We're wrapping up Rome.
Today we finished scouting the Angels and Demon's sites, now all that is left to do is write the adaptation to get the movie made.
If anyone is getting Tina's updates too you might not have gotten one yesterday. Somehow she managed to get Gmail to eat it when she was saving a draft, so she's typing fast and furious today- probably trying to do her "makeup homework". I haven't actually seen anything she's sent, and she hasn't seen mine. We'll have to trade notes when we get back and see if we were actually on the same vacation!
Today's big sites were St Maria Del Popolo, home of the Chigi Chapel and St Maria Della Vitoria, home of the Ecstasy of St. Theresa. We had tried to visit the latter yesterday but were denied, it was Sunday and Mass was in progress. Some poor communication with the priest guarding the entrance (keeping the tourists at bay) yielded much confusion and the number 3. Whether that meant the masses would be done at 3 or there were to be three masses I'm not sure, so we proceed on our way. Today's visit found the door unguarded and tourists welcome.
A short combo of walk and subway ride later we found our way to St Maria Del Popolo, home of the Chigi Chapel. A fun little church but a bit heavy on the whole death angle. Up until 1870ish Popes allowed burials in and under churches and St Maria Del Popolo was heavily used for this function. Each little side chapel included at least one tomb and a manhole sized cover in the floor. These man holes lead down to graves where family members were buried. The process included digging a little niche and tossing the body in. Apparently it got a bit stinky after a while.
I commented to Tina that this church probably wasn't popular with weddings. Embedded in the floor right after crossing the threshold at the back of the church was a brass scull and cross bones. What a way to start your wedding. "Right this way ma'am, mind your step".We also made a side trip to the Cappucin Crypt (more death). Decorated with the bones and skulls of 4,000 friars arranged into patterns, the Cappucin Crypt lives up to its slogan, "We you are we once were, what we are you will become".
We also had some gellato (lemon and rasberry is my favorite combination) from a couple different spots. To say there are several places to buy gellato would be an understatement. It would be more appropriate to say you can't swing a stray cat without hitting a scooter causing the driver to swerve in front of a smart car and forcing it to crash into a gellato store.
Sunday, June 19, 2005
Saturday, June 18, 2005
Ah, La Meridina!
It's a hot one.
We had an easy schedule today after a great late dinner last night. Our guide book recommended a nice Irish bar with really good Italian food (and some non-Italian dishes) and football (soccer) on TV. Alex can now honestly say he went to an Irish bar in Rome and ordered a Margarita (Margharita Pizza is Cheese with tomatoes). The soccer game was pretty good and the finish was very entertaining, with the losing team's fans attempting to smash through the plexiglass on the field. While the small group of fans attempted to break through the wall, the rest of the fans stood in the stadium and watched. The police finally got tired of all this and fired a small amount of tear gas into the crowd. Everyone headed for the exits after that.
Today we went to the Baths Diocleatian and snapped some pictures of the Meridian line (La Meridina, dating from 1702), a high tech clock and calendar- very Indiana Jones. The line is oriented straight north south (a cool enough feat considering when it was built) and a small hole 65 feet up on the south wall lets a thin beam of light in that arcs across the floor. At noon, the light hits the brass meridian line. In addition to this function, the line includes markings for months and seasons. The distance up the line where the beam of light hits it reveals the date. They didn't use daylight savings time, so the light beam was due to cross the meridian at 1310 today according to a sign on the wall. At the base of the line was a small oblong circular pattern of concentric rings. Apparently a small hole in the north wall of the building let light from the north star in which swirled around the concentric circles as the earth rotated and tilted with the seasons.
Apparently this ancient Timex was the official clock of Rome until 1846. The new "official timekeeper" is a cannon on Gianicolo Hill that is still fired every day at exactly noon.
From the baths we went to to Octagonal Hall for some statue browsing, then on to our ultimate destination, a walk north to the Spanish steps and on to Villa Borghese. We had made reservations for entry before coming to Rome to see the gallery which allows 360 people in every two hours.
