European Vacation: Adventures in Rome – The Middle Part 2

If you missed my previous two installments on Adventures in Rome, click here:
The Beginning
The Middle

Now, in case you were wondering, there is another advantage/disadvantage to staying in an apartment vs. a hotel for a family of four.

Advantage: We had a nice big bathroom to use.

Disadvantage: We didn’t have a lovely maid service providing an endless supply of T.P., and even worse, we didn’t have Louie Da Plumber with us! (If you missed my blog post singing the praises of Louie Da Plumber click HERE.)

Yes, although my beloved plumber, Louie Valenti, is Italian, he wasn’t in Italy. And for some reason the apartment’s hot water heater circuit would trip on a daily basis. (Maybe that’s an electrical problem, but anyway…) It wouldn’t have been so bad except the circuit would typically trip mid-shower.

I knew from reading the tour books beforehand that we shouldn’t expect the long, hot showers we get in the U.S. But none of us were prepared for the mere minute-and-a-half showers we received. Typically, one of us would get in the shower, get all soaped and shampooed up, then BAM! The water would turn ice cold. We’d be forced to shiver our way through a super-fast rinse off.

Then to add to our vacation pleasure, we ran out of T.P. (Two rolls for a family of four for eight days. Nah. Didn’t quite cut it.)


So my brave “non parla Italiano hubby” attempted to buy some at the grocery store. I say attempted because due to a helpful sales clerk who thought she knew what he wanted, he came back with paper towels instead.

That was, um, interesting.

Aaaaaanyway…back to our exploration of Rome.

We had pre-registered for a Wednesday tour of the famous Borghese Gallery. We arrived at 10:30 a.m. and checked in.


“Oh yeah! We can get audiotours!” I said excitedly pointing out the audiotour sign.

My entire family just blinked at me. “What for?” Joshua asked.

I gave an exasperated sigh. “So we know what we’re looking at!”

My family blinked again, then just strolled away.

Hmph! I got my audiotour anyway, which I shared with my son, much to his dismay.

We saw the action-oriented Bernini sculpture of David, from the famous David and Goliath story. I think this David is so much cooler than the typical just-standing-there David. Twenty-five-year-old Bernini used his own likeness to portray David’s face. In typical Baroque style, he’s in action. Biting his lip, focused expression, we witness him at the very moment he’s about to become a hero.

And we also saw another famous Bernini sculpture taken from Greek & Roman mythology. This Apollo & Daphne sculpture portrays the moment Daphne has just cried out to her father to save her from the unwanted advances of the overly amorous Apollo. He grants her wish by turning her into a tree just as Apollo reaches her.

Leaving the museum, we strolled through the beautiful Borghese Gardens.

Then back to the Spanish Steps and Trevi Fountain. There were SO many more people there during the daytime!

These cute Italian boys were attempting to ride this—this bike-thingy through the crowds. Give it up, boys!

Next we arrived at the Pantheon.

Constructed to honor all pagan gods, this temple was rebuilt in the 2nd century A.D. by Emperor Hadrian. The incredible dome was the largest ever designed until the 20th century. The Pantheon also offered audiotours, but my family made me skip this one.



Located right nearby is Santa Maria sopra Minerva, the only major church in Rome built in Gothic style.




It’s built over the ruins of a Temple of Minerva, goddess of wisdom. It’s also the home of Michelangelo’s famous Risen Christ. Unfortunately, as I previously mentioned, I’d forgotten our guide books. So although I had remembered wanting to visit this church, I couldn’t remember why. I got so busy taking artistic pics of the church’s interior…





…I completely missed Michelangelo’s famous work. Sigh. I guess I’ll just have to be satisfied that I saw the Sistine Chapel and the Pieta.

One thing I found particularly cool about sightseeing in Rome, was the opportunity to see the places where Bible stories I’ve read about actually took place. Like Mamertine Prison (Carcere Mamertino) for example.

The apostles Peter and Paul were actually imprisoned there. It was a dank, dark, cramped space. We walked on the actual floor of their prison--touched the walls with our hands--that was SO COOL!

