Rome in a Day, another Way

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I needed to grab a cold water from the mini-frig in our room during the middle of the night (after consuming half a liter of wine the night before this “happy boy” was pretty thirsty). And I can hear Sharon saying now, “And whose fault would that be?” But now that I’m up, I worked on the previous day’s blog. It would be a shame to fall behind before getting on the Zuiderdam. By paying for the breakfast in advance when we checked in we saved 2 Euros for each meal over being charged at the door, and it didn’t make any sense trying to find something anywhere else. There was an ample spread including scrambled eggs, waffles, pancakes, many cold cereals and a full array of food for the typical Continental breakfast, including croissants (and yes, they had chocolate croissants as well, better than the ones on Holland America, but not quite as good as the one we had shared in the Barcelona airport only the day before). I got some sliced ham with a couple kinds of cheese, and of course a regular croissant. I sampled the orange juice, which looked like it might possibly be fresh squeezed (but it was that typical European swill that they pass off for orange juice). I stuck with water and they offered both natural and frizzante (my pick, with the bubbles).



Our guide would be meeting us at 9 AM. Prior to leaving the Nieuw Amsterdam I had changed enough dollars into Euros to cover our tour costs, which get paid to the drivers/guides as we go. Sharon had to purchase the Vatican tickets online and print out a voucher for two in advance of the tour. She had done this before we left Ohio. I had to convert $1,300 which took them a bit of time to put together at the front desk; but, I wound up with a 500 Euro note. I needed to break that into smaller bills but it was too large for the front desk of our hotel to manage; but, he directed me to a bank just one block away. I’d checked the previous afternoon, but it would not be open again to the public until 8:30 AM this morning. I was waiting outside for the bank to open a few minutes early. Already another man was also waiting. Then someone came up and indicated that I could enter by putting a credit card into the door reader (which would allow you to go into an interior room to the ATM machine to get cash). I pointed to the 8:30 on the door to indicate I was waiting for them to open. He asked in English, “To change cash?” and I nodded. The latch on the outside door was set on a time lock, and the light changed from yellow to off, indicating that door was open. From the ATM room the teller still had to buzz people inside. I got my smaller bills and returned to the hotel lobby to wait for our guide. He showed up just after I’d gotten back, and his name was John also. He was driving a large Mercedes SUV.



Sharon had learned about the Stephano Rome Tours from friends that she’d met while cruising, and this agency has had great reviews online. We had chosen their “Christian Rome” tour. While their tour offering highlight preset themes, they are flexible to visit sites requested by their clients as well. It was also the agency that was used for our tour in Salerno to visit the Amalfi coast.



Our first stop was at St. Peter in Chains church (one of the nearly 500 churches throughout Rome… And all of them Catholic our driver observed). Inside are one of the relics of the Catholic Church. These are the chains that held Saint Peter and the chains that held Saint Paul. It is said that when Pope Leo I brought these chains together to compare them, they miraculously fused together as one chain. What I wanted to see most was Michelangelo’s Moses which is housed here as part of the tomb of Pope Julius II. The statue is breathtaking, carved by hammer and chisel only out of a single slab of marble. Michelangelo considered sculpture his passion of releasing the soul of the rock to reveal something of beauty within. His detailed rendering of the human form is impressive, showing the veins and muscles in exquisite detail. The statue is sometimes referred to as “Moses with Horns” because of the two horn-like extensions beaming out of Moses’s head. The more familiar you become with Michelangelo’s works the more you realize that nothing he does is by accident. Some experience the statue feeling beams of light emanating from behind Moses; while, others see an aura surrounding Moses. It’s up to the viewer to experience each of his works. This was a work I really wanted to see, and feel fortunate for the opportunity to see it in person.



