I slept well last night. What was great was that the shower was hot and the light didn’t turn off this time. It’s the little things. 🙂
The B&B technically is just that… A bed and ‘breakfast’. I guess the facilities that are here are good enough. Again, I wish I had a phone, the internet and some washing facilities. The second B in the title is a stretch though. The breakfast consists of a basket with a sugared packet roll and a sweet chocolate biscuit thing and one of those packet toast things. I’m not sure what the little butter and jams would go on but on the bright side you can have a tea or a coffee and there’s some water and juice on the other table, so that’s nice. I made the mistake of eating the sugared role (damn the habit I have of needing to finish everything on my plate) but luckily the biscuit thing was better and I had that with a cup of tea. Not sure it was worth getting up for though. Not to worry.
It’s funny, I keep waking up thinking I’m in Sydney rather than Rome. Every so often I’ll be walking along and think the same thing. It’s a little surreal.
On my agenda for today was the Roman Forum… Well, what’s left of it. They say you should have a guide or get the audio guide if you want to understand what you’re looking at. This time I didn’t need help to get to the Colosseum (since it’s next door), I’m old hat at that now. 🙂
So I headed to the Forum. The Colosseum is packed with people and the path to the Forum isn’t any better. I kept getting held up by groups and slow people. Why is it that when you’re in a hurry an old couple can take up the room of five people and have the extrasensory ability to head you off continually as you try to pass… you know, like you see race car drivers do, only slower.
As you walk up the path (made of very large loosely ‘interlocking’ river rocks – difficult to walk upon) past the columns, your first sight is the Arch of Titus celebrating victory over Jewish Rebels. You can feel you’ve got a lot more in store as you see things scattered around the area in the distance.
The audio guide was pretty good but sometimes it was difficult to work out which direction it wanted you to face and its “to your right…” style directions were lost while as you found your bearings. But you get a lot more out of the experience than without it. I overheard an older couple say, as they stood in front of what was the House of the Vestal Virgins, “looks like someone’s house, they must have been nice houses back then, looks like they had columns all along the front”. Hmm… Actually… every year six girls aged between six & ten were chosen in a lottery and spent 10 years in training, 10 years serving (ensuring the Fire of Rome remained lit) and 10 years training the new virgins. But they were treated very well, like queens and could marry after their 30 years of service. If she did something wrong during that period though, particularly losing her virginity for example, the punishment was being buried alive & the guy would be flogged to death!
Anyway, the Arch of Septimius Severus was cool. It celebrated victory over the Parthians. It had three names on it but when Caracalla killed his brother Geta he removed his brothers and replaced it with words saying how good he was.
It seems if something was converted to a church then it was safe from history’s destruction. The Temple of Romulus has thus fared well. There’s so many ruins here… from the Temple of Saturn to the Basilica Giulia, the Temple of Concord, the Temple of Vespasian and the Temple of Castor and Pollux. Also the remains of the Basilica of Constantine which may have been some of the inspiration of St. Peter’s Basilica and then you have the Temple of Julius Caesar built by Augustus Octavian on the site where Julius’ body was burned after he was stabbed in the Senate. A lot of interesting stories made more realistic as you stand before particular ruins. It was a good excursion and took me two hours to get around the whole area.
After that I went to the bus stop and waited for the 110 OPEN tour bus… Eventually, I worked out that the road had been blocked so there’d be no busses passing any time soon so I took the train to Termini, a bargain at €1… so I could then take the bus from there. It’s one of those open air busses that you can take all day, hopping on & off whenever you like… good value at €13.
I got the ticket for the bus but it’s amazing how often you can get part of the way… Where do I go? The young lady tells me the terminal at the front, at least I think that’s what she was saying. Now that’d be helpful if I knew the context of the where ‘front’ is… I just wandered around and watched more people get the vague instruction and finally I spotted one of the busses over at a stand in front of all the alphabetised stands… The others seemed to follow me and finally see the three busses all lined up too. Why does it always seem so difficult?
The tour bus was a good idea once I worked out that the secondary input for the headphones had been installed because someone had jammed chewing gum in all of the original ones. It was good ‘cos you pick your language and it gives you a commentary as you go past things. When the stop comes, it says what you can see if you get off there.
