Second Major Excursion: Train Trip to Rome

31.10 Took Elise out of school early to go down to Rome. Her teachers were very understanding. She’s so far ahead in some classes, and so far behind in others, that it really doesn’t matter! I had booked late, so the only tickets southbound were first class. First class is awfully nice. Not worth 30E more apiece, mind you, but very nice. The train ride from Bologna to Rome was just under three hours; I spent some of that time making math facts flashcards for Rose. She doesn’t know things like 8+3 or 9+7. So now we can practice those regularly. It took a long time to get through them the first time, but now that we’ve done it once she’s actually kind of excited about doing them more until she can do them fast and in one go. This is progress.

Got in at 7:45. Couldn’t find hotel initially – I was completely turned sideways on the map and went toward the Baths of Diocletian instead of towards Santa Maria Maggiore. Ended up taking us nearly 40 minutes to go what in the end was 3 blocks. Hotel turned out to be part of 2 hotels, and the one I had actually booked had already filled up. (I question how this is possible, but whatever). The room was a standard miniature Roman 2 star hotel room. Clean and three spots to sleep is really all I require, and there it was. Plus, very very close to Termini and its attendant cab stand.

1.11 Leisurely wake-up, breakfast, and walk down to Santa Maria Maggiore, my tied-for-favorite (with San Clemente) church in all Rome. Mass for All Saints’ was in full swing, so we walked around a little in the back and looked at some of the mosaics. Had to take a cab to the Villa Giulia because it's not near ANYTHING public transportation-y. Because the villa is forever away AND it was a holiday, holiday rates were in effect, so it ended up costing 20E instead of 14 to get there. Oh well. Still, the Villa was great. Last time I was there I didn’t really appreciate that this had been someone’s HOUSE. This time I wanted to know what the scoop on the house was. As huge villas go it’s not that huge (cf Villa Borghese or Versailles or whatever), but it’s a fair-sized place. Took pictures of the little Etruscan temple in the garden and of the frescoes in the portico (copied from paintings newly discovered at the time under the Oppian Hill, i.e. the Domus Aurea. Very much Third Style painting), but they wouldn’t let me take pictures inside. It was fun to see inside a lot of the things we had already seen at Cerveteri and Tarquinia, and to show Elise and Rose the typical Etruscan painting styles with all the palmettes. Proof that there were once lions in Italy: The Etruscans can’t decorate enough stuff with lions. Lions lions lions. And palmettes. Got a blank space? Why not palmettes?

When we got to the end there was a section on the house itself. Seems Pope Julius III acquired the land from a relative and built the house in 1550. Since it’s not RIDICULOUSLY huge and ornate, and being Pope he had no, er, children to leave it to, when he died apparently no one wanted it! The Papacy took possession of it, but by 1599 it was abandoned, and proceeded to stand empty for the next 300 years! Amazing the frescoes look as good as they do! I never get to read as much about these things as I want to. But a wealthy family with a taste for Etruscan and other early art eventually took the place over, restored it, and started exhibiting things from the various Etruscan finds, some even in the order and arrangement they were found in the tombs, which was neat. One exhibit showed a small chariot which had been buried with the deceased. In the exhibit, the chariot had this cheesy-looking driver in his little toga, so fake…. Until I read the card which announced that said cheesy-looking driver in his little toga had actually been found in said chariot in the tomb! Hilarious.

After the Villa we decided to be Murricans and have lunch at the Hard Rock Rome, which wasn’t far. Knowing that the portions were huge we only ordered 2 lunches, and it was plenty. Our waiter was from Long Island. Elise was very charmed to have an actual American to talk to!

The real reason to have lunch at the Hard Rock was that it’s across the street from the Capuchin Bone Crypt. I had never heard of this thing until a fellow Latin teacher, Kat Braden, told me about it. It seemed like a very Halloweenish sort of thing to do, so we determined to go. Sure enough, across the street and down the block from the Hard Rock (though interestingly, no one at the Hard Rock had ever heard of it. Boy, talk about Americans not knowing or caring. This thing was cool and totally worth seeing, and they had no idea!) was the Church of the Conception, a Capuchin church with a little museum about Capuchin monastic life, and then the bone crypt. Seems some Capuchin monk managed to collect the bones of three or four hundred cartloads of dead monks and then had to figure out what to do with them. Being apparently of an artistic bent and having no other calls on his time (I don’t know this for sure but if you see it you will agree with me!), he decided to use the bones as decoupage for the walls of 6 little chambers under the church. Who knew that you could make flowers out of vertebrae, or a skull and two scapulae make a little angel? Sick, twisted, yet adorable!

Got the train back to Termini. As we walked back to the hotel Elise saw a sweater in a window that she fell immediately in love with, so we went in, tried it, and yes, it was lovely on her. They also had these fluffy scarves that she and I liked (Rosie is still looking for her perfect scarf), so we made some purchases and came on back to the hotel.