The Borghese was much more impressive than I expected. When planning things I thought I might be overdosed on sculpture and paintings by the time we got around to it, but since much of the art in the Borghese was commissioned specifically for use in this mansion it all seemed to fit together nicely. We picked up a guidebook to have some photos to bring back since the Borghese strictly enforces a no cameras or bags policy. I briefly toyed with the idea of asking where "dogs playing poker" was displayed, but we saved that as a joke amongst ourselves.
All in all a relaxing and quieter than usual day and, for those keeping score, much walking South to North today rather than yesterdays east-west .
Internet cafe tip of the day: Switching the language from Italian to English (British) via an icon in the task tray makes things worse, not better.
We had an easy schedule today after a great late dinner last night. Our guide book recommended a nice Irish bar with really good Italian food (and some non-Italian dishes) and football (soccer) on TV. Alex can now honestly say he went to an Irish bar in Rome and ordered a Margarita (Margharita Pizza is Cheese with tomatoes). The soccer game was pretty good and the finish was very entertaining, with the losing team's fans attempting to smash through the plexiglass on the field. While the small group of fans attempted to break through the wall, the rest of the fans stood in the stadium and watched. The police finally got tired of all this and fired a small amount of tear gas into the crowd. Everyone headed for the exits after that.
Today we went to the Baths Diocleatian and snapped some pictures of the Meridian line (La Meridina, dating from 1702), a high tech clock and calendar- very Indiana Jones. The line is oriented straight north south (a cool enough feat considering when it was built) and a small hole 65 feet up on the south wall lets a thin beam of light in that arcs across the floor. At noon, the light hits the brass meridian line. In addition to this function, the line includes markings for months and seasons. The distance up the line where the beam of light hits it reveals the date. They didn't use daylight savings time, so the light beam was due to cross the meridian at 1310 today according to a sign on the wall. At the base of the line was a small oblong circular pattern of concentric rings. Apparently a small hole in the north wall of the building let light from the north star in which swirled around the concentric circles as the earth rotated and tilted with the seasons.
Apparently this ancient Timex was the official clock of Rome until 1846. The new "official timekeeper" is a cannon on Gianicolo Hill that is still fired every day at exactly noon.
From the baths we went to to Octagonal Hall for some statue browsing, then on to our ultimate destination, a walk north to the Spanish steps and on to Villa Borghese. We had made reservations for entry before coming to Rome to see the gallery which allows 360 people in every two hours.
The Borghese was much more impressive than I expected. When planning things I thought I might be overdosed on sculpture and paintings by the time we got around to it, but since much of the art in the Borghese was commissioned specifically for use in this mansion it all seemed to fit together nicely. We picked up a guidebook to have some photos to bring back since the Borghese strictly enforces a no cameras or bags policy. I briefly toyed with the idea of asking where "dogs playing poker" was displayed, but we saved that as a joke amongst ourselves.
All in all a relaxing and quieter than usual day and, for those keeping score, much walking South to North today rather than yesterdays east-west .
Internet cafe tip of the day: Switching the language from Italian to English (British) via an icon in the task tray makes things worse, not better.
Friday, June 17, 2005
Let's Play Who's Going to get the Boot!
Where's the rain? We've had a light shower pretty regularly at the end of the day, it helps cool things off. Today it was just clear and hot. We replaced our Pompeii trip with a short trip back to the Vatican (west edge of Rome) to attempt to see the crypt (closed, oh well) and a trek west to east across Rome.
Tina's favorite activity in the vicinity of St. Peter's is to watch the staff turn away men wearing shorts and women with off the shoulder blouses. There are huge picture signs that make it perfectly clear you cannot go in wearing anything that leaves shoulders through knees exposed. Even after passing three separate places along the way, including a rather hot crowd trying to get through metal detectors people in shorts and with bare shoulders try to go in, only to be turned back. Tina shared her fun story with a British lady who immediately joined in the game of trying to spot people in the crowd who were going to get the boot.
