unforth | Arrival and Day 1

As I so often do, I though I would attempt to keep my journal a bit more regularly away, to help me record and remember the various experiences that I am having. Pictures, of course, are pending.

The departure for this trip was one of the latest I've ever had scheduled for an international trip, with the plane supposed to take off at 9:45. We got to the airport very early - at around 3 PM, because darknesschildsin needed to get back in time for her evening classes. First, we found we couldn't check in until 6, so we hung out in a Starbucks (and I started the process of caffeinating, as I'd already been up since around 6:30). When we down at six, there was a decent sized line that I complained about. It was moving pretty quickly though, and things were looking up, when they suddenly stopped all check in. A patient on the flight our plane was currently on had gotten "sick" (we're thinking stroke or heart attack, now) and the plane had been forced to emergency land in Halifax. Since they no longer had any idea when the plane would even be taking off, they didn't want us to check in. It took the better part of an hour and a half before we moved again, the time spent bonding with the people around us (a group from way upstate on their way to visit family; a girl from Romania on her way home...) before we finally checked in. From there things went pretty smoothly aside from the part where the plane eventually took off two hours late - which given how things had been going earlier in the evening, actually was better than we had feared. On the plus side, I got to watch most of one more baseball game - that we won - before I left. :)

The plane ride itself went smoothly. It was on Alitalia, and the seats in coach were a bit bigger than I was used to, which meant that even though I had the middle seat it wasn't awful. I mostly read my Rome book, was shocked at just how much I wanted to do, mildly irritated that the book didn't give a more thorough history lesson, and generally passed the time. I even managed to doze for about half an hour, which for me on a plane is something of an accomplishment.

We landed in Rome at about 1, which was only about an hour late, hopped in a cab, and were in the city by 3. (long time sitting on the tarmac, followed by having to wait for our luggage to appear). Our taxi driver was awesome. He didn't speak much English. Initially, there was nothing to the ride, just boring roads, but our passage in to the more interesting parts of the city was marked by our going by one of the gates in the old (ancient Roman-era) walls. From there, our taxi driver pointed out all the awesome stuff we passed, from the Basilica of San Maria Maggiore, which is very close to where we are staying, to the Colosseum, which "breathtaking" doesn't begin to describe. It was definitely a taxi ride suitable to wet the appetite for more.

When we got to the hotel, we checked in, settled in our stuff a little, and then went out for a walk. I'd hoped to go for a really long walk, mostly to scout out places I might be able to jog, but it wasn't to be, for mom got tired too quickly. As it was, though we still managed to wander by Trajan's Column at the tip of the Roman forums, the Vittorio Emanuele Monument, which is huge, and some other ruins that coincedentally ended up in our paths. Just to drive home to us just how awesome and filled with history Rome really is, one of those sets of ruins turned out to be the remains of Pompey's house, which is where Julius Caeser was killed. Somehow, in my head, even though I knew these things really happened they always seemed vaguely like fiction - they happened way far away both physically and temporally, and had no reality per se. Well, I can't say that any more. I was standing there, and 2000+ years ago, Pompey lived there, and one of the most famous men in history was murdered there. All of Rome is like that so far, just this side of completely surreal.

Today, we woke up bright and early, ate a little hotel breakfast, and then I went to go for a walk while mom was away. In order to balance our comparative energy levels, I try to pick things that don't interest her too much or are at least somewhat marginal to be the activities that I undertake without her. This morning's jaunt was to see Porta Maggiore, another of the gates through the ancient Roman wall. At this point, two old aqueducts also converge, so it's a decent one-stop shop for some nifty ancient stuff. It was a nice, refreshing walk through some areas of the city that weren't as polished as the fancy ones around the main sites, and when I got there it was a neat site - huge, but also surreal because the traffic has to pass through the arches of the aqueducts, so there were cars and trams running through. No traffic went through the gate itself, because some of the ancient Roman road was still intact; on one side of the gateway, there were a few of the ancients stones that weren't behind the fenced off area, and I managed to get a snap shot of my own feet on the road. I thought it was cool, anyway. :)

From there, I walked on back, and together Mom and I headed to the Termini train station. Due to some timing snafus we hadn't been able to order our tickets to Venice in time before we left, so we wanted to get that out of the way. Thank god for electronic ticket dispensers, or else we'd have had to wait in a truly monumental (pun was, sadly, originally unintended) line. AS it was, even the English menu had a lot of Italian in it, which made it a little bit of an adventure.

