Another hard thing. And photos

Another hard thing is down time. What do you do with yourself when you're not touring?

Some New Friends

We’ve met some new friends on our travels and have invited them to visit us in Richmond Hill.

A Ruined Day

We spent the day at Ostia Antica, the old Roman seaport. The harbour silted up around the 4th century and the ruin is now 3 kilometres from the ocean.

In the middle ages, all the buildings were stripped of their marble cladding, so all you see now mostly is the brick core of the walls.

A little boring visually, but you can get a bit of an idea of what it was like to walk around a small Roman city.

 

A note to yesterday’s postings from St. Peter’s: Matt says that most of the statues of the popes seemed to be of Pope Pumpkin Pius.

And there were a few others of St. Chocolate Cakus.

(I think it’s time to go home and have Thanksgiving dinner.)

 

Photos:

 

I. This sign seems to date from the time of the Romans.

II. A sarcophagus (or an esophagus), I think.

III. Unidentified roamin’.

IV. The public toilets (men only).

V. A street.

VI. Pavement mosaics in one of the forums.

Last Vatican photos

I. From 1508. (Raphael was 25 years old when he came up with this.)

II. No photos allowed in the Sistine Chapel. This is mine.

III. The translation should read: The showcase is being set up. It was empty.

More Vatican Museums photos

I. Lunch.

II. In the Vatican Museums – baboon envy.

III. Nice nipples.

IV. They say it’s a “female clay statuette” but I don’t know . . . .  I think they might sell “life-size replicas” in the gift shop.

V. There are two quarter-mile long lengths of galleries like this in the Vatican Museums. The far distance is a quarter-mile away.

VI. This looks like the discount shelf at the back of Zellers.

VII. That’s the pope’s Fiat, the white one, third from the left.

What we did today

I. Today’s You Know Where.

II. In the line.

III. You know where (part 2).

IV. Most of the statues in St. Peter’s are of popes. This is one.

V. A view.

VI. Another.

VII. Sepulcrum Sancti Petri Apostoli: The Tomb of Saint Peter the Apostle (in the basement).

Another hard thing. And photos.

Another hard thing is down time. What do you do with yourself when you're not touring?

 

(There’s a previous post that I did directly online. Those of you who receive email alerts might not have received an alert about it.)

 

I. From the national Museum of Rome. [A Roman copy of?] a Greek statue of a boxer.

II. No caption.

III. In front of the Vittorio Emmanuele monument (again).

IV. The Spanish Steps at night. One of those place you can’t leave Rome without seeing. Although when I’m at these places, I think, “I wouldn’t come to a place like this at home and expect to enjoy it. Why do I come here in Rome and expect to enjoy it?” (Falls into the category of: without the people, it’s probably great.)

V. The Trevi Fountain. Matt doesn’t know either “Three Coins in the Fountain” or “Arrivaderci Roma.”

VI. This is what Matt calls “church wallpaper.” It is a three-dimensional (tromp l’oeil) painting of marble columns, when they didn’t have the space or the money to have real marble columns.

VII. Souvenirs.

I miss all you guys

Matt says the hardest thing about travel is not having any deep contact with people. I'd have to agree with him. You're confined to your travelling companion(s) for social contact, and it's quite different from the wide range of friends and family and the types of interactions you have with them in a normal day at home. Here, it's waiters, museum attendants, and bus drivers. Your closest friend other than your travelling companion is the concierge at your hotel.
After that, for me the hardest thing is walking. At the end of the day, my feet hurt. I keep thinking: if I was a multi-billionaire, could money fix that problem? What about being carried about in a sedan chair?

Or a folding electric wheel chair (not implying any physical disability)? Or a golf cart? Or buying private time in the Vatican Museums: paying for an afternoon, clearing everyone else out, and having the run of the place to yourself. Or travelling with my personal chiropodist? Pedicurist? Podiatrist? (I don't know the word.) Pediatrician? A segue? Staying in my hotel and having people bring the actual things to me from the museums, art galleries, etc?
I think a large part of the problem is the unforgiving, hard marble pavements. I could arrange to have softening industrial matting laid down before my visits.
Other suggestions are welcomed. Must be received in time to be implemented on this trip.

Most Rome (III)

1. Penis envy (the statue’s: he doesn’t have one any more).

2. Baboon envy.

3. I don’t know what to say about this one. It’s a room in the Capitoline Museums – one of the world’s earliest museums, started in 1471 when Pope Sixtus the Fourth (I love it!) gave a bunch of old statues he had lying around to the Roman people. He is the one the Sistine Chapel is named after (Sistine being the adjectival form of Sixtus). Anyway, there were many rooms like this one – this is the room of the philosophers – jammed with busts. They were funny and very wonderful at the same time (collectively and individually).

4. Taken by Matt – I don’t know what it is, but I like it. It looks like an earlier version of ET.

5. What you feel like after a day at the forum and after your dad has dragged you through several churches.

6. The Gesù – the big Jesuit church in Rome and the epitome of anti-reformation baroque Catholic art (finished in 1584). I’ve always hated it from pictures I saw of it, but, you know, I kind of liked it in the flesh. Very effective. Very low lighting levels. Totally over the top.

That’s the dominating impression we feel about Rome – totally over the top. They just didn’t know when to stop!

One structure above all symbolizes this: the Vittorio Emmanuele Monument. It is inconceivably, monumentally large (see the photo below, which shows the relative size of human beings). I had never seen or heard of this before, so when we came upon it, I was a little taken by surprise. Sort of like when you catch your first glimpse of The Death Star.

More Rome (II)

1. Fresh flowers on Julius Caesar’s grave in the forum (!@!??@%$?)

2. The forum

3. The quintessential ancient Roman statue. This is so archetypal!

4. Who you lookin’ at, buddy?

5. No caption.

6. “And one more thing . . . . “ (a famous but little-known quote from Cicero – with one of the props he used to use).

Hodie mundus patet

We were incredibly lucky to be in Rome today, as it was one of the mundus patet days, the days when a door to the underworld was opened. These are August 24, October 5, and November 8.

There was a hole, or pit, on the Palatine Hill overlooking the Roman Forum – just where we were today!

This hole was usually covered with the lapis manalis, the stone of the manes, dead family and friends. On those three days of the year, one of the state priests would remove the stone from the hole and the spirits of the dead would come out and you could commune with them. They were holidays.

 

Unfortunately, no one knows where this hole is now. And we didn’t find it.

So I present a few pictures of Rome we took today (in our search).

 

(We press the camera shutter button about 800 times a day.)

 

1. Some men outside our hotel room last night. Suspicious looking . . . .?

2. Another great old-movie elevator.

3. Generic store in Rome – ready for anything touristy.

4. The Circus Maximus looking a little seedy.

5. Today’s You Know What.

6. Gladiators and carabinieri.