After leaving St Peter's Square we walked along il passeto, the passage built for the pope to escape to Castle Sant' Angelo during sieges. Once there we toured the cool (literally, very thick walls kept it comfortable) castle. The round structure includes a very handy ramp that spirals up 410 feet. Originally built as a tomb by and for Emperor Hadrian (later used by other emperors), Castle Sant' Angelo got around a zoning law that said thou shant be buried inside the city of Rome. Hadrian snapped up a sweet piece of real estate right across the river, and technically outside the city, and built himself a nice little burial spot. Apparently over time it became a bit passe to be buried there and through the dark ages the castle was used as a fortress and prison. Finally the Pope tapped into it as a little escape pad and a very nice little apartment and terrace were established on top. We toured those, a subtle and easy way to see a former pope's bedroom (not an option over at the Vatican) and enjoyed the view, breeze, and a light lunch from the roof of the castle.
After coming down from the castle we walked to the middle of Ponte Sant' Angelo (the ped bridge crossing the tibre river in front of the castle) and peered over the edge into the river, where nearly 200 people fell to their death in 1450 during a Jubilee Year festival.
We then caught a bus across the river and to get us close to Piazza Navona, where we started our west to east walk. We wandered through the piazza admiring the art vendor's goods and made our way east to the Pantheon, a slight detour a block south to see the Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva (a quattro treat; 1-it is the only Gothic church in Rome, 2-plaques outside mark the depth of water during previous floods, 3-it was built over (sopra) the pre-Christian pagan Temple of Minerva; and 4-under the alter is buried St Catherine of Siena who in the late 1300s is credited with persuading the pope to return from France to Rome, saving Italy from some hard times. Not yet worthy of a stop? Throw in an incident in 1634 when Galileo (then 70 years old) knelt at the alter in this church on his way to his trial before the Inquisition.
From there we kept going east, to another Egyptian Obelisk (Rome reportedly has 13, more than any other city in the world-some are fake), Piazza Colonna (which, surprise, has a column), and on to the Trevi Fountain. Alex declined the opportunity to throw two coins into the fountain (one promising a return to Rome, the second indicating he would find his love here). Judging by the way some young teen girls were oggling him on the train yesterday he doesn't need the coins. Must be the haircut. Tina and I think one of the girls snapped his picture on her camera phone, Alex was oblivious.
After Trevi we continued east to Piazza Barberini which is home to (maybe you recall) our Internet Cafe!
Internet Cafe Tip of the Day: The hyperlink "Top Up" on the home page is used to add credits to your current session.
Have a good one!
Tina's favorite activity in the vicinity of St. Peter's is to watch the staff turn away men wearing shorts and women with off the shoulder blouses. There are huge picture signs that make it perfectly clear you cannot go in wearing anything that leaves shoulders through knees exposed. Even after passing three separate places along the way, including a rather hot crowd trying to get through metal detectors people in shorts and with bare shoulders try to go in, only to be turned back. Tina shared her fun story with a British lady who immediately joined in the game of trying to spot people in the crowd who were going to get the boot.
After leaving St Peter's Square we walked along il passeto, the passage built for the pope to escape to Castle Sant' Angelo during sieges. Once there we toured the cool (literally, very thick walls kept it comfortable) castle. The round structure includes a very handy ramp that spirals up 410 feet. Originally built as a tomb by and for Emperor Hadrian (later used by other emperors), Castle Sant' Angelo got around a zoning law that said thou shant be buried inside the city of Rome. Hadrian snapped up a sweet piece of real estate right across the river, and technically outside the city, and built himself a nice little burial spot. Apparently over time it became a bit passe to be buried there and through the dark ages the castle was used as a fortress and prison. Finally the Pope tapped into it as a little escape pad and a very nice little apartment and terrace were established on top. We toured those, a subtle and easy way to see a former pope's bedroom (not an option over at the Vatican) and enjoyed the view, breeze, and a light lunch from the roof of the castle.
After coming down from the castle we walked to the middle of Ponte Sant' Angelo (the ped bridge crossing the tibre river in front of the castle) and peered over the edge into the river, where nearly 200 people fell to their death in 1450 during a Jubilee Year festival.