Across the street from Termini was one of the four-five buildings that house the Museo Nazionale Romano, which is the cities place to go to see antiquities. Basically, anytime anyone is doing construction work and something gets dug up, it goes into these museums. This branch is housed in the Palazzo Massimo, which sounds awesome but was actually a rather ordinary building, apparently originally built as a Jesuit college or some such. Many of the artifacts were actually recovered while the train station was being built, with the coolest story in that regard being that while they were doing construction they turned up what had apparently been an entire planned neighborhood from the time of Hadrian (right around 100 AD). This had been in the way and therefore was not savable, but the cities resident Archaeologist (yes, Rome has a state-sponsored lead archaeologist) photographed and documented the whole thing, and saved what he could - including some lovely frescoes and mosaics. The museum all in all didn't start that impressive, but it managed to get more impressive the farther in we got. The first floor started with mostly old heads from sculptures, and I remember thinking that it said a lot about the sad state of what was available in the way of antiquities that even in Rome so much of what we get to see is just broken off heads who have had their noses smashed off. That didn't last, though, and there were some very fine and very complete sculptures later on, including a really awesome Greek-replica discus thrower, and a Hellenistic full-size sculpture of a (really ripped and really naked) man. The two things that made the biggest impression on me, though, were the ship remnants and the mosaics.

The ship remnants were bronze bits salvaged from three ships that had sunk in a lake. Apparently, the shipwrecks themselves used to be in a custom-built facility on the edges of the lake, but that facility - and the ships - were burnt to ashes during World War II. (WW1 and WW2 are really tragic for that reason as well, so much cultural heritage lost!). These were the bronze fittings, though, and they were really awesome and in amazing shape considering they must have spent close on 2000 years under water.

As for the mosaics, well, they were the best I've ever seen except maybe the one at the Romisch Germanische museum in Cologne (that one has the advantage of being the only mosaic I've ever seen "in situ" - and the proof that WW2 didn't only destroy, because that mosaic was discovered in that exact location while the residents of Cologne were building a bomb shelter during the war, and when the war ended, rather than move the mosaic, they simply built the museum around it.) The mosaics here were really amazing and of many different styles, and I was amazed by how fine they could look when made by small enough bits of rock. There were also a LOT of frescoes, including two large sets that had all been salvaged from two different villas. One of these sets had been arranged and layed out similarly to how it would have been originally (these had been found in a villa that had been along the Tiber, and had been moved to the museum). This was a neat way of doing an exhibit: the frescoes that had adorned the hall were all in hallways; those that were bedrooms were in little rooms; and that which had been lost was left blank. The other set had been in a bathhouse (from amongst the buildings uncovered when the station was being built) - many of these still had their matching mosaic floors. All in all, these were all very unique and on a much more impressive and communicative scale than almost anything I'd seen before (except, perhaps, for the small frescoed room they have at the Met.) Oh - and the best frescoes at all were from a tomb, they were vividly painted in bright greens and blues, depicting native plants and birds that all have meaning in the funerary rituals of the time.

Oh, then there was the incredibly awesomely carved and preserved sarcophagus depicting scenes of battle. I've seen a lot of Roman-era sarcophagi in my time, but this one was definitely the most awesome.

I'm sure I could say more - I probably will be kicking myself for omitting this thing or that thing (or even this other thing) when I get around to looking at the pictures - but I think that'll do for now.

After the museum, we headed back to the hotel, got lunch in a little cafe things just next door, and now mom is napping while I write this. It's about 3 in the afternoon; in half an hour or so, if she's not up for doing more, I'll go out to the Museo Nazionale di Arte Orientale, in the hopes that it'll be a cool place to see Islamic and eastern art representative of the sorts that used to pass through Italy regularly in the old middle ages and Renaissance-era trade routes. If she is up for stuff...we'll figure it out then.

Also, one of the coolest things here? Most of the museums open at 8:30 or 9, and don't close til 7. Those are truly awesome hours of operation. :)

Pics to come - if I have the time now, I hopefully will have some integrated into this post as links within the next half hour or so. At least, that's the plan. :)

Edit: Well, the photos ARE uploading, and have been for an hour, but it's going VERY slowly over the internet connection here. Bah! I'll integrate them later. :)

Edit 2 It's 9/27, and I've finally got the pictures linked in this post. :)