Rome!

Blue skies over Rome

The history of Rome has fascinated me for many years. My first walk through the Roman Forum was moving. Since many of the stones that pave the streets there were covered with silt and later excavated, there’s a possibility that you could step on the same stone Julius Caesar walked on thousands of years ago! Honestly, the thought of writing a blogpost on Rome is overwhelming. The only way I can get my arms around it is to say that I’ll put some information on the photos (you'll need to open them to see it) and am writing random observations in no logical order below. So here goes:

Irish Pubs

There's an Irish pub in pretty much every city we’ve visited. Rome was no exception.

History

Rome is just layer after layer of history. Literally. You can be walking along a street and suddenly there’s a fenced-in area around an archeological dig.  We visited The Museum of Roman History where there were so many marble statues and sarcophagus I began to wonder if all of Italy was a massive marble quarry. This museum also had the interior frescoes of several ancient roman villas. The Colosseum always makes me wonder what it would have been like to be a gladiator looking up at the blood-thirsty crowds. The Roman Forum is vast and its incredible to imagine the machinations of all the politicians here. The Vatican Museums are awe-inspiring and include ancient as well as more modern treasures.  This picture is of a sarcophagus made of Imperial Porphyry which is so hard to carve that the technology to carve it was lost for 1000 years after this was made. 

Click here to read about Imperial Porphyry

Saint Peter’s Bascilica is massive and full of huge statues and other ornamentation.  Like so many masterpieces that have been threatened, The Pieta is behind glass now but is still moving. Thankfully, the crowds here are generally respectful. 

Speaking of layers. 

Rome seems to generate far more trash than it can deal with.  There are overflowing trash receptacles from small to large everywhere.  Lucky we weren’t here during the heat of summer!  

Influential renaissance men who were contemporaries of each other:

Leonardo da Vinci - his influence is everywhere.  

Michelangelo - completed the Pieta at age 24 and completed David at 25. Wow! He was a sculptor but was convinced to paint the Sistine chapel ceiling - a huge undertaking with breath-taking results. It was hard on my neck just looking up at it for 20 minutes. He painted it standing up and it nearly killed him. Years later he was convinced to paint/fresco the wall behind the alter and “The Last Judgement” is a masterpiece. 

Raphael 

Painted the papal apartments (for example) - immensely talented.

Click here for more photos and info.

Priests and Nuns 

We saw many groups of priests and nuns here - not unexpected since we’re near Vatican City.  The priests were always with other priests and the nuns with other nuns - no mixed groups. Many of the priests were from America as we heard their conversations - they seemed to have a lot of travel experiences. One of the reasons we heard them is they would meet in restaurants. They seemed to eat well and there were bottles of wine on the table even at lunch. We can’t say where the nuns were from as we didn’t hear them speaking and we never saw nuns eating out or drinking wine. 

Camping near Rome

Our campsite is about an hour by public transportation outside the heart of Rome so we had multiple trips to get it right using Google Maps. We learned that the busses are not very reliable. After learning how to interpret the signs on the stops we learned that the signs aren't entirely right either. We experienced busses that never seemed to come and busses that Google Maps said were due but there was no corresponding signage yet they arrived. There were also busses so crammed we couldn't get on even though we had waited longer than anyone else. Some people just seemed to push on and disappear into the crush of bodies. We decided that we would have to stop being so polite if we stayed here much longer.

This campsite and many we’ve visited also had lots of other kinds of accommodations such as chalets, bungalows, small pre-fab type homes, house tents and even a two-story house tent. All were much more reasonably priced than a room in Rome would be and many of these even had kitchen facilities. So if you’re tempted to go on a long trip but think you can’t afford it, this might be a lower cost way to go.

In this particular campsite, we were pretty close to a relatively major road so there was traffic noise but there are many that are farther outside and there’s little road noise.  

Speaking of Traffic:

Driving in Italy we’ve noticed a lot fewer RV’s and the highway drivers are less considerate. Roman drivers don’t spare the horn to express their opinions of other drivers’ actions. The average horn blast length increased exponentially here. There were also more sirens than we've heard anywhere else.

We drove the ring road around Rome, parked in the campsite and never attempted to drive into the city so the rest of our impressions were from the pedestrian perspective. Sidewalks were crowded when they existed.  There was no sense of safety in using a cross-walk - even when you are clearly granted right-of-way according to the lighted signs. Of course, lots of pedestrians also ignore the cross-walk lights. Somehow Rome seemed to wear us out faster than other cities and we think it may have been the stress of walking in those streets.

  

The moped drivers seemed particularly insane and there are lots of them! They wove through traffic, darted between cars, and drove in the lane meant for on-coming traffic if it suited them. Both moped and car drivers would drive two across in a single lane if they were able to squeeze through. Our last night there we saw a moped driver lying still on the ground in a pool of blood.  There was a person tending him and an ambulance arrived quickly but we were really shaken. I hate to end this post on such a somber note but everything I put afterwards seemed wrong too.

Rome is intense. After Rome, we needed some rest and relaxation. Next stop: Sorrento!