Ruins, ruins and still more ruins

Yesterday we went to Ostia Antica, an abandoned town near what was at one time the mouth of the Tiber.  It was a port town so all the big ships would come into port and put their stuff (like amphorae full of olive oil – see my post about Monte Testacchio) on smaller ships that would carry the cargo up the river to Rome.  But eventually the port got too small and they built a bigger one, and the town sort of faded away and was abandoned.  Then the river must have changed course over time and filled in the entire thing with silt.  Yech.  But it was very handy as a preservative. The whole town is basically still there.  Or at least the bits that had been buried in mud.

 

It goes on forever.  Tom says it’s a mile from one end to the other.  But that’s only if you travel in a straight line.  The cool thing about this place is you can actually walk into the ruins and wander around.  There are a few areas that are off limits and marked by chains, but for the most part it’s every man for himself.  This is just the kind of thing the C-man loves.  He and the Princess spent a great deal of time galloping off into the distance with Tom and I shouting after them that they needed to stop running.

 

This town had everything.  You can see the baths, a theatre, the forum, a fire department, shops, warehouses, and taverns, even an apartment building.  That would have been interesting, but unfortunately we couldn’t get anywhere near it because it was chock full of tour groups.  If I take the kids back there we will have to get a better look at it.

 

I think we may have seen about half of it.  Maybe not quite that much, but after three hours the kids were done so we got back on the train and came home.  That afternoon we just hung around the apartment eating grilled cheese sandwiches and tidying up. 

 

A, our babysitter came over at about 8 and then Tom and I left for dinner. J, another  faculty member here, had invited us to dinner with another program.  She is sharing studio space with our University.  She had also invited some of the fellows from the American Academy They were all very interesting, but I can’t remember any of their names.  It was a great time.  She made fried artichokes, but before you could eat them you had to draw one.  She had a big sheet of brown paper on her table, strewn with artichokes and drawing implements.  I cheated and just wrote a description instead.  J said that would be acceptable.  They were delicious.

 

Today was the last day of Culture week, and the weather is still beautiful so I suggested to the kids that maybe it would be a good day to go to the Colosseum one more time.  They thought this sounded like a pretty good idea so after lunch we saddled up and headed over to the #3 bus stop.  We got off the bus between Circus Maximus and the Colosseum and then walked back to the entrance at Palatine hill, assuming the queue would be shorter there.  It was.  We did a quick walk through Palatine hill and then went down to the main attraction. 

This is the third time we have been to the Colosseum so there wasn’t much that we haven’t already seen.  Except now it is spring and there is grass growing on some of the rocks, and flowers too.  That was pretty cool to see.  The C-man had a sad moment when he asked if we could do something the next time we came and I explained to him that this might be the last time we visit the inside.  Because we have, after all, been there three times already, and it costs 11 euro to get in normally, with no discount for the bambini.  So we may come back and see the outside, but we might not go inside again.  He said he was going to miss the Colosseum and got his big sad face on.  There were a few tears but he rallied pretty quickly.  I suspect this last month may be pretty hard on them.  I told him this building has been here for 2000 years, it will still be here when he comes back to Rome. 

 

So Culture Week comes to a close, and I think we managed to wring it by the neck.  We got into the Baths of Diocletian, Monte Testacchio, Trajan’s Markets, Ostia Antica, Palatine Hill and the Colosseum.  Not bad, not bad at all.

 

 

 

Monte Testacchio

Ah, another perfect day in Rome.  Today we had an appointment to go up the Monte Testacchio.  Actually the school had the appointment, but they had room on their permit so the kids and I tagged along.  As we were standing there waiting for the group to assemble a couple came up and asked our guide if they could go up the hill.  He told them no you need a reservation.  Then somehow he got into a conversation with C, and Tom told them we had room on our permesso and did they want to tag along with our group?  They happily said yes. 

It turns out this guy who hitched his wagon to our train was something of an expert.  He gave us a little lecture at the top of the hill about the different types of amphorae and how you can date the different layers in the hillside.  It was very interesting.  I have no idea who he was or where he came from, but he was very interesting.

