The Last 5 Days

Where did the week go! We leave Rome today for Capri and I still have four days to show you! So below are highlights from the rest of the week here in Rome which consisted of the Pantheon, Vatican, Sistine Chapel, St. Peter's Basilica, the Borghese Gallery and lot's of wandering the streets. I'm sorry I don't have time to write more or any captions to accompany the pictures.

Oh, how I will miss Rome! The thick crowds of tourists and the restaurants hawking their menu's to get us to eat there I will not, but Rome was amazing. I week here was definitely long enough, considering we saw all the sites we wanted to see in three days, but the extra days left many hours to wander and get away from the masses to really experience the peaceful, more local parts of Rome. Every meal was fantastic, we did have our first experience with some terrible gelato, and I finally got to have some authentically Roman spaghetti carbonara.

We are now off to the Isle of Capri where we've rented a little cottage for a week. The owners were lovely as they live here in Rome and we had to go to their house the other night to get the keys, maps and information. It will be a two hour train ride from Rome to Naples where we will then take a boat from Naples to Capri. We can't wait for the peace and quiet. Also, the cottage does not have internet so unless Rich's "personal hotspot" on his phone works, there won't be any posts until our second week at a different rental. I think this makes Rich a little nervous. I think it's fantastic. Time to pull out the deck of playing cards I brought and have some good, old fashioned, non-connected fun!

The Pantheon

Inside the Pantheon

A Pantheon Column for scale.

The Spanish Steps...you're suppose to climb them, but we're not sure why,

The piazza below the Spanish Steps was beautiful.

This is supposedly in the top 10 best pizza places in Rome, a family-owed bakery.
That's the caprese pizza and each pizza is about 4 feet long and they chop off square slices
with one big chop of the knife. It was wonderfully fresh and delicious.

The pilgrimage is over! We've made it to the Vatican.

Mailing a postcard home....like everyone else does, since the Vatican
is it's own country. It was more of an experiment to see if it makes
it home before we do.

St. Peter's Basilica through the Vatican Gardens.

Two interesting facts: The sculpture is supposed to represent the world in the outer sphere and the Vatican
City in the smaller inner sphere. The entire sculpture is also the same size as the ball at the very
top of the spire on St. Peter's Basilica dome which is in the background.

Our wonderful tour guide in the sculpture gallery of the Vatican Museum.

An unknown fact to me: Most of the ancient sculptures once had color whereas
now they're all natural stone color. On some sculptures the eye color will survive, like
on this one of the Goddess Athena.

Inside the tapestry room of the Vatican Museum.

The Map Room, where frescos of all the different regions of Italy are painted along
the walls.

Inside St. Peter's Basilica.
One of the most amazing places I've ever been in.

Part of the ceiling.

The entrance. Look how tiny everyone appears!

We were there at 5:00 a mass was going on behind this giant pulpit structure,
so we got to have some mood music with the organ during our tour.

It was the prettiest church I've ever been in.

So long Vatican City! It was a pleasure!

The Villa Borghese, home of the Borghese Gallery.
If you see one museum in Rome make it this one. It was absolutely amazing.

And then Rich found a buffet for lunch.

After the buffet we went back to the Trevi Fountain to toss a coin in with a wish.

There are vines like this all over the city.

Then we found a whole street of stores selling priest attire and church accessories.
We had no idea such places existed but I guess how else would a priest get his clothes.

On Saturday we went to the Borghese Park right next to our hotel to escape the crowds.
It was like Central Park just less crowded.

I read and Rich flew paper airplanes.

St. Peter's at night.

One of the more interested dinners in the old Jewish ghetto, but highly recomended on Trip Advisor and Zagat.
The fried artichokes as an appetizer are famous but it was a little strange eating the whole leaf.

At one of the top beer bars in the world, according to Rate Beer.com
I have to say, the "Weird Grape" was really good, and I hate beer.

And perhaps this sums up just how touristy Rome is.

Love.

On our last day we decided to make a stop by one more church, for good measure....
we picked one that's down the street from our hotel that always seamed to have a
waiting crowd out front. Reason for the crowd? The crypt, with the remains of
over 4000 friars, none of which were actually six feet under. The bones were everywhere.
On the ceiling, the walls, stacked. Some full skeletons still had their friar robes
on. It was wonderfully creepy but what had been done with the bones incredibly
creative and artistic. Pictures weren't allowed. Sorry.

Last dinner in Rome!

Arrivederci a Roma!

The Caesar Shuffle

The plan of attack for our first full day in Rome: see the great feats of Roman engineering....or whats left of them. Since the Colosseum and the Forum are right next to each other we decided to shuffle from one to the other...and quite literally for that matter, due to the extreme amount of tourists that had the same idea. After the awful bout with the subway the day before, we decided everything in Rome was walkable so we walked all the way from our hotel, which was clear across on the opposite end of the city center, probably a 45 minute walk. I'll take a 45 minute walk over staying close to a tourist vortex.

You have to have tickets to get into both the Colosseum and the Forum and of course we had nothing of the sort. The line at the Colosseum was beginning to wrap around the entire perimeter by the time we arrived but Rich, the ever-so-saavy ticket master had a feeling there would be a separate ticket line over at the entrance to the Forum but with a much shorter line, where you could purchase tickets for both sites. Of course he was right and we only waited in line for about 20 minutes. I need to start believing that sometimes (well, usually) he does know what he's doing and he's usually right.

First impression of the remains of the Holy Roman Empire? Truly impressive and awesome. I took a million and one pictures of it all, so only the ones that I think TRY to capture the grandeur and scale I posted below. The Colosseum was the most impressive, being the iconic symbol of Imperial Rome, especially if you picture scenes from the movie "The Gladiator", it kind of brings the whole thing to life. Walking through the Forum was a different kind of experience as it's not as grand of a structure, but rather a large spread of ruins that as you walk through you can really imagine what life was like 2000 years ago. We also walked through Palentine Hill which is even older than the Forum.

