Advertisement
Published: September 7th 2017
Livias house
Wife of Caesar Augustus, so cool, I have a poster of part of this.Geo: 41.8955, 12.4823
Just thought I'd say hi to everyone! just sitting at the table enjoying my second cup of tea after having some scrambled eggs, listening to the street noises... Here are some examples of the life that is happening at our feet this morning - 3 men are re-stuccoing a building kitty-corner from ours, an ambulance made it's way to Campo di'Fiori through this very narrow street, shopkeepers are sweeping outside their shops, others are talking on their cell phones while making their way to work?, motorcycles are going by, people are calling to each other, laundry is hanging out to dry.
It's a lively area, I'm enjoying the window open and listening to it all, right now it's 9:16 and Karen is upstairs doing her thing and I'm about to get into the shower. This trip has been at a much slower pace in the morning than in the past and I'm enjoying it, not feeling the urgency to get out and "see it all", I'm sure those that have been with me here in the past might have enjoyed that also!! ;-) you know who I'm talking to....
I took some photos of some of the above, will
post when the program allows me to. My memory is getting full and I've deleted every app I can and am about to have to delete photos of our Panama trip, am assuming they are all saved at home, still hate to do that but may have to.
Just a lazy update, will let you know what we did later. I enjoyed Karen's blogging yesterday, it's great to see Rome through the eyes of someone that is here for the first time. You forget some of the "strangeness" after you've been a few times and don't think to mention them.
A Presto!!
Wendy
It's now 10:22, I'm having problems with the iPad, it keeps saying that I have no space left to download photos even though I've deleted everything I can, even lots of photos.... so will work on that later and just blog for now! We have had a good day, we went to the National Museum, it was 4 floors of lots of good stuff! how's that for a description, after a while it's so overwhelming it's had to put into words.... we started in the basement with jewelry and the numismatic collection, I took a TON of photos and ran
Dicus Thrower, copy of a Greek original
Beautiful in person, so graceful, you think he's going to complete the move... the battery out. It was a fascinating history of coinage, Nixon was not the first to institute price controls or Argentina and China to manipulate the currency, it's been going on for a long time. It's a really interesting study and I need to find a "Currency for Dummies" book to explain it all to me. So if I can ever download the photos I will have the history along with coin photos to remind me of what I learned today.
We saw mosaics, frescos, and statues galore. Saw the original of a poster I have of the beautiful fresco of Livia's (the wife of Augustus Caesar) house, it's a beautiful garden scene on 4 walls, they recreated the room so you could see it in context, very cool. The whole museum was well done, they had a lot of rooms "in context" so you could see what it would have been like at the time. Several videos also, one on Augustus Caesar along with some propaganda with the point being that it's a good thing to unite Europe under one empire as it's been done lots of times, EX; Caesar, Charlemagne, Charles V, Fredrick I?, Napoleon, etc... can't remember
Amazing sarcophagus, so much detail
They left the faces of the future (dead) owners off until needed. the other examples they gave... so boys and girls control by one is a "good" thing, don't worry.... interesting video.
After touring the entire place it was about 5:30ish, we made our way back to the Pantheon area and had dinner on Via d. Seminario, the same street we stayed on when I was here with Jim, mom, dad, Zach and Joe. They had a dinner special so we tried it, very good, I had the bruschetta, chicken with potatoes, zucchini, eggplant, roasted red peppers along with a lime to squeeze over the chicken. I tried the eggplant and Karen was kind enough to take that off my plate as I'm not a fan, but I did try it! the rest was delicious, along with a coca cola light, all this for 15 euros, not a bad deal.
We really did have to get some good gelato as the stuff we had yesterday wasn't up to standard, we went around the corner to the most famous place in Rome for it called Giolitti, and what a difference! once you have this you know this is the real deal and nothing else comes close, not icy at all, extremely smooth, I had
the dark chocolate and Nutella, with a bit of panna (cream) on it, we will be going back for more!
