1.5 hours. And we were going pretty fast. Like 40, 45 mph. On scooters. Trust me, that feels pretty fast. Especially up in the mountains, around turns. But anyway.

Here's Kat and Alex helmetting up. I was wearing a similar helmet, for the record. Shawna was my scooter mate, riding on the back.

John, Dave, Nate, looking pretty sweet in those helmets.

Here's our scooters. 150cc. Which was TOO BIG.

These things were heavy-ish, and powerful enough that you kinda shot forward when you gave it throttle. Felt easy to wipe out, cause they went fast and wanted to tip over. I felt constantly like one mistake and a split second, away from totally wiping out and wrecking my body and the bike. The rental was already like 40 euro or something, I forget, and we paid I think 10 extra for insurance. There were uh, some issues with some uh, spills, and some...collateral damage and associated costs. None for me, thank God. But a couple people weren't so happy at the end of the trip.

I have some other pictures of scootering that Shawna took, that I'll post later. When I post the "my friends' pictures" entry. Then you can see me driving, with her on the back and stuff.

Once we got up into the hills, we had a great view. Not much time to enjoy it, since I felt like I had my life and Shawna's in my hands every second, and was concentrating on staying with the pack- we were like a scooter gang.

We finally got to Tivoli (later than expected, cause it took us forever to get out of Rome- *I* was not navigating, for the record :) And we first went to Tivoli Gardens, cause some people had been to Hadrian's Villa, and also given the time, and thinking that the sun would be going down before we left, wanted to get back, and were actually willing to skip seeing Hadrian's Villa for the sake of safety. I personally wasn't neurotically thinking I'd automatically die if I drove back in the dark, and wasn't gonna come this far and not see a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

So the gardens, first. On the side of a hill. So lots of steps and cascading fountains. Pretty awesome.

And great views.

Longest series of fountains I've ever seen, wow.

HUGE fountain, built into the side of the hill. And by the way, at least originally, all these fountains were driven simply by the natural water pressure coming out of the hillside.

This thing actually opened up and was an organ that played once an hour, that was also driven by water pressure somehow.

After rushing through the gardens, and ditching everyone else and figuring out the scooter situation, and who was paying for what since we were splitting stuff but changing plans and switching riders, Jessica, Dave and I (Jessica and Dave driving together- she didn't wanna drive) we split up, and the three of us, me driving solo, headed for the Villa, through the town of Tivoli. First off, it was way easier driving with just me on there. But also more scary, cause at least with Shawna holding on I felt like I had a seat belt and something behind me!

Here's some random castle in town. Wish we had time to see it. Looked cool.

Hadrian's Villa! Our scooters! Not bad looking, at least they had lockable storage for our helmets, and they were blue. Cool.

Here's a model of the entire complex. Ridiculous big.

Ruins. This place was like a city, not a palace. Domes, colonnades, giant reflecting pools, building after building after building...like the whole Roman Forum again.

This reflecting pool is a pretty famous representative for the complex. I've seen many photos.

The sun was definitely starting to set, and we were trying to hurry, but the place was cool, so screw it. We also knew we hadta get back to turn the scooters in before the rental place closed. The setting sun made for great light though!

Sorta reminds me of Versailles.

Back in the city, after a harrowing drive following maniac Dave's driving through town after town (I swear he was trying to lose me) and trying to figure our way back into Rome the right way, we finally got back to the rental shop, after trying to make it back to a much closer one to our hotel, that we couldn't find and it was closing. Dave liked weaving between cars at stop lights. That is not easy to do. The bike likes trying to tip over at slow speeds. Man I can't believe I didn't damage or injure anything. Seriously.

But here's Vittorio Emmanuele II monument, all lit up. With Trajan's Column in the foreground.

The column is a spirally-written picture version of the conquering of something by his troops. The column is big enough that there are circular stairs inside and you can see small slit windows going all the way up the side.

So that was that for the day. Quite an adventure. It was really fun, but I was really glad for it to be over. I felt near danger the entire time I was on the scooter. So finally being able to let down my guard was quite a relief!

Rome, also for the second time, a long time...

(Mon. Nov. 30th to Thu., Dec. 3rd)

So I went to Rome with my dad and Chris in 2002, same time I went to Florence before. That time we spent I think a total of 5 days there. Did a ton. But DIDN'T do a ton also. So much to see! So this trip was 9 days in Rome. Wow. I felt pretty comfortable making my way around by the time I was done, especially considering the amount of small winding streets. Hard to navigate until you start understand where you are, where you need to be, and which direction you're pointing, which isn't always easy.

