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.