The Caesar Shuffle proved to be much more strenuous and exhausting than expected. We're blaming it on the incredibly tricky and large cobblestones that all of Rome seams to be paved with, along with the extremely irregular terrain of the ruins. That and it's getting hotter here in Italy. I still can't imagine being here in July and August. Anyway, as a result of the trekking we worked up quite an appetite and that evening decided to give into our heart's desire for something other than Italian food. Do you blame us? We've been eating Italian every single day for three weeks now....Well, I take that back. We had McDonald's at the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Home Sweet Home while in Rome!

The Westin Excelsior. Before it was a Westin it was just the Excelsior, built in 1906.

We're located in the Via Veneto/Villa Borghese district which is in the city center, but north of

all the tourists. The area is beautiful, peaceful and the side streets look just like the streets

between Madison and Park back in NYC. It's just lovely.

And far away from the peace of 5-stars is the Colosseum, ancient Rome and the vortex of tourism.

The Colosseum, originally called the Flavian Amphitheater is an elliptical amphitheater
in the center of the city and was the largest ever built in the Roman Empire. 
It is considered one of the greatest works of Roman architecture and Roman engineering.

A Roman gladiator....and behind him the line to get in.

Capable of seating 50,000 spectators, the Colosseum was used for gladiatorial contests and public spectacles such as mock sea battles, animal hunts, executions, re-enactments of famous battles, and dramas based on Classical mythology.

While most of the seating is gone and the floor has given way to the labyrinth below, it is still
an amazingly magical site. It was also really hot, even without 50,000 spectators sitting side by side.
I can't imagine. Probably much worse than a U.T. football game.

In addition to the structure itself, there are remains everywhere, from fallen
columns to large chunks of sculptures. There is an open-air exhibit that
also has artifacts of things ancient Romans probably had with them 
while viewing an event...everything from glass bottles to hair combs.

There has been quite an amount of restoration work or where you can tell
their trying to save parts of the structure from completely disappearing
as over the years lots of damage has been done from earthquakes to 
stone robbers. For the most part though, it's all pretty original.

I thought this very ironic; two girls lounging on an ancient column and one of their
t-shirts says "Nothing lasts forever." So true. 

It's kind of impossible to stop taking pictures of the Colosseum. 

The Palatine Hill is the centermost of the Seven Hills of Rome 
and is one of the most ancient parts of the city. It stands above the Forum.

According to Roman mythology, the Palatine Hill was the location of the cave, where Romulus and Remus were found by the she-wolf that kept them alive (remember, back in Siena this image is everywhere in the city). According to this legend, the shepherd Faustulus found the infants, and with his wife Acca Larentia raised the children. When they were older, the boys killed their great-uncle (who seized the throne from their grandfather), and they both decided to build a new city of their own on the banks of the River Tiber. Suddenly, they had a violent argument with each other and in the end Romulus killed his twin brother Remus. This is how "Rome" got its name - from Romulus.

Rome has its origins on the Palatine and recent excavations 
show that people have lived there since approximately 1000 BC.
Many affluent Romans of the Republican period (c.509 BC – 44 BC)
 had their residences there and during the Empire (27 BC – 476 AD) 
several emperors resided there. 

And next to Palentine Hill is the Forum.
The Roman Forum is a rectangular forum (plaza) surrounded by the ruins 
of several important ancient government buildings 
Citizens of the ancient city referred to this space, originally a marketplace, 
as the Forum Magnum, or simply the Forum.
Today is a sprawling ruin of architectural fragments and archeological excavations.

It was for centuries the center of Roman public life: 
the site of triumphal processions and elections, venue for public speeches, criminal trials, 
gladiatorial matches, and center of commercial affairs. Here statues and monuments also
commemorated the city's great men.

The teeming heart of ancient Rome, the Forum has been called the most celebrated 
meeting place in the world, 

And that concludes our Caesar Shuffle.

Next it was time for lunch..

After lunch we made our way to The Monumento Nazionale a Vittorio Emanuele II (National Monument to Victor Emmanuel II or Altare della Patria (Altar of the Fatherland). It is a monument built to honor Victor Emmanuel, the first king of unified Italy. It was inaugurated in 1911 and completed in 1935 and is built of white marble.

The monument also holds the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier with an eternal flame, 

built under the statue of Italy after World War I. 

The monument was controversial since its construction destroyed a large area of the Capitoline Hill along with a

medieval neighborhood. You can see the Colosseum from the top. The monument itself is often regarded as 

pompous and too large. It is clearly visible to most of the city of Rome despite being boxy and lacking a dome or a tower. The monument is also glaringly white, making it stand out amidst the generally brownish buildings surrounding it. Also, it's stacked nature has lent it several nicknames. Foreigners often refer to it as "the wedding cake", whereas Romans commonly call it "the typewriter".

Exhaustion.

And despite its criticism, the monument was really beautiful, mainly

because it is so stark white. Inside there is a museum about the

Italian Reunification, but we did a run through, as it was just too much Italian

history to absorb that late in the day.

And then our American palettes and the deprivation

for "American-tasting" food that they've been enduring for the last 

2.5 week got the better of us..and it's down the street from the hotel.

Rich: "I can't believe people still eat here or that

I'm paying their ridiculous price for a hamburger."

Me: "It'll be good."

We waited close to 45 minutes.

And it was worth it....

...as all cares and worries quickly vanished into the vanilla milkshake.

And is that a real glass of iced tea!!?!? Quite possibly the only one to exist in Italy.