We left Florence in the early afternoon (I think) and got to Rome in the evening, on the train. I know many people slept or talked- I took the entire trip to work on my pictures from Florence and my remaining schoolwork that was still ridiculously due.

We found out we were staying at two separate bed and breakfasts, nearby-ish, owned by the same lady, Michelle. Who was very Italian, pretty, probably dyed jet-black hair, and wore expensive tight jeans and lots of perfume. She was really nice though. I told her I spoke a bit of Italian, but she seemed to be surprised every time of the few, that I actually spoke any Italian.

Anyway, after finding our hotel (which you'll see pictures of later) we all met up that night to begin our sightseeing. I knew our hotel was near one of my favorite landmarks in the city, the Castel Sant'Angelo (castle of the holy angel, which would be Michael, the archangel). AND, look what a great night shot my camera took!

This castle was the final destination of stuff in Angels and Demons. Sorry if I just ruined that for anyone. It served as a dungeon/prison many times, and also a papal refuge- there's a continuous wall with tunnel in it, going all the way to the Vatican, presumably to the Pope's room, so he could escape to relative safety if need me. Pretty cool.

Here's the view just down the river. There's a bridge extending direction into the castle, that crosses the river Tiber, which runs down towards...yeah that's St. Peter's. Another cool night photo. Thanks, camera. I think I briefly paused to snap this while my classmates set their cameras perfectly still on the edge of the bridge :) Nice reflections too!

Crossing the bridge, we were walking towards the main part of central Rome, and I turned back to get a good shot of the castle, with the archangel up top. There's an older, original statue thats also inside, that I saw with Tiffany when we took a tour later. Great looking bridge too. The castle was built in many stages and layers, which is kiiiiinda evident here...

A short walk later we wandered (well, we were led, by our professor) into Piazza Navona- also featured prominently in Angels and Demons. At this point I had a loose concept, at best, about where things were, relative to each other, from my previous trip. But I learned :)

You can see the fake dove up at the top of the obelisk. LOTS of obelisks in this city, and most of them were stolen from Egypt centuries ago by Roman armies. How in the bloody hell they got them back is beyond me. Okay, I actually know...they floated them on logs...apparently...?

Nice to be back in piazzas instead of plazas/plaças in Spain :) From Piazza Navona, we walked to nearby Campo dei Fiori- "Field of the flowers". I guess it originally was that :) I don't remember who the statue was...I should know.

But really, now, its the #1 place to go to BUY flowers, from vendors during the day. It was a completely open piazza at night, with restaurants and outdoor seating ringing it, but during the day was FULL of vendors of flowers and food and DVDs and Venetian glass jewelry that was cheap but really pretty. So I bought some of it for someone pretty ;)

That was pretty much that night- just a brief tour to get us acquainted, see a few things, and then we got let go to get a bite to eat. I don't remember where I ate that night, but Rome is somewhat expensive (not THAT bad if you're careful) and I was saving money knowing I was gonna go BROKE when Tiffany got there and we ate gelato twice a day :)

So here's the bed and breakfast. A few floors up, on an old service elevator with the accordion metal door, that was so slow. This hallway is it, for the place, though I think she had two floors of rooms. This floor there were only three rooms, and she lived somewhere back through the kitchenette through a door that said no guests.

Here was our room.

A double bed in the middle with two rollaway type beds on the sides of it. And not much remaining space to move around :) The comforter/quilt things matched the curtains, and the walls were the same kind of...burnt peach color. A little overpowering... But I slept okay, once I got the slippery annoyingly silky bedcovering folded up and put away. It was a couple days of the lady remaking our beds before she realized I really didn't want that thing put back on the bed every time.

The next morning- hit the ground running with Alexander. Here was a sweet old Fiat Cinquecento (500), the old version of the new car that you'll see later, that they're bringing to the US this fall. I loved them. Tiny and Italian.

I just love the cobblestone EVERYWHERE.

Here below is uh, some cool shelves and glasses in some store.

And like I said, back in Campo dei Fiori, the Venetian glass necklaces. Some of em were kinda ugly, but some were really awesome.

Here's probably the smallest church in the city of Rome.

This was a piazza, since any space that was not strictly street was Piazza Something, as called out by a plaque on the wall of an adjoining building. But these buildings angled in towards this tiny church entrance...so weird!