Upon our arrival Elise had noticed an “Indian Fast Food” joint across the street, and she’s been dying for Indian, so we went there for supper. Two facts should have been dead giveaways that it was no damn good: 1) BEEF curry 2) golden brown TANDOORI chicken. We ate there anyway. It was terrible. On the plus side, it was only 11E. In trying to decide what we would do tomorrow, Elise discovered “The Dark Side of Rome” walking tour, an evening walk of ghost stories along the Tiber. In keeping with the Halloween theme we decided to book it, and lo and behold they had spaces for tomorrow night! So Hadrian and ghost stories for tomorrow.

2.11 Mausoleum of Hadrian/Castell’Sant’Angelo. Train to Lepanto, then walked down toward the castle. Found a restaurant called Ottimo, decided to eat. Fresh pasta was indeed pretty ottimo. A few blocks further on we found the Castell and a market down one side, complete with merry-go-round, so clearly returning was required. The castle had some amazing views; we got some nice shots of the old city and of San Pietro in the distance, but the Roman part of the tour was very minimal. Somewhat disappointing. However, after the castle we went back down to the market, found Rosie a scarf of her own finally (pink cheetah print with magenta roses, of course!), and Elise some new earrings (coincidentally, also with roses!), then rode on the merry-go-round for a while. From the castle roof we had seen a little playground down in the castle grounds, so the girls played on the swings for a bit before we headed to Campo dei Fiori to try to find the new excavation of the very spot where Caesar was killed. It was about at this point that I started having a stomachache.

We found the Campo easily enough, and tried to find the spot. Half of Rome is under excavation at any given time, so this was not easy. We found a spot that seemed to be it: it fit the description from the ancients and it had been somewhat dug up. There was water main work happening in the next block, but no mains had been pulled up in this spot. I took a picture and we kept going. In the Largo Argentina is the excavation of the Area Sacra (and the cat sanctuary), also some cool ruins, but further down than the Theatre of Pompey is supposed to have been. We decided to catch a bus back, as this was less than half the price of a cab, but at 5:30 in the afternoon this turns out to have been an insane decision. It was cramped, to say the least.

We had tried to arrange to have dinner with Chris Keenan near the Pantheon (Chris is one of my former JCL kids who’s doing a semester in Rome), but didn’t manage to catch him. (The tourist cabs on the south side of Termini tried to tell me that 25E was a good price to the Pantheon. What rubbish. Actual station cab price: 10E.) By this time my stomachache was getting really quite severe. The girls said they weren’t hungry and I certainly wasn’t. We walked over to the meeting place for the ghost stories walk and found it with no trouble, but by the time we got there I could barely stand I was so crampy and faint. I asked one of our fellow tourists to tell the guide that I was sick, hailed a cab, and got home. I was raging with fever by the time I got into the bed, and tummy continued unsatisfactory for several more hours.

3.11 Better this morning, but not significantly. We had planned to do the Palazzo Massimo complex (museum, Crypt of Balbus continuing the Halloween theme, and the Baths of Diocletian) but I just couldn’t do it. We did go down to Upim (Rome’s answer to Macy’s) at the end of the block from the hotel and get a couple outfits for Rosie and some new things for Elise, but this turns out to be all the excursion I could handle. I ended up sleeping most of the afternoon. However, we did catch Chris finally, and arranged for him to come to us. We had dinner in a little trattoria down the street from the hotel, then he took the girls to the walking tour. (Large gratitude to DarkRome Tours, who were within their rights to charge me 56E for cancelling at very nearly the ACTUAL last minute, and who instead rebooked the tour in Chris’s name for no fee and said they hoped I felt better soon.) He told me the excavation for the spot where Caesar was killed is actually UNDER the Largo Argentina, and in fact if you look carefully at the largo itself you can see the curve of theatre in the front of the shops. So we probably stood on the very spot while we were waiting for the bus. I had half a bowl of soup for dinner (the most substantial meal I’d had all day) and went to bed. Stomach did not cooperate fully and I was only able to doze between gettings-up.

When the kids came in they woke me and told me a little about the tour (so glad I didn’t go on a queasy stomach – some of the stories were QUITE gruesome) and were clearly in an excellent frame of mind. So I thanked Chris and shooed everyone into bed quickly, as we needed to be on the train at 9:45.

4.11 Uneventful trip home. Elise made herself flashcards, having seen how well Aurora’s worked, for squares, cubes, and square roots. We came home to chilly and rainy here, but not terrible (it was actually quite mild in Rome and started to rain and get colder just this morning! Such timing). Elise’s homework for the long weekend was to write a summary using the passato prossimo of what she did on her trip – “I left on Wednesday. I went with my mother and sister. We arrived in Rome at 7pm” -level stuff, so I helped her with that. She did fine on it, but getting started was miserable. She has very little confidence in her own ability to put the language together.