deathpixie | Italy 2010 - Day 4

When we'd checked in, we'd been offered a bus tour of the city. Considering the sheer amount of Rome there is to see, it seemed like a great idea. If only we could work out which stop to wait at... After discovering the bus didn't get to the stop near our hotel until 10 a.m. and the morning was a-wasting, we walked the 15 minutes to the originating stop, with plenty of time to spare. The day was, like most of the days had been, hot, clear and sunny, with enough humidity to feel it as a film on your skin. The breeze from the top of the double-decker bus was lovely and we had a bird's eye view of just how crazy - and yet skilled - Italian driving can be. Headphones infnormed us of various sites until we reached our personal Aim Number One - the Colosseum.

The Colosseum, built in 80 A.D. and named after the colossal statue of Nero that used to be nearby, completed as a centre for gladatorial sports - Gladiator Superbowl, if you will. And not, as Russell Crowe or Ridley Scott would have it, a place for chriot races or where you could see a gladiator fight a tiger. Animals were used for combat, but only against other animals. They were also fed unarmed criminals in the arena during intermission, although generally not actual Christians. Nor did gladiators fight to the death - they were far too valuable for that - but fought to first blood or until a victor was declared.

The Colosseum is remarkably intact for a building over two thousand years old. It stands in central Rome, huge and awe-inspiring, surviving despite age, acid rain, earthquakes and American tourists with pocket knives carving their names into the wall (unfortunately not a generalisation - the American father behind us in the line to get in thought doing that would make an awesome Facebook pic, and then encouraged his kids to carve their names too. Ugh.). We wound up paying an extra 400 Euro each (about $4:50) for a personal tour to a) get away from the American before E clocked him and b) get out of the long, slow-moving queue. It turned out to be a cunning plan, as the tour guide was very informative (I got most of the previous info from her) and thorough, if not a little overwhelmed by the heat - it was gearing up to be a scorcher of a day.

(The rest of the Colosseum photos can be seen here.)

After we'd wandered the Colosseum, we headed over to the nearby accompanying ruins of Domus Augustana, the emperor's private residence. It included his own little private arena, various buildings and gardens, and has archeologists busily working on it even today. There's a wealth of history to be found, including prehistoric items and the grave-houses of pre-Roman kings.

Footsore, hungry and thirsty, we grabbed some foccacia from one of the vans parked nearby and rejoined the bus, following the path of the marble slabs which had once adorned the Colosseum (imagine how blinding in summer that would have been!) and which had been removed to decorate one of the other great buildings of Rome - St. Peter's Basillica in the Vatican.

Words, even pictures, can't really encompass the Vatican. Like the Colosseum, it has a presence that goes beyond mere architecture. There is a sense of... belief, I suppose, that even an unbeliever like me can feel, and respect. Outside it's hot and noisy and busy, but inside... I literally stopped in mid-word as we walked into the Basillica, struck dumb by the sheer magnificence of the place. Domed ceilings arched high above us, every inch a painting, a masterpiece. Statues of various saints occupied the myriad nooks, some with offerings or candles before them, others with worn patches where penitents had touched a toe or the bronze or stone hem of a garment in the hopes of a blessing. And in the immediate right hand corner...

I'm the first to admit, I don't know a lot about art. But I do remember an art history class in high school on the Italian Masters, being shown a series of slifes. And the one that caught my breath was Michelangelo's La Pieta - Mary holding the dead body of her Son, looking down at Him wiht such sorrow in her expression it breaks your heart.

If a slide could move me so deeply, imagine the impact of the original.

Of course, as fate would have it, my camera battery died right then. So I am sans photos for the rest of the Basillica, apart from D. and E's shots when they load them online. But in a way, that wasn't such a bad thing, since I wound up really looking around me, instead of scoping out shots.

We did the Basillica literally from bottom to top. We went to the tombs of the Popes in the basement, including John Paul II (where we were hurried past by a Vatican plainclothes guard who excelled at shushing people), and we climbed the 500-odd stairs of the Cupola, where we looked down over the city (and I tried not to die of a heart attack. I also promised out loud that I would go back to swimming, a promise that I'm kind of afraid to break, considering I made it on top of the Vatican of all places). By the end, we were overloaded on art and heat and headed back to the bus for the remainder of the tour.

When we got back to the hotel, I lay down in my darkened, airconditioned room for a while and drank my weight in water, to counter the fact I had minor heat exhaustion as well as a wicked sunburn (it's peeling right now, actually), while E went shopping. She managed to find a dinner venue just around the corner and once D and I were human again, we took ourselves there and once again ate awesomely.

A diversion regarding food, since I haven't been specific yet. Italian menus have an appetiser section, first main course (pasta), second main course (meat, chicken or fish) and then dessert and coffee. Vegetables are ordered seperately as a side, possibly because you have all those mains to get through. D. discovered the cafe corretto, coffee with a shot of grappa or sambucca in it and had one just about every night.

Breakfast is usually pretty light: bread, sliced meats, cheese, juice, coffee. Lunch is had around 1:00 p.m. and most Italians nap afterward, to cool down. Dinner is later, usually not until 8:00 or 9:00 p.m. and afterwards it's usual to take a walk, to help digest.

Most of the time I managed half (or third) shares in an appetiser, one main and dessert, with salads at lunch. The amount of exercise I'd have to do to burn off typical Italian caloric intake makes me whimper and yet, for the most part, Italians are pretty healthy-looking. It's a mystery.

I wonder if it's all the olive oil?