We then caught a bus across the river and to get us close to Piazza Navona, where we started our west to east walk. We wandered through the piazza admiring the art vendor's goods and made our way east to the Pantheon, a slight detour a block south to see the Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva (a quattro treat; 1-it is the only Gothic church in Rome, 2-plaques outside mark the depth of water during previous floods, 3-it was built over (sopra) the pre-Christian pagan Temple of Minerva; and 4-under the alter is buried St Catherine of Siena who in the late 1300s is credited with persuading the pope to return from France to Rome, saving Italy from some hard times. Not yet worthy of a stop? Throw in an incident in 1634 when Galileo (then 70 years old) knelt at the alter in this church on his way to his trial before the Inquisition.
From there we kept going east, to another Egyptian Obelisk (Rome reportedly has 13, more than any other city in the world-some are fake), Piazza Colonna (which, surprise, has a column), and on to the Trevi Fountain. Alex declined the opportunity to throw two coins into the fountain (one promising a return to Rome, the second indicating he would find his love here). Judging by the way some young teen girls were oggling him on the train yesterday he doesn't need the coins. Must be the haircut. Tina and I think one of the girls snapped his picture on her camera phone, Alex was oblivious.
After Trevi we continued east to Piazza Barberini which is home to (maybe you recall) our Internet Cafe!
Internet Cafe Tip of the Day: The hyperlink "Top Up" on the home page is used to add credits to your current session.
Have a good one!
Thursday, June 16, 2005
Shift is labelled Maiusc
Ok, so I'm not so smart. I just figured out I was picking names from the Frequently Mailed List on GMail, not from my All Addresses list. So if you haven't gotten two previous updates and want to know, send me a message and I'll get you the "back issues" (no charge, they aren't that exciting).
Today was pretty cool. We went out of Rome to the historic port city of Ostia Antica (founded about 620 BC). A sunny day, two subways and a transfer to a "train" (really just an above ground subway) and we were within walking distance of the site. There's been a ton of restoration done, and our guide book kept us focused on the main stuff. It'd be easy to spend many hours wandering among the shells of brick buildings. The long story short is this was the first "colony" of the Roman Empire. Rome, on the Tiber River but for all intensive purposes land locked, needed a port. Ostica Antica is at the mouth of the Tiber river and facing the Mediterranean Sea. Sea going ships would offload here, and cargo could be transferred to river ships. Everything was going along smoothly until the Roman Empire collapsed, Ostica was abandoned, silt built up and the city was buried. Oh, and of course as anyone who's flown over a river knows, they change course. The river curved away from the buried city and everything just sat there, waiting for an interested archaeologist to dig it up.
The city center has an amphitheater (seats 4,000) that is still used today. It is currently set up for some sort of Summer International Concert Series. Perhaps some of the money helps pay for the restoration projects? No Black Eyed Peas on the agenda but we saw a changing room (think ice fishing house set beside a 2,000 year old curved stone open air theater) labelled James Taylor Quartet- not sure if that does anything for you all, but there doesn't seem to be a bad seat in the house.
We're modifying our schedule a bit and dropping the trip to Pompeii. There's plenty to do here and we're enjoying the slower pace of Italy permeating our schedule. We just go with the flow and don't really rush anywhere. We see people running through the subway trying to catch trains and we just don't really care, there's another one coming. We start the day pretty slow, enjoying the morning breeze on the terrace and updating journals. After touring whatever and when we get hungry we find some food. The little snack place at Ostia Antica has great pasta salad with mozzarella and tomatoes by the way. Then in the evening we've been stopping by this Internet Cafe, after which we'll head back towards the hotel. Yesterday we walked by an interesting looking Pizza shop (not quite a ristorante but more than a snack bar) so we popped in and had dinner.
