I have just returned from my epic 12 day journey through the world of the Romans. There is no way I can describe everything I did here, or give my experience justice, but I figured I should at least make an attempt and picking out some of the highlights.
I had been trying to get to Rome for years but had never quite made it, and when I was on the plane, I started to get really worried that I had built up the city so much in my mind that it would end up being a bit of a let down. Well, never fear, my faithful readers, Rome is amazing although the modern city itself is quite disgusting. And maybe I should briefly summarize my experience with the modern city: First, Italians are disgusting and self-centred. They throw their rubbish wherever they are, there is no recycling, and everyone smokes (which means cigarette butts are everywhere because of course, they never use rubbish bins). On the train out to Pompeii, I saw an entire family unwrap and eat a number of cookies, the just toss all the wrappers out of the train window. Gross! You are not allowed to smoke inside buildings anymore, but that rarely stops anyone. When I was at Termini (the main train station) I saw a guy smoking right under the No Smoking sign with two cops standing pretty much right beside him, doing nothing. He then just threw his butt onto the floor of the train station and walked off. Second, there is graffiti everywhere. I was half surprised not to find it on any of the Roman ruins but they are the only things that are immune from being spray painted. It means the whole city kind of feels like a slum which then sort of opens up into these beautiful piazzas with amazing architecture and incredible ruins. This makes it a very schizophrenic city. Third, there are street vendors everywhere, trying to sell you all kind of stuff (umbrellas when it rains, sunglasses and hats when it's sunny). This means you can't really walk anywhere without people just pushing stuff in your face and trying to scam you into buying stuff. Finally, as a woman traveling alone, you can expect to be accosted on a regular basis, by very forward Italian men. I wanted to sit and read my book in the park on my second last day and well, needless to say, I was not alone for long and basically had to lie and say that I was late to meet a friend for lunch so that I could get away.
Other than these few negatives, the city is pretty cool. Most of the little cafes sell pizza by weight and it is absolutely amazing. I pretty much just ate pizza the whole time I was there. Also, you can drink on the streets and there is nothing better than grabbing a piece of pizza and some beer and going to sit by a fountain somewhere in the middle of the afternoon! All the fountains have drinking water spouts so there is always clean, fresh water around. The city is also extremely walkable and I was pretty much walking 8-10 hours a day and thoroughly enjoyed exploring the city, wandering around museums and sites and relaxing in the sun.
So, moving on to the ancient stuff. Again, I saw far too much to go into detail here but I can basically summarize my 5 favourite sites of Rome:
1) Pompeii. This doesn't actually count as it is down by Naples but was definitely the highlight of my trip. A town that basically experienced a sort of "sleeping beauty" effect, the entire town was buried by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD. This means that most of the town was preserved (including food, paintings, and creepily enough, the bodies of those who couldn't get out in time). This picture is of a temple to the goddess Isis, and rarely do we find temples so well preserved (at least those which were not turned into Christian churches). The paintings are also amazing, and the houses, and well everything. I spent an entire day there and would go back in a heartbeat.
2) Ostia: This was the port town for Rome (since Rome was not a coastal city). The ruins of this town are very similar to those in Pompeii (most buildings survive to at least the first level). It was not buried in an eruption but just sort of abandoned and then forgotten as the coastline changed. There are only some wall paintings but the cool thing about this town is that it was a working-man's town and most of the residences are the ancient equivalent of apartment buildings which is quite a contrast from the amazing private homes found in Pompeii.
3) The Vatican: The museum collections at the Vatican are truly amazing and the views from the top of the dome of St Peter's basilica are breath-taking. However, I was really torn by the incredible collection of stuff there, and the reality of how the Church got all this stuff and how it is hording it (and also charging an arm and a leg to go see it). There is no where near enough space here for me to go into detail about all of this so I'll just leave it at that. If you are feeling brave (and have about 2 hours of spare time) feel free to ask me about it sometime.
4) The Roman Forum, Palatine and Colosseum: These three sites are put together here in part because you basically buy one ticket to get into all three. This picture is taken from in front of the temple of Divus Iulius looking through the open space of the forum towards the Capitoline hill (with the back of the Capitoline museum in the background). The only thing that ruined this experience was the weird modern art (you can see the 3 gleaming white pillar things on the right of this photograph) that litters the site. No idea why the Italians would put this stuff in here and it totally takes away from the coolness of the site, but oh well. I thoroughly enjoyed walking through these areas (especially since I knew exactly what I was looking at) whereas a lot of the people I talked to while there found these sites super frustrating as nothing is really labeled. I kept interjecting into people's conversations as they were wandering in order to correct their information and provide them with some insight. It was weird and I tried not to do it too often but some people were so blatantly wrong that I couldn't just walk by.
5) The Crypt of the Capuchini: Not Roman and not something I had heard of before I came to Rome. A friend that I met up with there took me on our day of adventuring. The crypt is divided into 5 chapels all of which are decorated with the bones of 4000 monks who died between the 16th-19th centuries. It is amazingly done but at the same time kind of creepy. Definitely not for the faint of heart but a must-see as there is really nothing else in the world like it. You aren't allowed to take pictures inside but I found a link to a video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlK0frpbh5s
So, that was pretty much my trip. I pretty much saw everything I had planned on (except Hadrian's villa at Tivoli because it is really awkward to get to by public transport) but I by no means saw everything and will definitely have to go back. And of course, there is no way I could put even a fraction of my pictures here (I took over 1100) so I will be putting up a bunch on my picasa web site in the next couple of days as I sort through them.