Monte Testacchio is an entire hill made out of pottery shards.  900 years worth of pottery shards.  The hill is right behind the Mercato Centrale, or Central Market.  There has been a market on this site for, well, 2000 years.  Back then they would transport olive oil in these pottery jars called amphorae, and after they sold the oil they would just smash the jars and toss them in a heap.  After 900 years of this kind of behavior, you accumulate quite a pile.

When we planned this trip I was imagining a hill, covered in grass where if you dug around a bit you might find tiny shards of terra cotta about the size of a dime.  No.  There are literally chunks of pottery all over the hillside.  Some of them still have handles, or plugs in them, or markings.  I was amazed.  Especially considering how old this place is and how long people have been coming here.

I also couldn’t stop thinking about was all the work that went into making all these jars, just so they could get smashed to bits and tossed in a pile.  I understand the logic behind it though.  The oil would soak into the terra cotta and it would get rancid, so you couldn’t really reuse the jars at all.  But still, it seems like a shame.  On the other hand though, all that work is still visible 1000 years after the fact.  That has to count for something right?

Apparently in the old days you didn’t need to make an appointment, or get permission to go up there.  You could just go whenever you wanted to.  And people did, and they took home lots of souvenirs.  The city finally closed the hill when they realized it was actually shrinking. 

So now you have to have a guide/babysitter, and you are not allowed to touch the pottery shards.  Which seems strange since you are allowed to walk on them, but never mind.  I understand the logic behind it.  If you pick it up the trip to your pocket is very short and very tempting.  It is also very illegal to take bits home with you.  At one point on the hill I stopped to take a rock out of my shoe because I didn’t want to get off the hill and realize it wasn’t a rock at all…

After lunch The C-man and I took the H bus up to Termini for a trip to the Baths of Diocletian.  This is a huge series of ruins.  There is a museum built into them now, and a church.  It was free because it’s culture week.  That’s why we went up there.  I am determined to get as much out of this unexpected windfall as I possibly can. 

The museum is kind of disappointing.  We did see a whole human skeleton though; the C-man thought that right there was worth the price of admission.  It is full of odds and ends but you can’t really get a good look at the ruins themselves.  And, at the moment much of it seems to be closed for renovations.  The C-man enjoyed himself, and it was fun spending the afternoon with him, but if I had paid 5 or 8 euros to get in I would have been kind of irate.

On the way home we stopped at that gelateria on Tiber Island.  In a radical departure, the C-man had cinnamon ice cream instead of his usual chocolate chip.  He had tried mine the last time we were there.  I asked him how it was and he said, “Good, it tastes like muffin.”  

Trajan’s Markets

It was raining when we got up this morning.  It is always raining these days.  Our original plan today had been to go to Trajan’s markets and see Trajan’s column, which we have seen before but I wanted to see it again.  Plus all the city museums are free this week and I wanted to take advantage of that.  I thought we might have to abandon those plans, but after obsessively checking a number of weather websites I decided we could probably press on, or if not, we could go to the Baths of Diocletian. 

 

We came home and had lunch and by then it had stopped raining and it looked like the sun was trying to come out.  So we decided to forge ahead with our original plans and go to Trajan’s markets.  We took the 780 bus up to Piazza Venezia, ran across all the scary lanes of very fast traffic and arrived at Trajan’s forum.  This is another one like the cats where you can stand and look at them, but you can’t go down and walk around.  Probably just as well today as they looked like they were soaking wet.

 

Then we walked over to the market entrance.  It was free because it is culture week.  The funny thing is the ticket inspectors were just as adamant about seeing your tickets as they always are, even though nobody was paying to get in.  Weird.  We wondered if maybe they just didn’t want to seem like they weren’t doing their job.

 

Trajan’s markets are huge.  There were originally 150 little shops arranged in a semi-circle.  The museum is in part of it.  That part has two stories, with six little shops on each floor, and a big central hallway.  They have bits and pieces of roman statuary in them now, and a model of the markets as they used to be.  They are huge, and very well preserved.  You can really walk around in them, which is pretty cool.  The C-man likes to walk around in the ruins and you don’t get to do that very much. 

 

After we had had our fill of ruins we came home on the bus, made a quick pit stop and then headed to the playground where we met up with another American family.  We have met them before.  They are also on a semester abroad program.  We had a nice long chat until Princess O and the C-man started arguing about where to go for ice cream.  I did the popular thing and said forget it, if you can’t agree we aren’t going.  So we came home instead.  My goodness that was a popular decision.