The other tourists are a mixed bag, imagine a place in the world and there's a small contingent of tourists from there here. We were informed that we'd be easily identified as American's by wearing tennis shoes everywhere, maybe-maybe not. Lots of tennys in this town. The only people we've seen broadcasting where they are from are Canadians (easy to spot Canadian flags on bags and hats). Presumably they don't want to be thought to be Americans, the premise of a Daily Show segment. Whatever. No one seems to care where were from, and everyone has been friendly and helpful.
Settle a debate for me. Tina is convinced the (overpriced) cans of pop here are smaller than there. We buy plastic water bottles from street vendors on our way out on our outings, so it isn't a big deal, just a curiosity. They say 330 ml on the side, is that the same as what is on a 12 oz can there?
Tidbit of the day: a Euro style keyboard has extra characters on the right after the letters and numbers but before you get to the backspace, return key, and shift (labelled Maiusc) on your keyboard. This can be a pinky stretcher getting over there to hit return.
Today was pretty cool. We went out of Rome to the historic port city of Ostia Antica (founded about 620 BC). A sunny day, two subways and a transfer to a "train" (really just an above ground subway) and we were within walking distance of the site. There's been a ton of restoration done, and our guide book kept us focused on the main stuff. It'd be easy to spend many hours wandering among the shells of brick buildings. The long story short is this was the first "colony" of the Roman Empire. Rome, on the Tiber River but for all intensive purposes land locked, needed a port. Ostica Antica is at the mouth of the Tiber river and facing the Mediterranean Sea. Sea going ships would offload here, and cargo could be transferred to river ships. Everything was going along smoothly until the Roman Empire collapsed, Ostica was abandoned, silt built up and the city was buried. Oh, and of course as anyone who's flown over a river knows, they change course. The river curved away from the buried city and everything just sat there, waiting for an interested archaeologist to dig it up.
The city center has an amphitheater (seats 4,000) that is still used today. It is currently set up for some sort of Summer International Concert Series. Perhaps some of the money helps pay for the restoration projects? No Black Eyed Peas on the agenda but we saw a changing room (think ice fishing house set beside a 2,000 year old curved stone open air theater) labelled James Taylor Quartet- not sure if that does anything for you all, but there doesn't seem to be a bad seat in the house.
We're modifying our schedule a bit and dropping the trip to Pompeii. There's plenty to do here and we're enjoying the slower pace of Italy permeating our schedule. We just go with the flow and don't really rush anywhere. We see people running through the subway trying to catch trains and we just don't really care, there's another one coming. We start the day pretty slow, enjoying the morning breeze on the terrace and updating journals. After touring whatever and when we get hungry we find some food. The little snack place at Ostia Antica has great pasta salad with mozzarella and tomatoes by the way. Then in the evening we've been stopping by this Internet Cafe, after which we'll head back towards the hotel. Yesterday we walked by an interesting looking Pizza shop (not quite a ristorante but more than a snack bar) so we popped in and had dinner.
The other tourists are a mixed bag, imagine a place in the world and there's a small contingent of tourists from there here. We were informed that we'd be easily identified as American's by wearing tennis shoes everywhere, maybe-maybe not. Lots of tennys in this town. The only people we've seen broadcasting where they are from are Canadians (easy to spot Canadian flags on bags and hats). Presumably they don't want to be thought to be Americans, the premise of a Daily Show segment. Whatever. No one seems to care where were from, and everyone has been friendly and helpful.
Settle a debate for me. Tina is convinced the (overpriced) cans of pop here are smaller than there. We buy plastic water bottles from street vendors on our way out on our outings, so it isn't a big deal, just a curiosity. They say 330 ml on the side, is that the same as what is on a 12 oz can there?
Tidbit of the day: a Euro style keyboard has extra characters on the right after the letters and numbers but before you get to the backspace, return key, and shift (labelled Maiusc) on your keyboard. This can be a pinky stretcher getting over there to hit return.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
The Vatician Looks just like on TV!
The Vatician looks just like on TV!
Until you get on the roof. The coolest part of the day, sitting on the roof of St. Peter's Basilica and writing postcards to Tina's Mom and Mine. There is actually a snack shop and a small gift store with prices described by Rick Steves as "Sinful". We bought a couple of the obligatory rosaries and considered it a donation to the church.
