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Ciao from Rome, Italy - Part II
JENNI: Of all the things we saw that evoke memories of the postcards, movies, pictures and stories that show the symbols Rome, the Colosseum was the most familiar. I'd seen it before in the movie Gladiator, (digitized into what it probably looked like back when it was used for more than sightseeing) and every travel magazine and TV show features it prominently. I was ready for it. We were walking to it from our pension one evening, turned a bend in the street, and it suddenly loomed in front of us with the afternoon sun lining its decaying edges. It is big, and it is imposing. Rome traffic zooms all around it nonstop, and I wondered if anyone noticed it anymore. Did they realize they were driving around the ROMAN COLOSSEUM? The one built in 80 AD, where 50,000 Romans would go for major entertainment - seeing criminals, slaves, prisoners of war, and Christians fight each other of exotic animals to the death. Entrance was free back then (not anymore), and was a fabulous diversion from workaday life for hundreds of years. Gladiator and animal fights were banned about 400-500 years after they started, and eventually the Colosseum was partially dismantled so its stones could be used in other buildings around Rome. It was dedicated to Passion of Jesus in the 1700's. It's boggling to visualize the history of Rome's famous ruin, from the heyday to as they stand today.

I bought a little book that shows pictures of several ruins, and it has a plastic overlay that you place over the picture to see what it really looked like back then. It's incredibly helpful, especially for the ruins that look more like giant piles of rubble than a judicial court or town bath. The Roman Forum looks like this, but the story behind this area is so rich. This was the seat of Rome, from its markets to palaces to triumphant arches. It's hard to locate the layout of the buildings based on their crumbling foundations, but we did the best we could and still wandered around as lost as the others. Occasionally we would hear an English-speaking tour guide pass by and we would trail along innocently. This is how we found out how the forum fell to ruin. This entire place filled with tons and tons of dirt that happened naturally over the years as the people of the Dark Ages had no use for such things as a basilica or monument. At one point, early Christians tried to pull down these columns in front of their new church (That's the church over Joe's shoulder in the picture on the right.) They pulled and pulled, cutting gashes into the marble columns, never dreaming that two-thirds of each column was sunk deep into the ground. They never succeeded in tearing them down, and now we can see that their "new" church was formerly a temple for a Roman empress. You can see how high the ground was by noticing that the door to the church is about midway up the wall of the temple. This point used to be ground level. The church is no longer in use because archaeologists are constantly at work in the Forum area; continuing to discover artifacts from past civilizations in one of the greatest landmarks in the history of mankind.

JOE: "Three coins in a fountain." Those are not just lyrics from a famous song from the 60's or the title to a movie. They are a tradition. Throw the coins in the Trevi and you guarantee you will return to Rome some day. The Trevi Fountain has been the backdrop for many movies and love affairs. Now it includes ours. We visited the Trevi six times; four of those times at night. The Bernini sculpture is carved out of an edifice that appears to be an office building. Lovers from all over the world gather here to throw their coins and get their pictures taken. They gaze at the fountain then swat away the annoying men selling roses until they finally buy a flower or get aggravated and leave.
My second favorite fountain was the Fountain of the Naiads (on the left). It's very sensual; so much so that it caused a scandal when it was unveiled in the early 20th century. Some prudish citizens convinced the government to build a wall over it at one point, but then enough people complained that they eventually took it down. And yet another favorite fountain is the one in front of the Pantheon. It doesn't hurt that the Pantheon is so magnificent. And there are dozens more fountains all over the place. Rome is full of these sculptured pools waiting to make your dreams come true. Little do they know that just being here has already fulfilled our biggest fantasies.

