Thursday, August 23, 2012

Rome, Aug. 9

Aug. 9, 2012
Rome, Italy
Rome is amazing – a thoroughly modern city that is in many ways just like other big cities anywhere, except that every time you turn a corner you can see the ruins of some excavated ancient monument.
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It was such a thrill when I got my first sight of the Coliseum on the horizon as our bus was driving toward it. It’s been reproduced in so many books, paintings and movies that you almost think it’s a figment of our collective imagination. The fact that it actually is real, and that it’s still around after thousands of years even if it is in ruins, is mind-boggling.

Our local guide, Yohanna, was very knowledgeable about the Coliseum and the nearby Forum, which she took us on a walking tour to see. (She’s also very spunky – she told off a vendor who had parked his van illegally. We couldn’t understand a word she said, but we could tell she was hopping mad at him.)

Did you know the Coliseum only took 8 years to build (unlike the Florence Cathedral which took over a hundred years)? Of course, the Romans had the help of 40,000 slaves on the Coliseum, so maybe it’s not such a surprise. Did you also know that it actually had a retractable canvas awning that could be manually pulled across the top opening to keep sun and rain off the spectators? Those Romans were some incredible engineers.

Inside of the Coliseum, hardly anything remains of the original sand-covered wooden arena floor, so that you have to use your imagination to picture the gladiator fights that used to be held there. But the underground chambers where the gladiators were held before fights are still clearly visible. Our tour did not include taking our group down into the underground portion of the Coliseum since the temperature was about 100° and there was danger of heat exhaustion. But we were able to roam around the upper portion and take as many pictures as we liked.

Yohanna then boarded our bus with us to narrate information about several other notable monuments and buildings we passed, such as the Constantine Arch, the Arch of Titus, the ruins of the Roman Baths, the National Monument to Victor Emmanuel II, and the Twin Churches and the Egyptian obelisk in the Piazza del Popolo. (Rome has more obelisks than any other city in the world, most of them taken from Egypt after they conquered it in 30 BC.)

During the bus ride, Monique also chatted about what it’s like to live in Rome, which is where she lives most of the year. Apparently it’s expensive, like it is in most big cities. An average apartment of 600 square feet is about €1000 to €2500 per month. Most residences in Italy come with a small front-loading washing machine, but no dryers. Clothes are hung up to dry in Italy. (I did see a lot of laundry hanging outside of windows in Italy.)Basic utilities are about €155 per month, and they're paid for in person at the post office every two months. Eating out can be pricey – from €50 to €300 per person depending on how fancy the restaurant is, not including wine. A new car runs about €17,333, which sounds cheap but most cars here are very small. A lot of people buy Vespas or scooters instead. Public transportation (the Metro or the bus) is much more economical at €1.30 for a one-way ticket.

Gasoline is the equivalent of $9 a gallon here, and most of that goes to finance the government-subsidized health care system, as do the taxes, which are among the highest in world (about 46.25% of a Italian worker’s salary goes toward taxes.) Monique told us about a woman in one of her tour groups who broke her leg and had to be taken to the hospital for a cast, which didn’t cost her a cent even though she was a foreigner. A system like this has both its good and its bad points. If you have a chronic illness or an accident, it’s good to know that free treatment is always available to you. On the other hand, you have to be willing to give up much of your take-home pay in exchange for that “free” health care.

After the tour, Gary and I had a drink and chatted with Yohanna in the bar of our hotel, the contemporary-style Mercure Piazza Bologna on Via Reggio Calabria. (Even when you’re just having a drink in a bar in Italy, they feed you. Usually it’s just a little bowl of potato chips, but sometimes you get other things like nuts or little toasted sandwiches.)

Some of the group was going on an optional dinner theater outing called Dinner with Tenors, where you have dinner while being serenaded by Italian opera singers. Gary and I are not into dinner theater, so we had opted out of this. Instead, we explored the neighborhood and had dinner at a local restaurant called Ristorante Preistorici. The food was fine (I just had a salad with cold boiled shrimp), but the restaurant itself had kind of a hokey prehistoric theme, with pictures of cave men painted on the walls. They even had a “Prehistoric Appetizer” listed on the menu. There was no description of it, so I was afraid to order it. What’s their idea of a “prehistoric” appetizer – raw mammoth meat?

We probably would have gone to a different restaurant if we could, but it was one of the few eating places open. Apparently, August is the month when all of the Romans leave Rome to go on vacation. (Monique told us that Romans all go to the same places when they’re on vacation, to the point where they’re even lying next to each other on the same beaches, so they never really get away from each other.) The good part of this is there is hardly any traffic on the streets of Rome in August, but on the downside it means not as many stores and restaurants are open.

Today was the actual day of our 32nd wedding anniversary, even though we’ve been celebrating it this whole trip. Some of the women from our tour group were also having dinner at Ristorante Preistorici at another table. When they stopped by our table to chat as they were leaving, Gary told them what we were celebrating and they all congratulated us.

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