Alex and I made the dome climb to the top of St. Peter's dome (advertised as 322 steps). The climb included some interesting stairwells squeezed between the outside and inside dome, with slanted walls just so you'd remember where you were. We were able to take the steps two at a time since a thunderstorm was headed in and the place wasn't crowed. Once up the slanted stairs we switched to a short series of tight spiral staircases and finally popped out at the top.
Working backwards now, we went through the Vatican Museum (I hope they have a good database of all that, uhhh, art). I was suprised by the sheer volume of statutes. The Map room didn't look anything like on the movie Hudson Hawk :)
The Sistine Chapel was much smaller than I was thinking it would be, but the ceiling and alter wall were more impressive. The room was of course packed. It was fun listening to the guards trying to quiet the people (it is a church after all). Every few minutes as the roar of the crowd rised, the guards would clap and ssshhh everyone.
Yesterday was a fun trip to the Colesseum, Arches and Forum. We spent a bit of time on Palatine hill, enjoying the very nice weather. It had rained a bit earlier, but a cool breeze and some clouds to cut the sun a bit made it perfect weather for stumbling around broken stuff oohhing and ahhhing.
A couple of arches off to the side of the forum were being prepped with a stage in front. The show that night was to be Averil Laveine and the Black Eyed Peas (I'm sure Tom has their entire collection).
We ate dinner at Target. Seriously. McDonalds the day before and Target today. Not the same as the stores you're familiar with, and probably pronounced differently, its a small restaurant on a side street not far from Piaza Repubblica and our hotel.
The hotel has been great. It's a small place (18 rooms) run by two brothers, very clean and squeezed into the fourth floor of a big building. There is a nice enclosed rooftop terrace we stop by in the morning to have some pastries and coffee. It's also a good spot to update our journals with the previous days activities.
Now were back at the same Internet cafe we were at last time. It is four subway stops from St. Peter's square, and about a 7-10 minute walk from our hotel (opposite directions from each other), so we just jumped off the subway here to check in. Its a very busy and big internet cafe with about a 100 computers on two floors.
No more interesting stories of being sick or attempted robbery. Even the street beggers seem to have calmed down. The scooter drivers and traffic are still nuts, and the subway is unreal with masses of people packed into the cars. It looks a bit like vertical body surfing at the bigger stops when locals will fling themselves at the doors to squeeze into an impossibly crowed car, only to be held in place by the doors slamming shut behind them. We watched how it worked for one train and duplicated the move on the next much less crowded train and it worked out fine.
Enough said. It is almost 8pm and time to get dinner.
Until you get on the roof. The coolest part of the day, sitting on the roof of St. Peter's Basilica and writing postcards to Tina's Mom and Mine. There is actually a snack shop and a small gift store with prices described by Rick Steves as "Sinful". We bought a couple of the obligatory rosaries and considered it a donation to the church.
Alex and I made the dome climb to the top of St. Peter's dome (advertised as 322 steps). The climb included some interesting stairwells squeezed between the outside and inside dome, with slanted walls just so you'd remember where you were. We were able to take the steps two at a time since a thunderstorm was headed in and the place wasn't crowed. Once up the slanted stairs we switched to a short series of tight spiral staircases and finally popped out at the top.
Working backwards now, we went through the Vatican Museum (I hope they have a good database of all that, uhhh, art). I was suprised by the sheer volume of statutes. The Map room didn't look anything like on the movie Hudson Hawk :)
The Sistine Chapel was much smaller than I was thinking it would be, but the ceiling and alter wall were more impressive. The room was of course packed. It was fun listening to the guards trying to quiet the people (it is a church after all). Every few minutes as the roar of the crowd rised, the guards would clap and ssshhh everyone.
Yesterday was a fun trip to the Colesseum, Arches and Forum. We spent a bit of time on Palatine hill, enjoying the very nice weather. It had rained a bit earlier, but a cool breeze and some clouds to cut the sun a bit made it perfect weather for stumbling around broken stuff oohhing and ahhhing.