We also visited the Basilica of St. Peter-in-chains. This church holds the actual chains that bound Peter and Paul in Mamertine Prison, as well as a second set of chains that bound Peter when Herod jailed him in Jerusalem (Acts 12). Quick story summary: King Herod threw Peter in prison with plans to kill him later. One night, Peter was lying asleep between two snoozing Roman soldiers, bound in these chains. Even more guards were outside the door of the prison. Suddenly an angel appeared, struck Peter on the side, and his chains (THESE chains!) fell off his hands. The angel led him out of the prison to the city gate, which opened by itself, and Peter was set free. More coolness!

There was a church service going on while tourists traipsed around the basilica, which felt kind of weird & disrespectful somehow, but the congregation seemed accustomed to it. On top of the historically significant chains, the basilica also is home to a sculpture of Moses, another famous work of Michelangelo’s.

We came to Capitoline Hill and the Capitoline Museum. The Capitoline Museum was established in 1471, and it’s the oldest public collection in the world. I was thrilled to learn the museum offered audiotours, but when I asked I was told none of the English-speaking ones were available. I heard several very suspicious sighs of relief coming from my family behind me.

The courtyard of the museum is filled with massive chunks of an ancient sculpture of Emperor Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor (306 – 337 A.D.). His head, hand and foot survived intact.

The museum also contains the greatest surviving equestrian statue of antiquity—a statue of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius (161-180 A.D.). Many believe this statue was preserved so well because it was mistaken for a statue of the Emperor Constantine.

Our next stop was the Vittorio Emanuele II Monument, a.k.a. the Wedding Cake. This brighter-than-white structure was built as a monument to Italy’s first king and to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Italian unification.

We took the elevator to the top for an awesome 360-degree view of the city.






We’d seen the oldest equestrian statue in the world, and here was the biggest. The statue is 43-ft. long, and the king’s moustache alone is over five feet wide.

After a quick gelato trip, we headed home to rest our aching feet. As we prepared for bed, Ashleigh was not a happy girl.

She discovered pavement ants in her bedroom. Ewwww! Quite curious since we were on the 7th floor, and we’ve never known pavement ants to live anywhere besides ground-level slabs. Maybe it’s an Italian thing, or maybe they got confused from all the earthquakes.

“Hey Joe, did you notice the ground shaking? Maybe we should all move up to the 7th floor for a while.”

Stay tuned for more Adventures in Rome!



Italian Shower image
T.P. image by Bollin
Vittorio image by Argenberg
David image by smarthistory.org
Apollo & Daphne image

European Vacation: Adventures in Rome - The Middle

(In case you missed episode one, click here!)

And now, our story continues…

There are some advantages, for a family of four, to staying in an apartment rather than a hotel when vacationing in Rome. And then again, there are some disadvantages.

Advantage: We have access to a washing machine so we can do laundry.
Disadvantage: We have access to a washing machine so we can do laundry.

Advantage: We have access to a kitchen and can cook our own meals.
Disadvantage: We have access to a kitchen and can cook our own meals.

Hey, mama’s on vacation too! Fortunately, my hubby was intuitive enough to recognize this fact and sweetly took over these dreaded domestic tasks. (Yeah okay, intuition probably had less to do with it than my whining that there was NO WAY I was gonna be spending my vacation cooking and cleaning!) So the menfolk went to work.

Here is Joshua being very brave, stretching over our 7th floor balcony to use the Italian dryer.


We had an elderly neighbor lady who came out onto her roof every other day dressed in a beautiful skirt and blouse to use her dryer…


And although we gave it our best effort, man cannot live on gelato alone. So after shopping at a local grocery store, here’s my darling hubby, whipping us up a lovely steak and tortellini Italian dinner…

But, back to our sightseeing expeditions…

After exploring the Vatican and St. Peter’s the previous day, we set out to investigate some other well-known sites of Rome.

