 Remy Champion - RCHAMP | All Comments |
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| 13th June 2008 barbie | nice! - From: Rome and First Days of School You should go back to that Piazza Venizia several times...go for a run there...it sounds so cool...good place to do your "observations" too. Pax! |
| 7th June 2008 LoLo chan | so funny! - From: Rome and First Days of School Remy ordering meat...in a foreign country....I love it! The park across the street sounds like some good people watching, you're lucky you're not surrounded by stinky old buildings. Taking lots of pictures I hope???!!! Love the updates, ciao bella! |
| 1st June 2008 Dad | Rome - From: ITALIA!!!!!!!! Hey Remy, Thanks for the update. Glad you had a great time at Venice and Verona. I recall a good time at Venice 'a few years ago' (~1975), but never made it to Verona. I just finished up an excellent book called the Fall of Rome by Bryan Ward-Perkins, a professor at Oxford. Seems many recent historians are arguing the 'fall' was more of a 'transition' or 'evolution' with the Germanic tribes. The author presents a very strong case that the fall was in fact, quite violent, and threw Europe into the Dark Ages. In the book he cites pottery finds as evidence. He notes that pottery was much more prevalent during the Roman period, and that there was a strong trade route throughout the empire, that was not matched until the 1700's! Anyway, the point of what I'm getting to is to check out a hill in Rome called 'Monte Testaccio', that is 150' high, which is made up entirely of broken amphorae from the Roman period! It is estimated it contains the remains of over 53 million vases used for olive oil and wine (guess they weren't big into recycling those days!). It is an excellent book, and through analyzing pottery, coinage, churches, language, writing, and cattle bones (!), he presents a strong argument about the conflict that ultimately caused the empire to collapse in the fifth century A.D. (On the cattle bones, they have determined Roman cattle were much larger than cattle either before or after the empire period, which the author believes supports the theory of a collapse, and not a transition). Glad to hear you're able to use your Italian with the locals; keep it up... We returned today after getting Phoebe off, so she's 'next door' to you now (Provence). Take care, Love, Dad |
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