 

We did go back out tonight for gelati though.  It was another one of those perfect evenings, where I think to myself this is the Rome I was imagining.  It wasn’t quite all the way dark yet, it was warm, and the piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere was full of people.  There was a mother and a baby looking out their window at us, and all the bars on the piazza were open and doing a brisk business.  There was even a busker playing the accordion (the theme from The Godfather if you can believe it).  We sat on the steps of the fountain and ate our ice cream cones and all was right with the world. 

 

Wandering aimlessly again

It is culture week this week!  That means all the state run museums and archeological site are free.  Awesome.  Today Tom took the kids sketching with his students at the Capitoline Museum, so that means I had the day off. 

Anyway, since I had the day off I decided to go to the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj to see Priceless Works of Art, because that is what I like to do on my days off.  Funny, at home on my days off I go to Old Navy.  This way is much better.

Anyway, this Palazzo is still owned by the Doria Pamphilj family, and they still live there.  They own one of the largest privately held art collections in the world.  So you walk into the courtyard and you buy your ticket, which costs 8 euros.  And then the ticket seller asks you if you want the audio guide because it comes free with the ticket.  I said no which I think kind of surprised him.  But I don’t like the audio guides.  It makes a trip to the museum seem like a chore.  It becomes about checking off the paintings they talk about in the audio guide.  I prefer to just wander around and allow my senses to be assaulted.  You see more that way. 

So, you go up the stairs into the galleries.  This is an old school art museum. For one thing, there are windows.  Most museums don’t have natural light in the galleries. Natural light is terrible for paintings.  It fades them.  But apparently they don’t care.  All the rooms have painted ceilings, and fancy wall coverings.  The paintings are all numbered, but not all of them are labeled.  Lucky for me the guy at the ticket booth gave me a laminated booklet that listed all the paintings in each room.  And, of course, all the heavy hitters were labeled with the artist, title and a small explanation.

So you see the art galleries, which are really just rooms in the palazzo where they decided to hang the art, then you walk around the courtyard to the second part of the museum, which is just the palazzo itself.  There are about 4 rooms you can walk through and more that you can see but can’t go into.  These were obviously rooms the family still uses.  You would look in and see paintings, and fabulous wall coverings, and antique furniture, and then the phone book sitting on a desk.  Or in the dining room I saw the long dining table, silver candle sconces, fabulous chandeliers, and a high chair.  It was funny. 

Then as I was leaving I walked under a covered area in the courtyard.  There were bicycles parked there and a Mercedes.  And right next to the Mercedes, a Roman statue.  So even their garage has Art in it.

The courtyard is very pretty too.  There is a small fountain, and orange and lemon trees. 

Since this is still someone’s home, I wonder if they get the run of the place after they kick the tourists out for the night.  I mean can they walk through the galleries in the evening saying “this is MY Caravaggio, this is MY Raphael”?  How cool if you could do that.  I bet you could throw some great parties too.

I was in there for a while soaking it all in and thinking how much the children would have hated it.  I bought some postcards then made my exit.

I decided I wasn’t done wandering around yet, so I walked my usual circuit.  So I was off to the Trevi Fountain, which was absolutely choked with people.  From there I walked over to the Piazza di Spagna.  When I got there I realized I was starving so I went to McDonalds for a snack.  I’m not ashamed of it.  Sometimes you just need some french fries. 

When I left McDonalds it was raining and of course I didn’t have an umbrella.  Never mind.  I walked down the Via Condotti anyway, and peeked in the windows at Prada and Ferragamo (shoes, glorious shoes).  Approximately every 3 feet various nice gentlemen offered to sell me an umbrella for the low low price of 5 euros, but I held firm. 

When I got back to the Via del Corso I cut through the Piazza Colonna back to the Pantheon.  I just missed a tram so I decided to walk. I did break down finally and buy the world’s ugliest umbrella, but I did not buy it from the street vendors, and it was only 2.50.  Hah.

When I got home I made a pot of coffee – I am drinking waayy too much coffee these days.  I really need to cut back.  And I will, next week, or the week after. But I definitely have to do it before we go home.