We kept going, and between being in Campo dei Fiori, and walking by these ruins that were on Via Argentina, I knew we were really close to the hotel I stayed with Chris and my dad in 2002. But I couldn't find it...yet. No worries :)

These ruins are cool because I think Alexander said they were discovered during attempts at either street work or subway construction, and they just kept unearthing more and more.

There were signs labeling things that they presumed to be temples and such. There were a million cats living down there. It was weird. It was also a very active site- still lots of excavation going on, with pieces of columns and other things laid on the ground waiting to be reassembled. And you could see that the ruins extended under the streets we were on and even under the buildings across the street. Rome is basically a city on a city on a city...they used to just bury and build on top. Which is why the streets rise up around the Pantheon...you'll see.

After way too long standing by the ruins, Alexander released us for the day already- it was like noon or something. What the heck. So we started wandering- I think just me and Britta and Jessica, cause we were gonna make our way slowly back to the hotel to do school work and take naps and such. Others went straight for the Colosseum and such. In time.

Ha HA!! I found it! The hotel I stayed at with my dad and Chris for like 5 days.

Nothing special, but it was the first place I stayed in the first city I visited my first time overseas. As you can see from my dress, it was kinda chilly, in the 40s I think- not unbearable, way warmer than Chicago/South Bend at that time :) And only somewhat colder than Barcelona.

Here, around the corner outside a little shop was a kickass wool women's coat. If it wasn't so much money, for being handmade and all, I would have bought it, if it woulda fitted Tiffany- cause it was just cool. Dunno how they even dyed it like that.

Another bit of short wandering, by memory by looking on the map, and I found a restaurant where my friend Dina had written a message for me, years ago on the lintel of the door- it was gone. But the restaurant, and the name, remained :)

Then we made our way back out to one of the main streets that leads all the way from the river, near the castle, to the Colosseum, and followed it back.

I got the largest merengue puff I'd ever seen. My Aunt Jenny makes tiny bite-sized ones that are delicioso- so I had to have this.

Admittedly, it was more than I could handle. But it was still tasty- basically took me the whole walk back to eat it. Next to me was the largest roll of "horse meat" as my dad calls it, Mortadella. Basically bologna, but grosser- giant pieces of white in it, I assume fat, and often times olives and such too. I'll pass. But cool to see :)

We walked back through Piazza Navona (how could you not!) and it was alive with activity- its the place a lot of the fair-kinda-stuff seems to happen in Rome. This time of year, near Christmas, they had lots of candy and Christmasy things like ornaments and other tree decorations, and figurines and stuff.

Here's Britta probably getting the entire piazza in one shot with her wide-angle lens. I shook my fist at her a lot for her great photos. Behind her is a truckload of candy in bins.

If you don't know by now, I like getting pictures of things with people in the pictures, taking pictures of the things. I think it sorta demystifies the photographer behind the photo. Or surrealizes it, since obviously Britta didn't take the photo that I showed.

Here's the rest of the piazza, complete with a carousel!

We took a circuitous route past the castle, exploring a bit- it has a giant dried-up moat around it (castles and moats and medieval stuff rule- though yes, this castle was a bit pre-medieval).

And just as we were finally getting back, the show began. The show being apparently hundreds of thousands of I-forget-what-kind-of-bird that seasonally flocks in Rome, and lives in these treetops, in parks and especially near the river.

So yeah, those dark clouds in the skies, those are birds. And they made a tremendous noise. I'll be posting videos later sometime. They flew in formation around and around for quite awhile before very suddenly all deciding to land. Their shapes in the sky looked like a lava lamp or something!

Here is the key to the outer door of the building where our hotel was. I thought it was cool.

The remainder of the evening was basically spent doing schoolwork. In Rome. Yep. I guess not much worse than spending a semester in Barcelona doing schoolwork :) It was due the follow week-ish, and I knew Tiffany was coming and I hadta be done by then...

The next day we embarked on some serious stuff. Right near the Vittorio Emmanuele II monument (giant white building with lots of steps and guys on horses on top, some people call it the birthday cake) were the steps up to a piazza I hadn't seen before- Campidoglio.

The buildings and the piazza pattern (a Fibonacci shape) were designed by Michaelangelo.