Located at the end of the Via dei Fori Imperiali, (sounds really cool, right—it’s just the name of a street!) lies the Colosseum. The construction of this primo entertainment center was finished in 80 A.D., and the Emperor Titus declared a 100-day holiday to celebrate its completion.


Seventy-thousand people would gather several times each week to watch the fatal gladiator fights held there. Our tour guide, Maura, explained that about 85 percent of the gladiators were slaves, and forced to fight. In addition to gladiator fights, sometimes the arena was filled with water for naumachias (real sea battles) re-creating great battles of the past. They only held a few of these though, because the Colosseum wasn’t really designed to be filled with water and these battles were ruining the foundation.



Near to the Colosseum is the Roman Forum. I always thought the Forum was an individual building, but it’s actually a large area which encompassed several elaborate temples, triumphal arches, and monuments. It was a hub of activity in ancient times. Here’s the view from the top of neighboring Palatine Hill.

Here is the Arch of Constantine—built in honor of the first Christian-sympathetic emperor. It’s one of the best-preserved arches from ancient times.

The Arch of Titus was completed by his Titus’s brother and successor, Emperor Domitian.

And here is the Temple of Antoninus Pius and Faustina. When the Emperor Antonius Pius lost his wife, he wanted to deify her and built this temple in her honor in 141 A.D. It’s the best-preserved building in the entire Forum.

The Temple of Castor and Pollux was built in 484 B.C. Can you believe people just hurry past this stuff on their way to work every day?

The Temple of Vesta ( 8th century B.C.) was built to guard sacred objects, including the “eternal flame.” It was believed that as long as the flame burned, Rome would stand.

It was the job of the Vestal Virgins to guard this flame. Who were the Vestal Virgins you ask? Well, there were always six Vestal Virgins, selected from noble families by the age of 10. On the up side, they received lots of special privileges, and got to live in this massive, cool house.

On the downside, they had to remain virgins for 35 years. (Lifespan was around 45 years back then.) If one of them let the eternal flame go out? Death! If one broke her vow of chastity? Really horrible death! Buried alive. In the interest of fairness though, the guy doing the deed didn’t get off lightly. He was skinned alive. Yuck! Let’s move on…

We also took a guided tour of Palatine Hill, home to the majority of Rome’s emperors. As I mentioned before, it overlooks the Roman Forum. Lots of lush vegetation. These are the beautiful Farnese Gardens.

These trees are everywhere in Italy. They’re called Lebanese Umbrella Pines. Aren’t they cool looking?

Augustus was the first Emperor to make his Imperial residence on Palatine Hill around 700 B.C.—just a really nice house. The Emperor Tiberius built the first palace there. But the Emperor Domitian built the first truly extravagant palace on the hill. He had the entire massive structure encased completely in marble both inside and out. Here we are stepping on a piece of the original marble flooring that remains.

Emperor Domitian’s palace contained this private arena where he and 30,000 of his closest friends could view their own private chariot races and gladiator fights.
And here is the symbol of Rome: A she-wolf taking care of the twin boys, Romulus and Remus.

One legend about the origin of Rome goes like this:

Rhea Silvia, daughter of king Numitor, was a Vestal Virgin. She got pregnant. Oops! Rather than risk the whole “being buried alive” thing, she claimed she’d become impregnated by Mars, the God of War. Nobody wanted to tick off the God of War, so they didn’t kill her—just decided she’d have to get rid of the baby. She ended up having twins, Romulus and Remus, who were sent down the Tiber River to die. Allegedly a she-wolf who’d recently lost her cubs found and cared for them.

When they were older, there was a competition to determine which of the twins would become the king of Rome. Remus won, but Romulus got mad and killed his twin, thus Romulus became the king, and that is how Rome got its name.

Skeptics always thought the story of Romulus and Remus was a myth, but in the fall of 2007, archaeologists unearthed a sacred sanctuary dedicated to Romulus and Remus beneath the House of Augustus near Palatine Hill. Hmmm…very interesting.