A couple of arches off to the side of the forum were being prepped with a stage in front. The show that night was to be Averil Laveine and the Black Eyed Peas (I'm sure Tom has their entire collection).
We ate dinner at Target. Seriously. McDonalds the day before and Target today. Not the same as the stores you're familiar with, and probably pronounced differently, its a small restaurant on a side street not far from Piaza Repubblica and our hotel.
The hotel has been great. It's a small place (18 rooms) run by two brothers, very clean and squeezed into the fourth floor of a big building. There is a nice enclosed rooftop terrace we stop by in the morning to have some pastries and coffee. It's also a good spot to update our journals with the previous days activities.
Now were back at the same Internet cafe we were at last time. It is four subway stops from St. Peter's square, and about a 7-10 minute walk from our hotel (opposite directions from each other), so we just jumped off the subway here to check in. Its a very busy and big internet cafe with about a 100 computers on two floors.
No more interesting stories of being sick or attempted robbery. Even the street beggers seem to have calmed down. The scooter drivers and traffic are still nuts, and the subway is unreal with masses of people packed into the cars. It looks a bit like vertical body surfing at the bigger stops when locals will fling themselves at the doors to squeeze into an impossibly crowed car, only to be held in place by the doors slamming shut behind them. We watched how it worked for one train and duplicated the move on the next much less crowded train and it worked out fine.
Enough said. It is almost 8pm and time to get dinner.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Rome - Tuesday
Hello everyone,
Its 7pm and we've finished a great day of touring "broken stuff". Our highly technical Rome schedule includes days for "broken stuff", "dead people", "religious stuff", "vatican stuff (a day in itself)", etc.
The trip over went great, Alex was pretty jazzed about the inseat video system, allowing movie watching, tracking the plane on maps (it apparently got to -65 outside the surface of the plane while crossing the atlantic ocean at night while going 500 mph and at 37,500 feet). The Amerstam airport was our only trip into the Netherlands, so I don't think it counts as a country we've visited. From the air it looks very pretty, and the airport was nice :) We got to rome and took the train into town, about a 30 minute ride.
A short battle with the ATM at the airport ended in defeat, luckly we had changed some money at our bank in Eagan before coming over. Everyone stayed awake for the majority of the trip over so we were pretty tired yesterday. We wanted to adjust to local time and had arrived just before noon, so we kept ourselves busy until the evening. That meant doing little thinks like finding our hotel (a short walk from Termini-the central train station), another ATM fight (we won that one), a casual tour of the National Museum of Rome, and an open air "trambus" tour of the city to get oriented (2 hours on the open air upper deck of a double decker bus).
Of course not everything went smoothly. Within 5 minutes of leaving termini to walk to our hotel some kids tried to rob tina. She had a small backpack on and we were dragging our luggage to the hotel (we were still carrying our luggage to the hotel) when they snuck up behind her and opened all the zippers on her pack. She felt the tugs and turned around, scaring them a short distance away. Alex and I were walking in front of her and missed all the action. She shouted for us to stop and we checked her bag. Nothing was missing and we had been warned about this kind of thing so we gave the kids the stink eye and moved on.
As far as impressions of the city, its hard to describe. Busy, crowded, and hot. Every horror story you've heard about the traffic is true, but they may have left out the number of scooters and the death defying moves they make in front of and around buses (it was fun watching them use the trambus we were on as a blocker at intersections, where the scooters would shoot around the bus and cut in front of it to make a corner). My cousin described rome as "I took one step off the train and realized no one here cares if I live or die". Probably true, and I was happy about it after the trambus ride. The heat, long hours awake, and stops and starts and traffic had made me very car sick. I got off the bus, found a nice tree (not an easy task in downtown rome) and dry heaved into the roots. Nobody seemed to care, per my cousins comment, but I was pretty happy about it at that point. After a bit of be sick I felt better and we went on to dinner and ended the day. Alex and Tina have been troopers, putting up with a lot of running around and long hours to get to a strange land. To reward alex for his patience, we had our first meal in Italy at a McDonalds (hey, I just threw up in front of the Train station, why not?). Actually, Tina and Alex had a meal. I had half a chicken nugget and felt like looking for another tree, so I decided to pass on the whole meal deal for the evening. We tried our lucky ATM again on the way back to the hotel and it denied us with a cryptic "we have been instructed to return your card". I was ok with that for the moment, so we went back to our room. We struggled to stay awake until 9 or 10 then decided we'd adjusted to the time zone and slept for the night.