 

Birthday party plans

I am working on a plan for the C-Man’s birthday party on Saturday.  It is really just a dinner party with cake attached, but I wanted to be kind of like a birthday party, at least at the kid’s table.

I know what I will serve the adults, but I am trying to think of what to feed the kids.  I thought of peanut butter and jelly, or maybe hot dogs.  Something you would get at an American birthday party.  I will have to talk to the C-man about it again.  Or maybe hamburgers.  Of course, the C-man doesn’t like any of those things, but since you can’t get Kraft Mac & Cheese here he will have to muddle through.

I am also looking for a birthday cake.  The bakeries around here have beautiful cakes, but they don’t really seem like birthday cakes.  They are usually covered in dark chocolate, have fruity fillings and cost about 30 euro.  That is more than I want to spend on a birthday cake frankly.  I would bake one myself, but this is not possible.  I have a few more places to look tomorrow, but we do have a plan B. 

The bar downstairs has cakes in their refrigerated cases.  They look more like birthday cakes than anything else I have seen.  The C-man found one today he declared would be acceptable.  It is actually an ice cream cake.  I should probably go ahead and get it so we at least have something.   I even found a candle shaped like the number eight at the Standa. 

So, we have a #8 candle, a plan B cake, and party hats.  I think this is coming together nicely.  I hope the C-man agrees.

Happy Birthday C-Man

It is the C-man’s birthday.  He is eight years old now.   He opened his presents this morning.  He seemed pleased.  He got a DVD, some books and some games.  We are supposed to be getting him a drum set when we get back home, but I am hoping he forgets about that.

 

I asked him what he wanted to do for his birthday and he said he wanted to go to the Theatre of Marcellus.  Well of course he did.  Isn’t that what every 8 year old boy wants to do on his birthday?  It was a nice sunny day today, so we had a nice little outing.   We were lazy and took the tram up across the river and then walked from there.  There are poppies growing all among the ruins and it is very pretty.  I am not entirely sure why the C-man likes these particular ruins so much, but they are definitely his favorite spot in Rome.

 

We walked home across the Tiber Island bridges and stopped for some gelati near the Do Good Brothers Hospital.  As we were approaching the playground mom called on my cell phone to say happy birthday.  She talked to the kids, and then talked to me.  And since she was calling from my sister’s she gave her the phone.   It was sooo good to talk to her.  At home we talk to each other every day.  Sometimes twice, or even three times if the children are being particularly unpleasant.  We talked for a long time.  God only knows how much that phone call cost but we agreed it was worth every penny.

 

The kids played for a bit when we got home and then watched Star Wars, the Phantom Menace.  That was his present from Auntie S.  It is two hours long, so I did some cleaning and then I took a nap.  I didn’t mean to take a nap.  It just happened.

 

Dinner tonight was at the Hard Rock Café.  I know, I know, how horrible.  Actually, no.  It isn’t horrible at all.  It is very nice and very homey.  It is comfort food to the tenth degree.

 

It’s the atmosphere that gets you. It’s big and loud, with American music videos playing all over the place, and rock and roll memorabilia on the walls.  This one had a Live Aid jacket and program, and on one wall, the “choose life” t-shirt and blue and white shorts that George Michael wore in the Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go video.  Hilarious.

 

The C-man ordered macaroni and cheese, which wasn’t quite what, he expected, but he ate a few bites, and his garlic bread and most of my fries and he was fine.  I think, no I know he was expecting Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.  Nothing else is ever quite as good.  We told the waitress it was his birthday and she brought out some ice cream with a candle and the waitresses sang.  I think he enjoyed himself.  It is kind of hard to tell with him sometimes.

 

 

 

The Malaysian Grand Prix Report

Better late than never…

Ah, Easter morning, spent with the children huddled around the laptop watching racing cars.  What could be better?

So I did find a Secret Way to watch the Grand Prix online.  Hooray.  I had that up in one window and live timing in another.  Live timing, I have discovered, is a very handy thing to have up and running when you are watching the race and they are not telling you what you want to know.  Like letting me know that Fernando is in the pits while the race coverage is in commercials. 