I was just enjoying the ride. It was hot. I was wondering whether my neck, forehead and scalp may have been getting burnt. When we passed a temperature sign, it said it was 30 degrees… That would explain why it felt hot. It was hot!
I was getting hungry so I got off at the Trevi Fountain stop… Walked there… it was packed. Then I walked passed the Temple of Hadrian (whose huge columns were still hidden by the large printed sheet) to the Pantheon where I had Pizza… It was alright but they weren’t listening, I didn’t get my water (remember it was really hot) or my chili flakes. I was getting annoyed by then so after paying I stopped at the water fountain and filled my bottle… It’s cool how there are fountains and water things everywhere so you can quickly find drinking water… It’s good when it’s so hot.
I next walked to Piazza Navona where the Fountain of the Four Rivers was hidden when I was here before… It was still being cleaned and restored but now it had viewing windows so you could see the parts of the fountain not obscured by scaffolding. Imagine the maintenance of a city like this. It explains why there’s always something being restored. The fountain was built by Bernini and the cool thing was that I could now see the Nile sculpture shielding himself from the ugliness of the Church of St. Agnes built by Borromini who’s angel sculptures on the facade are turning away and closing their eyes so they don’t see the fountain. 🙂
I got on the bus at another stop. The ride reminded me that I should visit the Castel Sant’Angelo at some point. I traveled along… I regretted not liking hats and overlooking the need to put sunscreen on today. I got off at the Museum of Augustus’ Alter of Peace (Ara Pacis). There used to be a huge sundial which cast its shadow on the alter whenever it was Augustus’ birthday but it has since been moved. The alter was impressive particularly when you find out how much detail was in the floral pattern on the outside (it described almost every known flora at the time) but inside the museum was a small model of the buildings back then and likenesses of the family and a genealogy chart. Downstairs was further sculpture depicting some of his triumphs too and his famous last will & testament (which is also on the outside of the building).
What was interesting too was that in the adjacent showroom there were really old PC’s over history… that was cool. And they had quotes on the wall like one from Dvorak explaining how the mouse used by Apple was a fad that wouldn’t catch on. 🙂
I did a bit of a lap round the Mausoleum of Augustus then got the bus again. Of note, a homeless man had put various things on each of the posts along the path next to the road, each with a little note or sign – there had to be around 20 of them. Some were quite funny. You could put money in a box if you liked them.
When I got back to Termini & walked home I had a shower… It was so good after such a long hot day. I then realised the extent to which I was sunburnt, particularly my neck. Woops! :-/
I looked up Cinema’s in my Lonely Planet book. It seemed to indicate there was a cinema down from Termini in Republic Square so I thought that was worth a look…
After more walking… My legs! Anyway, I found the cinema and as it turned out they had Ocean’s 13 showing in English too (once I worked out that the times are printed on colourful leaflets on both sides of the foyer)… I decided to go after I ate something. I couldn’t work out the other conditions of the cinema, something about 20 minutes and no free tickets after 6pm. Anyway, I found a pizzeria and got a Pepperoni pizza. It was alright and they were pretty quick with regard to service. Got out of there with just enough time.
They seemed to be allocated seats so I took mine as soon as the people sitting there realised this as well. I met two girls from Perth just in front and talked briefly about stuff, one worked with Perth Tourism now so was trying to convince me how good it was over there.
The ads were loud and annoying and they used the loony tunes characters for their announcements which I couldn’t understand except maybe the one about checking you’re in the right seat. The Transformers preview looked really cool as did Harry Potter and Silver Surfer despite them being dubbed in Italian.
Anyway, the movie was surprisingly good but as the Perth girl was saying, hard not to be with so many stars… Although Charlies Angels 2 was pretty bad due, in my opinion, to the number of cameos. Either way, I enjoyed it. The Perth girl, not her friend, had the loudest laughter in the cinema! It was good she felt so comfortable despite being asked to move when they turned out to be in someone else’s allocated seats. 🙂
It was just on midnight. I casually walked home. My legs hurt from all the walking. They were soooo sore! I was glad to go to bed.