To end our busy day, we took a night walk starting at the Spanish Steps.

From there we hiked over to the incredible Trevi Fountain.

There was a fairly young crowd there at night—lots of young couples and stuff. I noticed one young Italian girl making eyes at my boy and trying to sneak a picture of him with her cell phone camera when he wasn’t looking. Back off, honey!

We tossed our coins in over our shoulders, ensuring we would come back to Rome again some day.

Last, we meandered past the Colosseum and the Roman Forum again, snapping some cool moonlight shots that are definite keepers.

And last but not least, more gelato!

A quick earthquake, and then time for bed. Stay tuned for the next episode when I’ll share more cool sites, apartment plumbing issues, power outages, and more!

Gelato image by avlxyg

European Vacation: Adventures in Rome - The Beginning

(Chevy Chase has got nuttin’ on us)

Well, we’re back from our very first European family vacation. We spent eight amazing days in Rome, Italy. We left on Saturday, April 4th, arriving in sunny Rome on Sunday afternoon. My hubby had done endless hours of research and booked a charming cost-effective Roman apartment for us, as opposed to two hotel rooms. (Four people aren’t allowed to stay in one hotel room, which contains only two twin-size beds and that’s all folks.)

Here are the kids outside our home-away-from-home at #43 Via Rodi, in Rome, Italy.

No, we’re not unusually small people (well, at least my hubby and the kids aren’t), all the doors in Rome are just really HUGE--which is interesting since most Italians we encountered were petite-to-normal height in stature. Perhaps ancient Romans were much more gladiator-sized? Something to think about.

Here’s the view from our seventh floor balcony.



Prettier at night, huh?


We quickly stowed our stuff and ventured out. It was around this point that I realized I’d forgotten to pack a few critical items. Things like, oh…

The map of the city! Our Italian/English dictionary! And all our travel guide books! Unbelievable! Well, if anybody was wondering how to make an already interesting trip even more interesting…

Armed with my far-from-fluent Spanish, and slightly more fluent English, we entered a neighborhood Tavola Calda. These are small kitchens that serve a variety of fresh, hot dishes. The owner greeted us warmly and did his best to explain the different types of food we were looking at. He served us some of his personal specialties, proud of the fact that he prepared everything fresh daily. We finished and left, but after walking in confused circles past his shop three times, he took pity on us and gave us a map to use. Gratzie!

We wandered the streets a bit, but still jet-lagged, we hit the hay early. We wanted to get a good night’s sleep to be in prime form for touring the city the next day. But as it turned out, a good night’s sleep was out of the question…

Around 3:40 a.m., my hubby and I were awakened by our bed rocking back and forth. My hubby’s first thought was that there was some, uh, “activity” occurring in a neighboring apartment. But then we noticed the floor and walls were rocking as well. While I drowsily pondered this strange occurrence, my quicker-thinking hubby leapt from the bed shouting, “EARTHQUAKE! Quick, everybody get into the stairwell!”

We scrambled out the door and raced down the steps in our jammies. By the time we reached about the fourth floor, we realized that nobody else in the building appeared to be freaking out like we were. While we stood there confused, one young apartment dweller opened her door a crack, and squinted out at us hovering on the staircase. She mumbled something unintelligible, then shut the door in our faces.

We looked at each other.

Hmmm. Maybe we imagined it? We pattered back up the stairs. All tucked back in, we were just starting to drift off when there was another rocking, more gentle this time.

“Daaaaad?” our son, Joshua’s voice quavered from the next room.
“I know. We feel it too,” I called back.
It finally stopped after a few seconds. Yeesh. Enough already!

Watching Italian television the next morning, we saw pictures of all the destruction that had taken place at the epicenter. We were grateful to have only been at the outside edge of this natural disaster. We ended up experiencing five total quakes (or according to Josh, one earthquake and four aftershocks) in five days. By the third aftershock, I wasn’t even fazed.

Earthquake, schmerthquake. No sweat. I’m used to it all now, baby.