The Ferraris seem to have recovered from their horrible race last week.  Both went galloping off into the distance at the start, and would have probably finished 1 and 2 except poor Felipe Massa spun his car and beached it on lap 30.  They changed the rules this year and you cannot get help back onto the track so the marshals could not push him back onto the track.  Massa says he doesn’t know what happened.  He says the car was behaving strangely.  That’s pretty typical.  Nothing is ever Massa’s fault.

Both McLarens started with 5-spot grid penalties for holding up traffic in qualifying.  That meant Lewis Hamilton started directly behind Alonso, his former teammate.  Unfortunately the Renault is no good this year and Fernando couldn’t do anything to keep Hamilton behind him.  Alonso did finish in the points though giving him 6 points in the championship race.  It’s not many, but it’s 6 more than Felipe Massa has.

Heikki Kovalainen managed to take third place in the other McLaren though.  I was happy for him.  He seems like a nice enough guy.  And Hamilton came in 5^th, behind Jarno Trulli.  How cool is that?  I have always liked so I was pleased to see him finally get a good result.  Hamilton’s race fell apart during his first pit stop.  The mechanics couldn’t get one of the wheels off the car and his stop took forever.  Actually, he did well to finish 5^th, and he was reeling Trulli in at the end, he just ran out of time. 

Meanwhile BMW finished second for the second race in a row.  This time it was Robert Kubica’s turn.  I think BMW will get their first win this season.

The Renault is a real POS this year.  Poor Fernando.  They say they will have improvements for the Spanish Grand Prix on April 25 but so will all the other teams.  So unless Renault’s improvements are really spectacular or one of the other mid-pack team’s improvements are off the mark, I don’t really see them making up much ground.  It’s frustrating because it is so much fun to watch Alonso drive on the limit.  And to see him on the limit and still struggling to pass a Red Bull is killing me. 

 

Bus Bingo

I went out with the kids this morning to do some grocery shopping, and discovered that Rome is closed today.  At least the grocery stores were.  So were most of the restaurants in our neighborhood and almost all of the coffee bars.  I had planned poorly and groceries were in short supply.  I had just enough pane americana to make sandwiches for the children with a side order of apples and potato chips.  Tom went to Planet Kebab to get lunch for us.  They were open of course, because the guys who run the kebab shop don’t celebrate Easter.

 

It finally stopped raining so we decided to do a round of bus bingo with churches attached.  Actually the churches were an afterthought.  Our original destination was the Domus Aurea, a park over by the Colosseum.  It is the site of Nero’s vast palace.  The one he built after the city of Rome conveniently burned in that neighborhood.  Apparently at one time it went on for miles, and the Colosseum was built later in part of the grounds.  That gives you some idea how big it was.  Since nobody liked Nero much they tore it down as soon as he died.  There are some big hulking bits visible now, and apparently there are other parts of the house you can see by appointment.  We just planned to walk around and see what we could see.

 

Our plan was to take the #3 bus to the Colosseum and walk over to the Domus from there.  But the #3 didn’t come for ages.  So after a very long time at the bus stop we decided that we were just going to take the next bus no matter where it was going.  That turned out to be the 125, which took us back past the Piazza San Cosimato and over toward Villa Farnesina.  We got off the bus when it got back to the Tiber River and waited for the #23.  We took that over to San Paolo. 

 

This is the second biggest church in Rome after St. Peters, which makes it the third largest church in the world.  Constantine built it in 4^th century but it burned to the ground in 1823 and was completely rebuilt.  The tomb of St. Paul is in the crypt.

 

Along the wall under the nave windows are portraits of all the popes since St. Peter, including Pope Benedict.  Apparently legend says when they run out of space for the next portrait the world will end.  I think I counted six spaces left.  But our Lonely Planet guidebook says there are eight.  Either way, clearly time is running out.  Although I suppose if the next six (or eight) Popes serve for as long as John Paul II did, that still gives us another 162-216 years.

 

We thought we would take another bus from San Paulo to Domus Aurea but it didn’t seem to be running so we took the Metro line B instead.  We got out at the Colosseum and walked through the Domus Aurea Park.

 

On the way out we decided to stop in San Clemente, since we were in the neighborhood.

 

San Clemente was built in the 12^th century, on top of an 8^th century church built on top of a Roman era palazzo and temple of Mithras.  It is very cool.

