Hello from Athens! I am back after spending the last week or so in Rome, and I had a great time. I think I might just go straight through the week in one post, so go fix yourself a snack before you get too far in.
We begin last Friday, when I left Athens. It takes under two hours to get to Rome, so I had a fairly pleasant flight. I even got a dinner, which struck me as pretty wild given the short flight time, and it was actually pretty good – a kabob of chicken, peppers, and tomatoes, and a little choriatiki (Greek salad) and some cheesecake. Anyway, I arrived in Rome and went right to baggage claim (traveling within the Schengen Zone is awesome, as there is no paperwork), and who should I find but Andy himself? He actually found me, but it was nice that we didn’t have to search at all. We headed over to the train which goes into Rome, and then we found our hotel without much trouble. The hotel was pretty standard European – smallish (but not the smallest I’ve ever been in) with an actually fairly spacious bathroom (it had a bidet for some reason, and there was an actual bathtub, but the water came out through a detachable shower-head in the middle of the long side of the tub, and there was no curtain, but I long ago gave up on expecting sense from European plumbing), and thin walls, but clean and with a generally comfortable bed.
The next day we decided to try just to get our bearings in Rome. (Andy slept really well through the night, and didn’t have any trouble with jetlag at all). So we proceeded from our room, and got to see Rome for the first time in the daylight. Walking down the street we found the Colosseum and the Imperial forums and Trajan’s column, and then we wandered over by the Capitoline. We got lunch (pizza! salad with balsamic vinegar!) and later gelato (gelato!). On returning to our hotel room I tried out the TV (I kept checking BBC to see if Greece had collapsed yet), and found that it was showing Poirot, and that after Poirot was Monk, and later that night was Midsomer Murders, and the next day was Columbo. Somehow all my favorite shows in the world were on Italian TV, though admittedly in Italian. Insane! We went out for dinner then, and just got some paninis. On returning to our rooms, we did what might be even nerdier than my watching Monk in Italian, which was to read ahead for sightseeing. Nor do I just mean we planned our route and checked when things were open, I mean Andy had Eleanor’s Oxford Archaeological Guide and Roman Source Book, and we read up on all the sites we wanted to see the next day, because we are that dorky.
On Sunday we actually went sight-seeing. We started with breakfast, which we had missed the day before, and which was pretty standard European breakfast. Why deli ham and cheese, Europe? Anyway, we headed down to the Colosseum and got in line for tickets, and decided to get the audio tour as well, though that was the last time we got an audio tour as it’s a little annoying to use and I knew pretty much everything they said anyway, and it wasn’t even a super-famous voice like when they got Omar Sharif to do the treasures of King Tut. The Colosseum is awesome, and probably was Andy’s favorite site. I did find the large amounts of going-on outside of it disconcerting, and since that sentence made no sense, let me elaborate. In Athens, when you go to a major archaeological site, it is just there. You go up to the ticket booth and get a ticket and go inside. There are no food stands, souvenir stands, people trying to sell flowers, people trying to be your tour guide, people dressed like ancient Greeks charging you for pictures, etc. This may be related to Greece’s law against posing, dancing or singing in front of the monuments, or Rome just knows how to capitalize on tourists a lot better, but I really didn’t expect it. Anyway, after the Colosseum we got some lunch (one advantage of traveling with Andy is that we would order different things in restaurants and then split them). Then we headed over to the Roman forum, which was pretty cool, and had remains of things like temples and the Curia (Senate-house). From there we walked up to the Palatine Hill, where they’ve also found traces of early Iron-Age settlement (the Romans thought Romulus had his house there), and where the emperors later built palaces. After that we exited and went over to the Circus Maximus, which is not particularly thrilling nowadays.
On Monday we decided to go to the Vatican (a lot of other museums and sites are closed on Monday), and we took the Metro to get there, which allowed me to award a point to Athens for better Metro. The Roman Metro is kind of totally gross, and for some reason they have TVs in the cars which occasionally show YouTube videos (we saw a cat falling down the stairs, and someone who couldn’t park their car). On emerging from that hive of scum and villainy we walked to Vatican City and started with St. Peter’s (first we visited the visitor’s center, and since they were out of English pamphlets we had to get one in modern Greek, which is my next-best language). While we went inside St. Peter’s, we did not visit the cupola or the tombs of the popes (sorry Rob). We grabbed some lunch then and made our way to the Vatican Museum, where we spent the next few hours. There’s a lot to see there, but the highlights (for me) included the Apoxyomenos (he is awesome and possibly my favorite), Laocoon, and the Exekias vase with Ajax and Achilles rolling dice (admittedly, I liked all these things before going). Nor did we skip the Sistine Chapel, getting to which involves crossing half the country in seemingly endless halls of maps, tapestries, and frescoes. When you reach it, you go inside a jam-packed room where people exist in an endless cycle of talking, being shushed, quieting down for a few seconds, and then talking again. The chapel is beautiful despite that, of course. We then began the journey back, which involved going down long corridors filled almost entirely with cabinets, endless cabinets. I didn’t really understand what they’re for, but I’m pretty sure one of them probably has a false back that leads into a secret corridor which leads to secret rooms where the Vatican keeps the good stuff, like the spear of Longinus and probably the Holy Grail.