Our guide said that next he was taking us to “Someplace special”. It’s not on the tour description. He talked of an organization that started as “The Knights of Rhodes” dedicated to recover holy relics and to provide aide to pilgrims needing help on their journeys to the Holy Land. The needed to become more militaristic to deal with threats including the Barbary Pirates. The relocated and became the Knights of Malta. The house that he took us too is a property of the Knights of Malta, which he referred to in a sovereign sense… just as the embassy grounds around the world are considered to belong to the sovereign nation. We climbed a hill to get near the top in a rather well to do neighborhood. In the entrance door is a keyhole and our guide said that we would look through the keyhole. When we arrived a woman was taking (or trying to take) a picture through the keyhole. The keyhole is more of a peep hole about the size of a dime. She stepped aside and allowed Sharon to take a look, and she exclaimed “Oh wow.” Would someone please tell me what’s going on. I was going to look next but then the woman with the camera barged back in with her camera, and so we waited. She seemed oblivious that she was making us wait. A minibus of visitors had just arrived and a dozen more people were getting out to look through the peep hole as well. After waiting a couple of minutes it became apparent that this women had no interest in letting anybody else take a peek. I spoke up, and do know the appropriate Italian for this, “Scuzi!” But this didn’t seem to matter, and I suppose it is possible that she wasn’t Italian. The guide then basically then tapped her on the shoulder and motioned her away for others to look. I took a peek and it only took a few seconds to see what was so fascinating. And now I know what the secret is. The thing about secrets, if they get repeated too often, pretty soon they’re not secrets anymore. So you need to promise not to reveal the secret of the door to read on! Looking through the peep hole you see the dome of St. Peter’s perfectly framed by the round hole. The guide remarked that it is almost a miracle in the hundreds of years since this building was constructed, with its peep hole, that no construction since has interfered with this view of St. Peters.



We made the stop to see the peep hole because we had some time to spend before we would visit the catacombs which don’t open to the public until 10 AM. There are many different sites about Rome where the Catacombs can be visited, as our guide mentioned, twenty-seven popes are buried in the catacombs in twenty-seven miles of tunnels beneath the earth. We travelled on the Apian Way to reach the Catacombs of St. Sebastian. The Apian Way we drove over contains many well-worn and smooth cobble stones, which our Mercedes did a fair job of smoothing out for us. Sharon noted that the car must have really good shocks, and that they must really take a beating. John, our driver, was complaining about the brakes that seemed to sing when he would brake because he’d had them serviced just yesterday. The catacombs came into existence because of the persecution of Christians during the early Roman Empire. Just being a Christian was a capital offense. They considered it an affront to the Roman Gods and also an affront to the emperor who often thought of himself as a god. The catacombs were created in areas that the Romans had their burial grounds, because of the reverence the Romans had for the dead, and the importance the Romans placed on not disturbing the resting places of the dead, the Christian found that these areas made an ideal place for them to practice their religion out of the sight of curious Romans who might likely report their Christian activities. The catacombs were dug out of the volcanic rock. In St. Sebastian’s Catacombs there are nine levels of tunnels, each deeper and below the previous tunnel(s). It is estimated that there are 600,000 people buried in the catacombs, from common people to popes. We needed to wait until 10 AM for our English speaking guide to take our group into the catacombs. The cost of the tour (with a guide) costs 8 Euro. They didn’t have any one Euro coins, and neither did I, we they only charged me 15 Euros, the cashier said “Discount,” and handed me our two tickets. Ahead of us had already gone a group speaking Polish, Italian, French and Spanish. Only the Germans were behind our group of about ten people. We walked down to the second level. The height of the tunnels we walked through seemed to be about fifteen to twenty feet. In the walls on each side were horizontal resting places for bodies that had been entombed there. Sometimes the holes seem much too short for an adult, and these were where babies or children had been buried. Back in the days of the Roman Empire about 50%!o(MISSING)f all children would die before becoming adults. We weren’t allowed to take pictures in the catacombs. We were told that this was because the light from flash photography can harm the preservation of the catacombs, but it didn’t stop our guide from using an LED flashlight pointer to highlight different parts of the walls or markings that she was talking about. She took us to one chamber where seven popes and six bishops had been buried. We looked into several rooms that had been carved along the maze of tunnels winding around this way and that. You certainly wouldn’t want to come down here without a guide. The walls contained many ancient fresco artworks dating back to the third century AD. The final room that we went to was essentially a small chapel, and any church groups that might come here with a priest would be permitted to conduct mass here, which might work well with a pilgrimage group as we had on our trip to the Holy Land last year (we had in fact four priests and two monks and an archbishop on that trip so I guess we were only missing a cardinal). When our tour ended, it was 58 steps backup to daylight. This might be a great tour in the dead of summer to come down here with its year-round temperature of about 65 degrees Fahrenheit. I had visited the catacombs as a boy over fifty years ago and recollected them as being “really creepy” which was no doubt due to all of the bones that were piled in all of the graves dug in the walls, many rows of them up both sides of the wall and in the family plots. We saw no bones today because about twenty years ago the government removed those that could be seen in the public areas to an ossuary. This was due to the significant quantity of bones visitors were taking home with them as souvenirs. Now that is creepy.



