Roma – a short stay

We've just finished a quick few days in Rome, Italy. It was the first time there for all of us. Other than feeling like I was bleeding Euros, it was fantastic. Max and Jemima especially enjoyed the Gelati – the two days we spent in Rome included (I would guess) six different serves! It was like we did in Brussels for Chocolate, but for Gelati instead! Think Gelati for breakfast, lunch and dinner and you're getting the gist of it! I think they are planning on their own posts about that, so I won't steal their thunder: keep tuned for the great Gelati tour in their own words!

As we did in London and Brussels, we caught a hop-on, hop-off double decker bus so that we could make sure we saw as much of Rome as possible in the short time we had there. We also did a guided tour of the Vatican Museum and St Peter's Basilica and for the last whole day in Italy, we hired a car and drove down to Pompei, something I have always wanted to see first hand.

The following is a summary of our stay and some of the things we saw (not in chronological order)

The Vatican:

I was a little disappointed that we could not get our passports stamped with Vatican. I am amazed that the Vatican is a completely separate country with it's own currency, residents, vehicle registrations etc. I guess it's not really feasible to stamp every passport on entry – they have a HUGE number of visitors daily. It was so crowded in the Vatican Museum that Max got swept up in another tour group and we lost him for about 30 mins. Luckily, Max had the sense to find one of the guards and ask for help. After that though, he wasn't prepared to let go of our hands for the rest of the tour! This is after we found him, looking much calmer and recovered from his ordeal in one of the Pope's apartments adorned with huge frescos by Rafael

In this one, after Rafael was given permission by the Pope to look at what Michaelangelo was doing on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he was so impressed by the work that he partially destroyed this fresco just so that he could include an image of Michaelangelo in the work. Note the figure wearing boots and dressed in Renaissance clothing on the steps in the foreground. That is Rafael's portrait of Michaelangelo – the highest way he had of praising the work on the Sistine chapel. This is no small effort as the process for painting a fresco is to apply a layer of mortar and while it is still wet, paint on the image, so any rework of a fresco involves destroying part of it so that you can redo that part of it.

There we also hundreds of statues on display. It was interesting to hear that at the start of the Renaissance , the sculptors in Italy were simply copying the earlier Greek works that historians had discovered – something you can see in the style of some of the sculptures.

As time went on, they developed more advanced artistic methods and techniques and moved beyond just copying the Greeks and incorporated more lifelike artifacts in their art. This included perspective, shadows and even eyes on their statues.

As it turns out, from microscopic analysis, Italian scientists have discovered that all these marble statues would have actually been painted rather than white stone – our image of grand white statues dotted throughout the landscape is all wrong – they would have been brightly coloured!

After the museum, we were fast tracked into St Peter's Basilica – the largest Christian church in the world. Westminster Abbey would fit quite a few times over inside St Peter's.

The second window along is where the Pope addresses the audience in St Peter's Square during Sunday Mass.

Speaking of Sunday Mass, we arrived on a Sunday and our first vision of St Peter's Square was of thousands upon thousands of people all waiting to hear from his holyness.

Rome:

Crowds in Rome we a very common site – even on Monday (which was a normal working day), Rome was crowded almost everywhere we went – probably the worst was at the Trevi Fountain – people were surrounding the fountain 10-20 deep the whole way around. The best I could do to get some photos was to hold my camera high above my head and take some rough images, then clean them up on the computer later.

The Colosseum was no exception to the crowding, but it was still an incredible structure to visit and walk though.

Just near the Colosseum, there were a huge number of other historic sites including active archaeological sites.

Poppies were out in force – it's Spring here after all.

We even found the famous statue of Romulus and Reamus suckling from the Wolf.

One of the most impressive building was the (modern, but old styled) Capital building – it dominates it's area of Rome and is proof that Italy still retains some fine craftsmen who to complete such an impressive building.

Speaking of crowds, one thing I was very wary of was driving in Rome. It's not the idea of driving a left hand drive manual car on the 'wrong' side of the road – I've done that before in France – it was the awesome reputation that Rome's traffic and drivers have for making it impossible for a non-Roman to cope with. While I did come across the occasional driver who used indicators, I don't think that indicating is part of the Italian drivers test, let alone their psyche. They seem to love straddling two lanes – even on the Autostrada (their autobahn, but limited to 130 kph) no indicators to change lanes, and occupying two lanes at once for kilometers on end. Thankfully, once I got used to their driving, I was able to drive quite successfully in Rome and on the Autostrada – frankly, it was probably easier than driving in Brussels.

Time for a celebration – and when in Rome, do as the Romans do – drink good coffee!

This one was from the Ducati Cafe – boy were there some drool-worthy (and expensive) things in their gift shop!

Pompei:

After learning of the fate of Pompei when I was a little boy, I have always wanted to see it with my own eyes. While a lot of the rescued mosaics and artifacts are now safely ensconced in a Naples museum, the ruins of the town itself are still a fantastic site to behold. There were still plenty of things to see. Sharon was amazed at the size of the ruins – apparently Pompei had a population of approximately 10,000 when Mt Vesuvius erupted and covered the whole town with a pyroplastic flow before the population even knew what was happening to them.

There were a few plaster casts of souls that were killed on that day in 79AD (believed to be November of that year) – plaster was poured into the voids in the ash where human remains once were, creating an eerie cast of a whole person.

The baths still included some glimpses of how they would have been decorated including ornate frescos and sculpting in the wall coverings.

The roads brought back memories of when I learned about Pompei at school – cambered roads for drainage with stepping stones for pedestrians and gaps in the stepping stones for the chariot and cart wheels, all laid out in a right angle based roadway pattern – very Melbourne'esque of them (perhaps I am mixing up the master and the student here! :-) ). Sharon suggested recreating the Beatles Abbey Road album cover on Pompei crossing stones, but when I tried to set it up, she refused!

When we found the giant amphitheater, we were treated to a choral performance from a Korean tour group – they must have been a church tour group because they sounded fantastic! I caught the last little bit on my camera in HD, hope it looks ok for you as on my low powered laptop that we're travelling with, I cant actually watch the video! My apologies for the raw nature of the video as a result.

A lot of people probably don't realise, but Roman Catholicism is the dominant religion in South Korea which is why I think it would be a church group – along with them all being older and pert of an organised choir of some sort...