On Tuesday we hit pretty much every major landmark in the city. We saw the four fountains on the Street of Four Fountains, the Spanish steps, the Trevi Fountain (we made wishes) and the Pantheon, the Piazza Navona (which has three fountains), Bernini’s elephant, Marcus Aurelius’ column, some churches, and the Palazzo Alltemps, which is a museum inside a 16th c (or somewhere around there) palace, and which contains the Ludovisi throne and the Galatian’s Suicide, which are two really famous pieces of ancient art. All of these were very cool, and it was nice just to walk around the city. The disappointment of the day was that we were unable to find the Museum of Pasta, which Andy and I both really wanted to go to because we were both so sure it would be the best museum ever; perhaps it is better if it lives only in our imagination. We also had possibly my favorite meal that day, which was lunch somewhere around the Piazza Navona; I had lasagna and Andy had gnocchi, and they were both amazing.
On Wednesday we hit the Borghese gardens (yes, we are aware it’s not even spring yet, or at least wasn’t at the time). These are north of the city center, and are pretty extensive. We began by just walking around; there’s statues all around, often of famous artists and writers and other such people, and other things to see. There’s a good sized lake with a little temple of Asklepios (not authentic) by it, and lots of ducks and geese and turtles. We sat there a while, then continued on in search of the zoo, because wherever there is a zoo Andy and I must find it. I have to admit, I didn’t expect much at all; the guidebook called it small, and I figured it wouldn’t be much more than a menagerie, but I was quite wrong. We got a map when we bought our tickets, though, and when we sat down to look at it we realized that it’s actually pretty big and has a lot of animals. There were elephants, a pygmy hippopotamus (and a regular hippo, who was very active, swimming around and splashing), Japanese macaques running around like crazy, orangutans (Andy’s favorite), and chimpanzees, which aren’t particularly common in zoos because they’re so aggressive. The male chimp was in fact very aggressive while we were there, and was engaging in a dominance display which included pounding on the glass, kicking it, body-slamming into it, throwing dirt and sticks at it, and some other inappropriate behavior.
On Thursday we went over to the Capitoline, where the Capitoline Museums are. There are two major staircases leading up the hill, the Aracoeli and another one whose name I can’t remember. These lead up to a piazza designed by Michelangelo as part of a general beautification of the city, and the two museum buildings are on either end (they are connected by an underground tunnel). There’s plenty of famous works in the museum as well, though a lot of things had been moved around to make room for an exhibition. Still, I got to see the equestrian Marcus Aurelius and the She-Wolf, as well as some other pretty cool stuff. One of the neatest things to see was the exhibit on Iron Age and archaic Rome (I am a sucker for the archaic period), which had reconstructions of how the Capitoline Hill looked in different eras, and pieces of pottery and votives from the period, as well as parts of the architectural facade of the temples, which were an interesting comparison with Greek counterparts. We then crossed over to the second museum, passing through the hall of epigraphy (I want one in my home some day). The other side had some Egyptian pieces, but mostly sculpture and busts. One room is called the Hall of Philosophers, and contains busts of famous thinkers, writers, and other intellectuals. Now, there were supposed to be three busts of Pindar, and I looked at the signs and had Andy take my picture with what I thought was Pindar, but when I looked closer I realized that the bust on the upper shelf was labeled ‘Pindar’, which I think means the museum signs are wrong. Be wary! We looked around for a mathematician, but the only person who qualified was Pythagoras, and he wasn’t there at the time.
On Friday we checked out the Castel San Angelo. Originally it was the Mausoleum of Hadrian, but later it was made into a fortress for the pope to retreat to in times of crisis. I was unclear on whether it was meant to protect the Vatican, or just keep the pope alive. At any rate, there’s a tunnel connecting the two, probably through one of those cabinets in the museum. The castle itself is pretty cool, as it’s a castle which has some extremely nice rooms (popes get only the best). I think my favorite room was the treasure room, which contained a comically large treasure chest (probably eight or so feet tall). There is also a terrace from which you can see a lot of Rome. We walked back to the hotel from there, which gave us a chance to see some more of the city, and also stop for gelato (do not think this was the only other time that week we stopped for gelato).
On Saturday we were a bit lazy. We did walk around a bit and tried to do a little bit of shopping, and we visited Santa Maria Maggiore and walked over to the Imperial Fora to get a better look at them and to see Trajan’s Markets, but it was a fairly lazy day. As we were leaving early on Sunday we had to pack up and get organized and take care of a few things (like finding out when Rome changed its clocks for daylight saving; not until Sunday the 28th, which is also true of Greece). Sunday morning we woke up pretty early to catch the 5:52 train to the airport, and then Andy and I had to part to go to our own terminals. My trip back was fairly pleasant. Admittedly, my flight took off a bit later than Andy’s, so I had a bit of a wait in the airport, but the flight itself was short and I got lunch (a roll with some feta and olive tapenade, and a spinach wrap with some chicken – seriously, they put no effort into this food and it’s delicious). I was back in Athens by 1:00, and back at Loring by 2:30 (I would have been earlier, but the airport train only runs every half-hour). Since then I’ve done my laundry and read my e-mails and taken care of a few other things. I think blog posts are going to slow down now, since I’m going to be spending all my time in the library working on research, but I’ll try to put something up every so often so you know I am alive and well.
Pictures are still here. You might notice in the comments that a Romanist has verified the truth of all my captions, which means Marcus Aurelius really is a total poser, and pelicans really are hilariously funny-looking.
Rome! The pictures are great (and labeled accurately!).