John met us back at the car in the parking lot, and away we went, back onto the Appian Way and back into Rome. We went to the Basilica of St. Paul outside the wall. When the Romans came to kill St. Paul, he was given the honor of being beheaded. He was a Roman and the law said that Romans cannot be crucified. The protocol for depicting people who have been beheaded is either as a headless figure, holding his severed head; or, as a complete figure with a sword. That is how St. Paul is depicted, always with a sword. St. Peter who was crucified upside down; because, at his request he was not crucified as Jesus had been because he didn’t feel worthy of that honor, is showed holding keys. Martyrdom it seems holds the keys to getting to heaven. All of the popes have their images lining the perimeter of the interior near the ceiling, looking down on those below. Starting to the left side of the altar, we spotted St. Peter, the first pope.



Driving on we visited the Vittorio Emanuel Monument which some locals deride as the Wedding Cake Building. At one point John pulled to the center of the traffic circle in front of the monument, on the opposite side so that we could get the full view of the monument and the two eternal flames on either side. The monument had been started as the tomb for Vittorio Emanuel. The building had been completed by Mussolini which is probably to source of the deriding nickname. The remains of Vittorio were later removed, and the tomb became one honoring an unnamed soldier.



On our way to the Pantheon, John talked about earthquakes. Knowing that we’d both lived in California, he noted, that we were “Waiting for the Big One.” He then remarked, “In Rome, the Big One came in 1300 AD”. That was when Rome was leveled by an earthquake. The streets that we were winding down were becoming narrower and narrower. I’ve notice from the start how our guide likes to talk with his hands, holding the steering wheel with his left hand and gesturing with his right; or making a point and pointing, or doing the palm up gesture for something so grand. The final couple of streets really did seem they were good for pedestrians only, but we managed our way through. The proximity sensors of the Mercedes were constantly beeping. And in the narrow alleyway approaching the square in front of the Pantheon we were creeping along at a pedestrian’s pace (and our driver was now talking with both hands). Incredibly, he found a place to park and gave us about twenty minutes to go in and checkout this building with a hole in the roof. This building that started out as a pagan site had been repurposed as a significant Catholic shrine. As we approached we received three offers for a 30 minute English guide of the Pantheon. There was a mob inside. We got some good pictures, and I even took a panoramic shot with my smart-phone, which captured the building above a crowd of people that appeared blurred and in motion (while the building was crystal sharp). I thought it was a neat effect.



We next visited the Castel Sant’Angelo. It is supposedly the only round one in the world! We took some more pictures, and also got a great shot of St. Peters Basilica in the Vatican. It was now time for lunch and John had made reservations for us at a local restaurant. He had asked us if we liked “Italian” food. I piped in “That would be great!” I think Sharon is finding that she can eat Italian food because they seem to have a plain grilled chicken dish and potatoes which she’s never seen in a US Italian Restaurant. Even her sister Erin would feel at home here. I asked for the ricotta stuffed crepes; but, they weren’t available. I switched to the ricotta and spinach stuffed ravioli. I started with a small serving of three types of bruschetta: one with an olive paste, one with an artichoke paste, and one with fresh chopped tomato. It was actually quite good, as was my ravioli. They didn’t have grilled chicken; but, they did have a grilled turkey breast. Sharon got hers with roasted potatoes. Sharon had water and we got a large bottle to Share. I also had a Coca-Cola. After lunch we met up with John back at the car where he’d dropped us off.



