Roman montage

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Wow. I've been here two weeks already, and haven't really kept this thing up at all. So here, in montage form, is everything we've seen and done in Rome to this date (excluding those things my parents don't want to read about): walk walk walk, metro, bus, metro, ice cream, church, bigger church, tombs, ruins, even bigger church, good food, the biggest church I've ever seen, even better food, really cheap wine, an even bigger church, and people making out everywhere.

Now that you're caught up, here's today:
We woke up early, then took nearly three hours to get out of the house. Understandable, because Lucy had to both take a shower And put clothes on. Clearly a two and a half hour operation under the best of circumstances, and factoring in the lack of sleep created by getting up early, I think three hours were all that any sane human being could expect out of our tiny Brit. Once on the road, we headed down to St. Peter's basilica, the holiest piece of rock in the Roman Catholic Empire. And they have a LOT of holy rock piles. Our plan was to go to the top of the dome, which is quite a ways up and gives a great view of the city, but they were doing an exorcism or something, and we weren't allowed past the first floor.

Vowing to return tomorrow, we headed off to a church with "the mouth of truth". Not a joke: this is a manhole carved into a man's face (which is one way to envision a manhole, unless you're Brandon). In medieval times, peasants put their hand into the mouth, and were told that if they lied the mouth would close, chopping off their gnarled peasant extremities. Ironic that the RCC would allow such superstitious nonsense in one of their churches. Actually, maybe it's more appropriate than ironic.

Finally, we decided to head out to San Giovanni's Basilica, the resting place of another set of holy bones. On the way, however, we were waylaid by the sight of a 50 foot pyramid a stone's throw from the metro stop. Having seen this beast before, we decided to satisfy our curiosity this time by poking it. Although we couldn't get close enough for physical contact, we did discover a posh graveyard that the pyramid is apparently just the capper of. A cemetary for non- catholic foreigners in Rome, it was a veritable orgy of one-upsmanship. Posh headstone next to more elaborate grave marker next to twelve foot statue of a cathedral next to an entire building. Clearly, everyone's competing for second place to the culturally incongruous pyramid dominating not just the cemetary, but basically the landscape for a good quarter mile in all directions.

There were some famous people buried there (Shelley, Keats, Hans Christian Anderson in the stone house), but the less notable are always somehow more touching in death. Seeing the graves of infants, teens, tourists that slipped at Roman monuments (a true story: the grave actually warns travelers to watch their step) made me think a lot about my life and it's eventual end. Everybody dies; the only real question is how many people buried in those plots truly lived?

We skipped S. Giovanni due to lack of time, and I'm skipping out on this blog to go have some wine!

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Comments

[George]

Oh so true
Jason, you have the heart of a poet...and the mouth of sailor. Hahaha, Brandon...manhole...funny stuff. Keep up the good work!