God is good! We (almost) made it!

We are back in the good old USA! We had planned to spend the night tonight in Atlanta but we are anxious to get home to our own beds. We will make a quick coffee stop & then hit the road to Dothan. It is so good up be back in the land of English speakers, ice and reliable Internet!

We Wanna Go Home! (Fri July 27)

We made a feeble attempt at seeing a few sights today, but our hearts just weren't in it.  The 90+ degrees also sap your strength.  We stopped by a church just down the street that contains Bernini's famous St. Therese in Ecstasy, it was covered with about 50 years of dust and diesel exhaust, which was a bit disappointing.  Then we wandered down to another Bernini fountain, Triton, and then went through the crypt of the Capuchin friars (artistically arranged bones--kind of weird).  We made one last stop at the National Museum of Rome:  It's a bunch of old statues without heads or arms...we turned to each other and said "who cares" and headed to McDonald's across the street for lunch.

McDonald's was fine, but we are ready to get to some place where every meal doesn't require effort.  Where we know what is on the menu, where they have A/C, where the cashier understands what we want, and where ice and ketchup are available, and included.

Triton Fountain

National Museum of Rome

More old stuff....yawn

Ornate 2000 year old sarcophagus with amazing marble carving....seen it.

Modern chariot races around a busy Roman plaza

Tired of trying new things?  McDonald's is everywhere and will gladly attenuate your cultural experience.

Outside the Diocletian Baths.  They were really, really big.

Back in the hotel, sheltering from the hot afternoon sun.

Boys engaging in their favorite activity.

We've had a great trip and have expanded our horizons in many ways.  We've learned to communicate and cooperate better as a family.  We've gained an appreciation for foreign people, places and languages.  We've seen some great art, astounding architecture, and amazing landscape.  And now we are ready to go home.  We are ready for mundane living for a while: laundry, grocery shopping, school, work and church.

We've run out of things to do for now, at least that we want to do.  The boys would like a park, but after 2000 years of urbanization, such things are rare in Rome and even if they weren't, it's too hot to enjoy the outdoors at this point.  We talked about taking the train down to the Mediterranean Coast, which is only a few stops beyond Ostia Antica, but nobody wanted to make the effort and the last thing we want to do now is deal with another crowd.  We are planning on sheltering in the hotel this afternoon and  hope to venture out for an early dinner.  Next, we are off to the airport at 6AM tomorrow for a long day of flying, but we are glad to do it.  Ciao!

Ostia Antica (Thurs July 26)

Today we headed out of town to Ostia Antica.  Ostia was Rome's port town on the mouth of the Tiber.  Founded a couple of hundred years before Christ, it thrived for about 400-500 years as the Empire's export/ import center.  Eventually the river changed course, the harbor silted in, Rome collapsed and Ostia was eventually abandoned…a Roman ghost town.  Over time it was slowly covered by silt from the frequent floods of the river, overgrown, and forgotten.  The malaria laden marshes also kept people away, so a surprising amount of original material is still there.  It wasn't excavated until the 1930s as part of Mussolini's efforts to showcase the glory of ancient Rome.  Reportedly, it's a lot like Pompeii but without the 3.5 hour trip and hordes of tourists.

Our guide today was a Civil Engineer turned Archaeologist in Italy working on her PhD dissertation.  She was studying the heated Roman baths at Ostia Antica and how thermal transfer occurred according to the design of the baths.  Does that sound boring?  It was.  However, there were some interesting things at the site and we pretty much had the place to ourselves, which was great after being elbow to elbow with other sweaty tourists all week.

The road in to Ostia is grooved by several hundred years of carts and chariots wearing away the stones. 

There's a lot more here than at the Roman Forum.  You can actually tell there was a town.  Many of the original floor mosaics are still in place.

The Public Loo

Close-up of the loo.   A constant stream of running water beneath the John did provide some flushage.  Privacy was lacking.

They had a sewer and buried water mains bringing in clean water under pressure.  It would be about 1500+ years before this level of civil engineering would be duplicated.

Davis surveying the ruins.  Umbrella pines (distance) are everywhere.  They are neat trees.

Heated bath.  Hot air from a furnace flowed between the columns below the floor and through air gaps in the walls.

The public theatre.

The design and scale is amazing.  It feels just like sitting in a modern ballpark.

A take-out window for the local restaurant.

Olive Oil storage depot.

At the Fishmonger

Our children decided that if they sat still enough at the train station, someone would put money in their hats.  Nope.

The regional train system is very nice, but a bit crowded.