Our driver/guide confirmed with our guide that we were ready to meet her. She took our pre-printed voucher and ushered her past all of those waiting in a long line. Every time it appeared that somebody was about to question us, she simply put her hand up in the air as tour guides do, and we never missed a step. Trust me, you do not want to wait in this line. Security was much stricter than it was even five years ago. All purses, cameras and other carrying bags all went through an airport-like luggage screener. People went through a metal detector, and people were even needing to remove belts with large buckles. She headed us to a public hall and found a bench for us to sit on either side of her. She then went over in great detail what we would be seeing in the Sistine Chapel. It took Michelangelo four years on his back to paint the Sistine Chapel; which, he did virtually by himself. He didn’t trust others to do the work he envisioned. But he wanted to be done with this menial task because it was not his passion, to release the soul of a piece of marble. Although the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is mostly flat, his expert hand brought his figures to life and his painted rendering of framing decoration appears to be three-dimensional. The recent restoration of the Sistine Chapel removed layers of grime and soot that had accumulated, mostly due to burning fuels used for illumination for many of the years since the fifteenth century when this masterpiece was completed. During this process it was discovered that Michelangelo had rendered the hand of Adam being brought to life by the hand of God eight times before he was satisfied with the result. Each time required re-plastering and then repainting the fresco in fresh plaster before it dried. We spent about twenty minutes inside the Sistine Chapel, looking at this incredible masterpiece. At 2 PM our guide stopped with the instruction, and headed us into the museum first. We saw many statues, and our guide showed how Michelangelo had drawn on the works of others for his depiction of such subjects in the Sistine Chapel (such as the face of God and that of Adam). Eventually we did reach the entrance to the Sistine Chapel. Our guide headed us directly to the opposite end of the hall from where people are steadily lining in, past the many clustered and some sitting near the middle. The far end is the best place to view the ceiling and all figures appear upside-right.



Afterwards we headed to see St. Peters Basilica. One step inside and you begin to believe that this really is the largest cathedral in the world. The lettering around the ceiling is a ribbon of black letters on gold, all done in a mosaic (and the letters are eight feet tall)! In one corner our guide ushered us over to look at Michelangelo’s Pieta. Again the genius of Michelangelo is self-evident as his depiction of Mary holding the lifeless body of her son. Mary’s face and arm have been restored after some lunatic with a hammer smashed her face and broke her arm back in the 1980’s; because, he was upset over losing his job. Now the sculpture is unapproachable since it has been brought to St. Peters for public display; but, you can still enjoy its beauty behind its clear protective barrier.



We hadn’t overrun our time allotments and so there was time to drive up and sightsee atop Janus Hill. From that promontory all of Rome was visible from one side; while, from the other you could gaze down on the Vatican and St. Peters Cathedral. We weren’t the only ones taking pictures here this day either. A movie company was also filming with the Rome skyline in the background.



We were dropped off at our hotel a bit before 5 PM. We made our way up to the 8^th floor of our hotel to go out onto the roof-deck and pool area to view the Colosseum. We had a pretty terrific view of the Colosseum which is currently being meticulously cleaned. This process should be completed sometime next year. Just imagine, it only took 7 years to build the Colosseum originally back in the day; but, over a year to clean it nearly two thousand years later. The cleaning was needed due to the effects of smoke and smog.



It was just a short five minute walk from our hotel to the Colosseum. They had stopped taking tours into the interior this time in the evening, and we walked around the entire perimeter. We made our way to a sidewalk café facing the Colosseum and sat down for dinner. I ordered cannelloni with Roma sauce, and also a Marguerite pizza. Sharon ordered the grilled chicken and roasted potatoes. Sharon got a Sprite and it was brought to the table within five minutes. I ordered a large bottle of frizzante agua and a glass of Chianti. Twenty minutes later I still had nothing to drink. I flagged down the hostess inviting people passing by to check out the menu, who had roped us into our table, to ask about my drink. A busload of tourists had come in after we had ordered, and they were already being served drinks including water. She brought it to the attention of someone, who did bring my drink just ahead of the cannelloni. This dish was quite good, but I’ve had better in the states. Sharon’s chicken was similar to her two previous Italian meals; except, that these roasted potato pieces were cut into smaller pieces than the others and were exceptionally good. Sharon agrees, she’s learned that she can eat in an Italian restaurant (she’s three for three). My pizza came and it was without a doubt the thinnest pizza that I’ve ever had. The crust was little more than paper thin and not thick enough to give any real support to a pizza slice. The slices could be eaten with your hands only because there was so little substance to the pizza; but, it would take two hands to support the slice from below. This type of pizza is supposed to have tomatoes, basil and mozzarella cheese… it had a thin layer of tomato sauce and a tiny amount of cheese and little else. I really don’t know what to make of this pizza, other than to say it was disappointing. The view and experience of eating while looking at the Colosseum and seeing the sun go down and then watching the Colosseum become illuminated in each of its tiered archways was priceless.



We walked back to the hotel and we both got a cup of ice cream at the gelateria across the street. I went up to the 8^th floor and took some nighttime pictures of the Colosseum. We both had to pack for boarding the Zuiderdam tomorrow.

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