And if you walk through it to the back, you get a nice overlook of- Il Foro! The Forum is a great place. If you have a good imagination to see what it would have been like :)

After some standing around and listening to architectural/historical information, we walked around the corner to some building's rooftop where there was a coffee bar, and I had my very rare but delicious coffee for once. In Spain and Italy at least, and I think Switzerland and France, you can get cafe con latte/leche that is basically espresso with steamed milk, so the consistency and color and amount is that of a normal coffee with a couple creamers, but the flavor is much richer, and its frothy. DELICIOUS.

Anyway, you could see lots more ruins from up there. And a lot of domes too. Rome has a lot of domes.

Here's a theater of some sort (ruins) that a friend asked if it was the Colosseum :) Nope. That's a bit bigger.

Another cool view- only because of the AMAZING number of scooters parked down there!

Before heading back around, we went in a *little* church tucked around the corner. I don't even remember the name, but you know, you trip over churches in Rome. And they're all this nice.

We headed back around to the Vittorio monument itself, and this a view down its steps- that yellow circle will later have the city Christmas tree there. The building on the left is where Musolini and many others have had their office, and there's a balcony where he gave speeches from.

This is the tomb of the unknown soldier. Guarded 24 hours a day by guys who stand there all day and don't move or flinch. You know, like the Beefeaters in London.

And that was it for the day. Another half day of sightseeing and then off on our own. Time to wander.

Oh YEAH. If I owned a Vespa, I'd buy all kinds of stuff from this shop.

Here's a McDonalds, and I think the line out the door illustrates how sadly popular the place is in ROME. ROME!!! And people are eating this.

I was walking around with my friend Shawna, who wanted to take me to her favorite place. This little collection of buildings in front of another *small* church. She had been there when she was there while studying abroad through ASU.

These buildings were great. This is looking up at the sky, clearly, and the negative space they form, framing the sky, just awesome.

Here's a view of what the buildings really look like. Lots of extra work. Small, narrow buildings too! Must be weird inside...I could only see in the lobby, since the building was apparently the office of the Carabinieri- the police (though different from the polizia- kind of like city police vs. state troopers).

Inside Shawna's favorite church- this model that had representative types of churches from countries all over the world, all around it. Crazy idea. Crazy amount of work. Cool model.

Each country was labeled, and they were grouped by continent. I think there was one for every country, at least whichever places were countries at the time it was built. It looked old. Ish.

Again, on the way back, we wandered around the castle. There were brick pavers with mossy grass growing between them. I thought the texture and color was great.

The castle!!! Look at it. With an angel on top holding a spear. Tell me that's not awesome.

Another little Fiat!

And yet, this car was quite a bit smaller yet. Definitely wish I had a couple guys with me so we could pick it up like the car we picked up in Holland. This thing was Smart Car sized. I mean look, they didn't even hafta parallel park it!

I have no current recollection of what church this was. We found one, and walked in, cause how can you not, and it was cool, ceiling reminded me of Basilica at Notre Dame.

Here's the Pantheon. We decided to visit it on the way home. This is either 3 or 5 photos, assembled. I forget how many I hadta take.

Right behind where I took that picture, is a McDonalds. Yeah.

And here's the first of many Smart Car photos- like the Bible says, "where two or more are gathered"...I would take a picture. Here's four. I think my record in one photo was five or six.

That picture was the beginning of our adventure. Shawna and I took the afternoon to walk north, out of the old city, into more normative Rome, in search of some other things on the map. Firstly, the Olympic park, secondly some stadium things.

We first found this very Modernist building. No idea what it was or who built it.

Here's the Olympic village from 1956. Obelisk. Odd almost-coral colored buildings. Stadium in the background on the left. We couldn't really get in. Not sure what its all used for now.

A tiny little church, with lots of mosaic on the OUTSIDE. Yeah all that is not painted, its mosaic.

We found our stadiums, but first we found this odd, giant sculpture. Looks metal but turned out to be giant wood timbers, bolted together. And painted red.

Here's a basketball arena- Pier Luigi Nervi, one of the best engineer-architects of all time. Loved mathematical shapes and experimenting with the lightness of concrete. This shell is apparently only a couple inches thick.

The inside- why its so strong and yet light (and also kickass looking). It was part of the Olympics as well.

On to a brand new building, from another Italian Renzo Piano, who built the Modern Wing on the Art Institute in Chicago.

It is actually a series of three of these things, that look like armadillos, and are separate theaters, around a sunken courtyard surround by built-in seats that functioned as an amphitheater. Cool place, odd looking buildings, but whatever. Interesting.

And that was the end of that journey. We headed back (it was a couple hours, the whole walk we took) and I spent the night doing school work again.