On the way back we stopped for groceries, will be eating in tomorrow and needed more lunch stuff, admired the Pantheon, that is a sight that you really can't get tired of, the proportions are so amazing, the engineering of it mind boggling. On our way to the museum this morning we were able to take a quick walk through, it's really one of my favorite spots in Rome. We also stopped in the church of S. Ignatius of Loyola, with its false dome, so interesting and surprising the first time you see it.
Will try to find out what is going on with the storage issues on this iPad and hopefully I can get the photos to download if not maybe I can add them when I get home, but that is a doubtful proposition ;-).
Fit Bit: 13,624 steps today, which is 5.87 miles
A Domani!
Wendy
We had a great time at the museum today. Wendy is right, there really is a lot of "good stuff" there. I think my favorite part was the fresco from Livia's house. My Mom is an
artist, so I was appreciating it from that perspective. The immensity of the project, painting all 4 walls of a room that size, and the beauty of it, painted in such a realistic style....it was soul soothing! I took lots and lots of photos of it. My second favorite thing was a statue of a woman who was supposed to represent Egypt. She was stunning. Her robes, so masterfully carved in rock, looked like they would ripple if a breeze were to enter the room. I was mesmerized. I'm going to post pictures of Lydia's room and the Egyptian lady on my facebook page if you'd like to take a peek.
Museums are wonderful and interesting, but this one was very large, and Wendy and I both were a little worse for wear before we got out of there. All that standing is brutal on feet and backs and hips. We were very happy to sit down for our yummy dinner. Italians do dinner out a little differently than I expected. When you order a meal, you get one thing. If you want more than one thing, like a salad, you order that separately. While we were eating our meal, we
Another part
Am currently only able to get photos I took from my phone on here... watched the couple at the next table eating theirs. They ordered cheeseburgers. On their plate was a hamburger bun and on the bun were two beef patties and cheese. That's it. And they ate it with a knife and fork!
Giolitti's gelato was an experience in and of itself. So many interesting flavors, some with unintelligible names, to choose from. I was thinking of trying one of those unintelligible ones as an adventure into the unknown, but lost my nerve and asked first. It was chocolate, coffee, and whiskey! Euw! That would have been nasty!!! I'm awfully glad I asked. 😊 Hazelnut and dark chocolate were a much better combination.
One of the things I am really enjoying in Rome is doors. Doors? What?? Yes, doors! They are old and huge, most being 10 feet tall at least. Some are up to 25 or 30 feet tall! Sometimes the big ones have smaller ones cut into them. Most of them are double doors, and they all have fascinating knockers, handles, knobs, and ornaments on them. They are earthy and worn, but they have aged with grace. They have character. I wish we had doors like that. I'll post one of
Mosaics of gladiator style horsemen
Don't remember the term, famous, guys back in the day! those tonight, too.
Space on the streets is in short supply around here, so there are lots and lots of motorcycles. But parked amongst the motorcycles today we spotted something novel. Well, to us at least. It was a Twizy! It was like a 4 wheeled motorcycle with a plastic raincoat on. You'll have to google it to appreciate it.
Egads, I just looked at the time and it's midnight! Where does the time go???
Sweet dreams to all!
Karen
Advertisement
Tot: 0.162s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 5; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0837s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Kath
non-member comment
So sorry about the photos and storage on your iPad, Wendy, assume you have looked up all the ways to get junk cleared off of it. You really might want to think about getting the Dropbox app installed on your iPad, then you can move some pho
tos to it, also. It's just a cloud, accessible from anywhere you log into Dropbox. With so many photos I would recommend using some kind of cloud storage, and it is a good one. Also for the future, you may want to take pictures at a lower size setting. Know people have different opinions on this, but Dan has our camera set at a lower resolution, since we don't usually need to enlarge them. His kids at school are always using up memories on their cameras because of this. It won't help with the photos on the iPad, but will help you not fill up your memory card in the future. Talk to Jim about the camera, maybe to Zach about the Dropbox or you can email me questions. Their website, dropbox.com, is also very helpful for answering questions. Don't want to take up your blog space talking about this, but would love to see more photos and hope you get this worked out,,,frustrating! The gelato sounds wonderful, by the way... Love, Kath