JENNI: The day before we were to leave Rome, I took a side trip to Pompei, near Naples, about 2 ½ hours away. (Joe stayed in Rome.) I didn't find it so easy to get to, and it was really cold by the time I got there, but I had to see! This is the society that was destroyed by Mount Vesuvius around the time of the opening of the Colosseum, in AD 79. It instantly wiped out the population of this bustling, wealthy town, subjecting its citizens to terrible and painful deaths. An excavation team, unearthing the remains, would occasionally find person-sized cavities in their digging with bones collected at the bottom...so they poured plaster into the cavities, effectively creating a plaster mold of the people in the positions they were in when they died. Their facial expressions and body contortions contribute to the idea that they died slowly and painfully. The people of the neighboring city, Herculeneum, also died from the eruption, but they much more peacefully. I read an article in an Italian paper (in English) that scientists determined the Herculeneum people died in a flash, not knowing what was coming. The heat increase from the volcano was so intense, and so quick, that people may have felt a slight increase in temperature before they were just dead. And this theory is supported by the different positions their bodies were in at the time of death - they were all sleeping, working, eating - displaying none of the same pain-wracked characteristics of the Pompeians.


JOE: By now you may be thinking I was being lazy while Jenni was working so hard sightseeing. Okay. You may be right. But I get tired of sightseeing sometimes and just wanted to chill. Just relax and watch people. Just walk and get lost in piazzas and drink coffee and read newspapers and chill. Oh yes, I also wanted to sleep late, watch Italian TV News (even though I didn't understand it) and eat pizza too. When in Rome … you know. My observations from people watching: the Romans are absolute slaves to fashion. Everyone here wears their best clothes every time they leave the house. We're talking shirts and ties for men and top quality fashion for women. It's a little chilly so everybody has a black leather jacket. The latest fad is wearing fake faded jeans and big, light-colored sunglasses. The ladies are wearing thigh-high boots (love that). Because Jenni and I are in matching sweatshirts and other travel gear, we are obviously tourists. We are a little self-conscious, but not too worried about it. We've chosen to spend our money on more important things than clothes.

JENNI: Like wine! We stumbled across a wine-tasting event, where they were sampling the new wines of the region! For $5 each Joe and I both got a shiny new glass, a bib to put it in when we weren't drinking, and taste after taste of the wines that were smooth as silk. We stayed for several hours, losing track of which wines we tasted and munching on cheese and cornmeal. Occasionally it would rain mud - fat raindrops with dirt mixed in, coloring everything it landed on dirty brown. The locals explained that this phenomenon happened once or twice a year, and it caused by the wind blowing sand from Africa into the skies over Italy, and then raining. And the sky was an eerie brown, like the dust storms in West Texas. No one seemed to mind much, and I'm sure car washes did a brisk business the next few days. We got filthy and it stained our few clothes, but who cared? We were sampling the new wines from the region! Despite the raining mud, It was a fabulous way to spend an entire afternoon, and we got quite tipsy. We had to take a taxi ride home since too much wine and a long walk home just don't mix!

JOE: One of our biggest highlights in Rome was meeting another American couple; Sean and Liz Ruiz of Hollywood California. Sean is a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy stationed in West Hollywood. Liz is an actress who has starred in more than a dozen movies. Her movie name is Elizabeth Kaitan. Her films include: Friday the 13th - Part 7. This was her return trip to Rome. She had been here in the mid-90's filming"Beretta," a movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger. She has taken a break from making films and now works for a political philosopher in LA. We hit it off with Sean and Liz immediately, so we spent hours and hours over several evenings having delicious conversation along with some excellent meals. Actually, the first night we met, Sean introduced us to Limoncello, an Italian liqueur. In fact, we drank an entire bottle of the yellow stuff while hanging out on the Spanish Steps. We also ate chocolate and talked heartily for about two hours before we got urgently hungry. That's when we shared the first of several big dinners.

Liz is very lively and fun. She regaled us with excellent stories about Hollywood and life in Los Angeles and - the best story of all - how she and Sean met for the first time. He's a tall, handsome officer who investigated a hit-and-run wreck. Liz's car was damaged, but she had smartly gotten the driver's license of the perpetrator's car. So she was able to help Sean collar the bad guy. But Sean refused to breach his professional exterior and so decided not to ask her out. Finally, Liz wrote him a note inviting him for coffee and the rest is history. They've been married for 3 years now and, lucky for us, we were now sharing some of their time during their vacation to Rome. Thanks to Liz and Sean for some great memories and excellent photos!

It would take several lifetimes to finish all of the touring we'd need to do in Rome, so we've decided eleven days will have to do. We're moving north now. Out of the big city and into the countryside of Tuscany where we've found out they're having a Truffle Festival.

Arriverderci, Roma!