 

The top church is very pretty and has some nice mosaics, but the real attraction lies below the surface.  First everybody pays the nice woman in the gift shop 5 euro (but she let the children in for free – I don’t think she was supposed to) and then you go down the steps into the first church.  You can still see some of the frescoes and the shape of the old church, which was slightly bigger than the “new” one.  Next you go down another set of stairs, and you find yourself looking into the Temple of Mithras.  This was a cult that traveled to Rome from Persia and apparently gave Christianity a run for its money for a couple hundred years.  Know what they did in the temple?  Neither does anybody else.  It’s a big mystery.

 

You can also see a Roman alley and a Roman era palazzo, with several rooms still in pretty good shape.  At this point you are about 30 feet below the street level, which is a little bit creepy if you think about it too much.

 

Finally we caught the #3 bus home.  This ended our afternoon round of Bus Bingo, and we got home right before it started raining again.

 

Happy Easter

Happy Easter.  I hope everybody is having a good day.

 

The Easter Bunny has come and gone.  Both kids liked their chocolate eggs.  Princess O’s had a little stuffed porcupine inside it.  The C-man’s had a little zippered case in it.  I think it’s a pencil case, with picures of Bart and Homer Simpson on it.  It was kind of a lame toy but he took it well.  That, I’ve decided is the only downside of these eggs.  You can’t see what’s in them.  You have to take potluck.  All in all it seemed to be a successful morning.  I think it lasted about 15 minutes.

 

It rained most of the day again today.  We did manage to get out for a walk early this afternoon.  We went out and did a lap of the Tiber Island.  You can walk down from the street level to the river and circumnavigate the whole place.  It isn’t very big.  The biggest thing on the island is a hospital.  The name of the hospital on that island is Ospedale Fatebene Fratelli.  Or, in English, the Do Good Brothers Hospital.  I love that. 

 

We made spaghetti Bolognese for dinner.  Tom makes a mean Bolognese sauce.  Then for dessert I had purchased a special Easter cake at the Standa.  They had tons of different kinds, and they are all beautifully packaged in fancy boxes with ribbons and fancy handles and whatnot.  Then you open it up and there, smashed into the corner, is an oddly-shaped cake wrapped in plastic wrap.  The packaging is definitely the best part.  It tastes just like a panettone, if you have ever had that.  It is not very sweet, and tastes a little bit like oranges.  There are also bits of candied orange in it and almonds on the top.  The children each took one bite and decided to go for the chocolate egg option instead.  This leaves a lot of cake for Tom and I to get through.  I am pretty sure we can rise to the occasion.

 

Tomorrow I go to Standa in the hopes of scoring a half price chocolate egg for myself.

 

 

 

The Easter Bunny cometh

Rain, rain and more rain.  Didn’t do anything today.  Tom went for a long walk but the rest of us just hunkered down and stayed in the apartment. 

I had the kids make themselves paper Easter baskets.  They turned out pretty cute.  They are small, but big enough to suit our purposes.  While we were being crafty I cut out a bunch of egg shaped pieces of paper and the children colored Easter eggs.  Not quite the same as coloring real eggs, but since I never did find white eggs, we couldn’t really do that.  On the plus side, it doesn’t matter if we forget where we hid the paper eggs because they won’t get smelly.  On the minus side, you also cannot make egg salad with them, and I love egg salad.

There are still a lot of chocolate Easter eggs left at Standa.  I never did get one for myself.  I am hoping they will go on sale after tomorrow.  If they were at Target they would already be 30% off and on Monday they would be half price.  But I am not sure how that stuff works here.  I guess we will wait and see.  I still have my eye on that Pirates of the Caribbean egg. 

Now I just have to wait until they fall asleep so I can get out all the stuff and get rolling.  I don’t think there is anywhere good to hide things, so I am not sure what I am going to do.  I guess I will think of something.  I also have to have Tom eat some of the carrot and radishes the kids left out for the Easter bunny.  I cannot wait to see what is in these eggs.

Looks like rain again all day tomorrow too.  I think it might stop sometime on Tuesday. I feel for all the people who are planning to go to mass tomorrow at St. Peters and sit in the piazza.  They will be freezing cold and wet.  Poor things.