Today we went to see the Colleseum, Roman Forum and Palentine Hill. We also learned how to navigate the Roman Subway and found this Internet Cafe on Piaza Barberini. My Internet card is running out of time, so I'll sign off for now and send another update later in the week.
Its 7pm and we've finished a great day of touring "broken stuff". Our highly technical Rome schedule includes days for "broken stuff", "dead people", "religious stuff", "vatican stuff (a day in itself)", etc.
The trip over went great, Alex was pretty jazzed about the inseat video system, allowing movie watching, tracking the plane on maps (it apparently got to -65 outside the surface of the plane while crossing the atlantic ocean at night while going 500 mph and at 37,500 feet). The Amerstam airport was our only trip into the Netherlands, so I don't think it counts as a country we've visited. From the air it looks very pretty, and the airport was nice :) We got to rome and took the train into town, about a 30 minute ride.
A short battle with the ATM at the airport ended in defeat, luckly we had changed some money at our bank in Eagan before coming over. Everyone stayed awake for the majority of the trip over so we were pretty tired yesterday. We wanted to adjust to local time and had arrived just before noon, so we kept ourselves busy until the evening. That meant doing little thinks like finding our hotel (a short walk from Termini-the central train station), another ATM fight (we won that one), a casual tour of the National Museum of Rome, and an open air "trambus" tour of the city to get oriented (2 hours on the open air upper deck of a double decker bus).
Of course not everything went smoothly. Within 5 minutes of leaving termini to walk to our hotel some kids tried to rob tina. She had a small backpack on and we were dragging our luggage to the hotel (we were still carrying our luggage to the hotel) when they snuck up behind her and opened all the zippers on her pack. She felt the tugs and turned around, scaring them a short distance away. Alex and I were walking in front of her and missed all the action. She shouted for us to stop and we checked her bag. Nothing was missing and we had been warned about this kind of thing so we gave the kids the stink eye and moved on.
As far as impressions of the city, its hard to describe. Busy, crowded, and hot. Every horror story you've heard about the traffic is true, but they may have left out the number of scooters and the death defying moves they make in front of and around buses (it was fun watching them use the trambus we were on as a blocker at intersections, where the scooters would shoot around the bus and cut in front of it to make a corner). My cousin described rome as "I took one step off the train and realized no one here cares if I live or die". Probably true, and I was happy about it after the trambus ride. The heat, long hours awake, and stops and starts and traffic had made me very car sick. I got off the bus, found a nice tree (not an easy task in downtown rome) and dry heaved into the roots. Nobody seemed to care, per my cousins comment, but I was pretty happy about it at that point. After a bit of be sick I felt better and we went on to dinner and ended the day. Alex and Tina have been troopers, putting up with a lot of running around and long hours to get to a strange land. To reward alex for his patience, we had our first meal in Italy at a McDonalds (hey, I just threw up in front of the Train station, why not?). Actually, Tina and Alex had a meal. I had half a chicken nugget and felt like looking for another tree, so I decided to pass on the whole meal deal for the evening. We tried our lucky ATM again on the way back to the hotel and it denied us with a cryptic "we have been instructed to return your card". I was ok with that for the moment, so we went back to our room. We struggled to stay awake until 9 or 10 then decided we'd adjusted to the time zone and slept for the night.
Today we went to see the Colleseum, Roman Forum and Palentine Hill. We also learned how to navigate the Roman Subway and found this Internet Cafe on Piaza Barberini. My Internet card is running out of time, so I'll sign off for now and send another update later in the week.
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