We arose Monday morning, and headed to Vatican City. To help our kids enjoy all the art they were going to see, I’d created little cheat sheets for them. One covering the Renaissance period, and another the Baroque period. I wrote them in “regular” language and even included pictures so they wouldn’t be completely dry and boring. Or so I thought.

“Ugh! It’s supposed to be a vacation,” Joshua grumbled, taking his packet. “You’re not supposed to have homework on your vacation.”
“It’s not homework, I made it fun,” I said, annoyed. “I just want you to know what you’re looking at!”
This was greeted with enthusiastic eye rolling.
Hmph! I didn’t care. After all my hard work, I insisted everybody read what I’d written.

I later learned that my son only pretended to read his packet. He merely daydreamed, then flipped to the next page whenever he noticed his big sister turn her page. Hmmm. Now I’m wondering if my hubby was doing the same thing?

THE VATICAN

We explored the Vatican Museum for a few hours…





Then we entered the Sistine Chapel. It’s just as astounding as you might imagine. Roughly covering the area of a football field, it’s amazing to think that Michelangelo spent four years painting the colorful frescos on the altar’s upper walls and ceiling. And to think he painted this entire ceiling standing up, not lying down as I’d always imagined. Many people consider this the single greatest work of art by any one human being. I listened to my free Rick Steve’s audiotour on my iPod while my uninformed family members opted not to use theirs, just staring at the ceiling and walls, trying to figure everything out for themselves. Sniff.


Security guards maintained a hushed atmosphere as we craned our necks upward to take in Michelangelo’s portrayal of the history of Christianity from Creation to the Last Judgment. We stood directly under the painting of God on a cloud, reaching out his hand to give the newly created Adam the spark of life.

We noted the shriveled self-portrait of Michelangelo, dangling from the hand of St. Bartholomew in the Last Judgment scene.

And we couldn’t help but chuckle just a little at the lower right-hand corner of hell, where Michelangelo depicted his greatest critic, naked, but with a serpent twining up his torso to hide certain parts in a most uncomfortable-looking way.


We learned the Last Judgment scene was actually painted over 20 years later than the rest of the room. By this time in history, people no longer felt the naked forms of Renaissance art were appropriate. So after Michelangelo’s death, church authorities had strategically placed wisps of clothing added to the work.


ST. PETER’S BASILICA & SQUARE

We left the Vatican Museums and stepped into St. Peter’s Square which is actually an oval. (Still trying to figure that one out.) It was designed by the famous Baroque architect and sculptor, Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Around 2,000 years ago, this area was Emperor Nero’s Circus (which is old-fashioned Italian for a Roman chariot racecourse). The Egyptian obelisk here was the center of the course.


Two-hundred-eighty-four Doric columns now ring the perimeter of the oblong shape, symbolizing the arms of the church reaching out to welcome believers and unbelievers.




The square was filled with loads of people, lots of priest and nun sightings.


From there we moved on to explore St. Peter’s Basilica—the largest church in the world.


The Basilica was built on the grave of the apostle, Peter, who was crucified there around 65 A.D.



The Basilica has strict dress codes; no shorts or bare shoulders. We saw one twenty-something and her group turned away at the door due to her super-short shredded denim skirt. The altar and Michelangelo-designed dome of the Basilica are alleged to mark the exact location of Peter’s grave.



We wandered around the extravagant structure, each at our own pace. We were leaving the building when Josh casually mentioned he’d noticed a sculpture of Jesus lying in a lady’s arms. Yikes! I’d almost missed seeing one of Michelangelo’s most famous pieces, the Pieta! The crucified Christ in his mother’s arms was located behind protective glass and was surrounded by a small crowd. I managed to shove--er, ease my way to the front and snap a pic.

We got lost heading for home, and found a Gelataria instead. Gelato for dinner, everyone!

With aching feet, we finally trudged back, dragging ourselves to bed. After another “shaky” night, we were ready for lots more sightseeing.

Stay tuned for more Adventures in Rome!

Sistine Chapel images by: Sacred Destinations