Rome's subway scores at the bottom of our experience.  Dirty, crowded, not maintained, very little coverage of the city (although to be fair, they can't dig a tunnel more than 3 feet without hitting some ancient ruin).  We had heard a great deal before our trip about Europe's "gleaming infrastructure."  The bullet trains are a step ahead of anything we have in the US, and you could certainly visualize their usefulness someplace like the East Coast or California.  Otherwise, I'm not sure that Europe is much different Unites States.  Getting around Chicago, San Francisco or New York seems about the same as getting around London, Paris, or Rome.  There are about the same number of people in far less space, so there's less elbow room and sprawl and countryside.  One useful thing about international travel is that it makes you appreciate what you have at home.

Ostia Antica occupied a large portion of our day.  The rest of the day was consumed by a nap and early dinner.  Our world travels are coming to a close.  Tomorrow we may visit the National Museum of Rome, since it's only a couple of blocks away.  Saturday we are headed home...and we are all ready to be there.  Ciao.

iPhoto's map of our recent pictures

Borghese Gallery & Roman Sites (Wed July 25)

Today we made our way north from the hotel through the embassy district to the nearby Villa Borghese Park.  The Borghese Villa was the home of Cardinal Borghese, the Pope's nephew.  In a rather nauseating case of nepotism, Scipione Borghese parlayed his position into great wealth and used that to amass a large art collection which persists today in the public Borghese gallery.  (Not the Catholic Church's finest moment, but it's a really great art collection!).

 

Congested areas call for clever parking.  "Smart" cars can perpendicular and parallel park.

Outside the Borghese Gallery.  Entrance requires an advance reservation and is limited to a two hour visit.  They let a couple hundred people in, let them look for 1hour, 58 minutes, then they shoo them out.  A unique system but it seemed to work.  

The fountain outside.

The large fountain out front.  

 

 The museum was very strict about bags and photography and you had to check your camera.  Thus, we don't have any pictures of what we saw.  We had a guide for this tour, and she was fantastic,  our best ever (also not shown).  Below are what some of the photos would have looked like.

 

Bernini's Apollo and Daphne.  Daphne turning into a tree to escape Apollo.  Single block of marble.  Flowing robes, leaves.  Incredible.

Bernini's version of David.  We might even like it better than Michelangelo's version.

Pluto carrying Persephone off into the underworld.  Looking at the indentation of his fingers into her thigh, you forget it's a marble statue.

We had such a good tour guide and saw such incredible art that the Borghese Gallery was a big hit with everyone.

 

 

After the Art Gallery we explored the large adjacent park (more of Cardinal Borghese's ill-gotten gain).

 

Playgrounds meager by our family's standards.  

Outside the Gallery we ran into this couple from New Delhi.  We have seen them twice in Venice, once in Florence and on two consecutive days in Rome.  At this point we decided to take our picture together, since we seem to be traveling companions!   They were very nice.  Scott calls them his "Indian Nanie and D-dad."

This guy was incredible.  He was playing full concertos from memory.  We sat and listened to him for 20 minutes.

We rented this bicycle-rickshaw thing for an hour to facilitate our exploration of the park.  There were lots of complaints about the driving.

Davis outside the old Roman City Wall.

 

 Next we headed to some Roman sites we have been wanting to see.

 

On our way to the Spanish Steps.

At the "Spanish Steps" (Spanish Embassy nearby).  A famous tourist hangout.  

We were there in the heat of the afternoon, when it is "quiet."   Apparently it gets really crowded in the evenings.  Can you spot Everlie and the boys?  (They are wearing blue). 

At the Trevi Fountain.

Throw a coin backwards into the fountain and you will come back to Rome…or so the story goes.

Chestnuts roasting on a semi-open fire.  We had some, they were quite tasty.

The obelisk and fountain outside the Pantheon.  

The Pantheon.  Originally built in 27 BC, and in continuous use since, with a remodeling job in 120 AD by Emperor Hadrian.  The Christians turned it into a church and kept it intact---well, except for the 250 tons of Bronze that Bernini took to make the altar in St. Peter's Basilica.

The "Oculus", the intentional hole in the roof.

 

King Victor Emmanuelle II, first ruler of modern united Italy, is buried in the Pantheon.

The famous painter Raphael is also there.

Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers in Piazza Navona.  That Bernini was a busy guy (He had 11 kids, so we guess he had some bills to pay).

In Piazza Navona.

 In most of the public places, in basically every European city we've been to, there are these guys pretending to be statues, angling for tips.  The boys love them.

 

They'll pose for a Euro or two.

This guy was creating pictures with scarps of cardboard and spray paint.  

It's a little "Velvet Elvis" like, but not bad for 15 minutes.

We stopped by an Italian Bookstore.  Apparently "Schiappa" is Italian for "wimpy kid."

A day without Gelato is a day without sunshine!

 

Tomorrow:  Ostia Antica--ancient port city of Rome.  Arrivederchi!