Wanderung 19

Meandering the Mediterranean

Bus Trip from Rome to Venice

April - May 2009

Monday, April 20th, 2009: Sightseeing in Rome, Italy

Bob:

Being retired, we are completely out of the habit of being awakened by an alarm clock and it was a rather unpleasant way to be jolted out of sleep the next morning. But we staggered around and got down to breakfast on time. We were just about done with our meal when Lois showed up with Phyllis in tow. She sat Phyllis down at our table and hurried off to fetch her a nice bowl of cornflakes and some meat and cheese while Monika ran around getting Phyllis coffee, orange juice, sugar and milk. Since I was still finishing my sandwich, I just sat and watched in speechless amazement as they buzzed around Phyllis like a queen bee.

As much as I would have enjoyed chatting with my sisters after I was done with breakfast, I really felt time was getting short so Monika and I returned to our room to get ready for departure. We made it out to the bus just on time and Lois finally dragged Phyllis onto the bus about 10 minutes later. I didn't think that was too bad, all things considered, but they got scolded by Lino, our cruise director. He also warned us to watch our belongings in the hotel because two people had had their purses stolen just during breakfast! What a welcome to Rome that was!

Our bus drove us down to the Vatican, picking up our local tour guide along the way, and we debarked a block or two outside the walls of Vatican City. Our guide led us forward at a brisk pace, seemingly not able to adjust the pace to Phyllis's slower gait due to her bad knee. Despite limping, Phyllis gamely kept bringing up the rear as we toured the Vatican museum, the grotto with dead Popes, the Sistine Chapel, and St. Peters basilica.

I had never seen the Vatican museum before, and boy was I impressed. The collection of sculpture, paintings, and tapestries on display there was just fantastic. Much of it was religious, of course, but secular items were also present. Ancient Roman statues, maps of the world, mosaics, and so forth were all fascinating. And the building itself was really a work of art as it had beautiful marble staircases and gorgeous painted ceilings.


 


 

I had also never seen the Sistine Chapel, and the art work there was really magnificent. Although the upper walls were covered with beautifully executed and preserved artwork, the lower walls were curiously blank. Our guide told us that the blank areas were where the tapestries had hung until they had been moved to the dim hallway to slow the process of deterioration. The ceiling frescoes and the "Last Judgment" at one end of the chapel were Michelango's work, of course. The scenes on the ceiling were pretty but did not have nearly the impact on me that the huge "Last Judgment" fresco covering one entire end of the chapel had. So much was happening in that painting with so many figures and so much action that it was almost like watching a TV show of the final judgment rather than a static painting. Wow, how did he do that?.

After that, St. Peters basilica seemed a bit anti-climactic, but whether that was a contrast effect with the quality of the art in the Sistine Chapel or whether it was because I had seen St. Peters once before a few years back (on Wanderung 10) and so now it was "old hat" to me, I cannot say. Michelangelo's Pieta was still there and an unbelievably complex and lifelike piece of sculpture it was, too. I tried once again to get really good panoramic pictures of the main altar area where the Pope, the whole Pope, and nothing but the Pope, holds mass.

I was fascinated by the domes along the side of the narthex that had brightly lit apexes. Equally intriguing was a mosaic that was so carefully done that it really looked more like a painting than a mosaic. And my laugh of the day was watching an Australian with a gold crucifix prominently hung around his throat reverently touch the foot of one of the bronze effigies of a Pope. I found it funny because just before in the Sistine Chapel I had observed the same man purposefully, continuously and illegally video recording all the artwork while hiding in a group of tourists. I had to wonder, do the devoutly religious and casually criminal aspects of his mind ever talk to each other? Amazing what some folks can rationalize, I guess.

Back outside, our bus drove us from the Vatican to Trajan's Arch next to the old Roman Coliseum. With her knee already throbbing Phyllis decided not to clamber around with the rest of us and parked herself in a cafeteria across the street while we visited the Coliseum and the old Forum area. I was glad to finally see the interior of the Coliseum as I had to forgo that the last time I was in Rome. On that trip we were so rushed that we did not have enough time to get through the security lines. But when you are with a guided group like on this trip you get to use a special line for the security screening and that went a LOT faster.

Nowadays, the inside of the Coliseum is just ruins, of course, but it was still magnificent. You could almost hear the roar of the crowds and see the clash of battles of the gladiators. Unfortunately, I could also hear the dying screams of the innocent victims such as the Christians. The old Roman culture was bloodthirsty and apparently proud of it!

We concluded our day with a walk through the old Forum area, which after almost 2000 years was also mostly ruins. Still, the remains of what the Romans constructed were magnificent and gave a little indication of what it might have looked like in its heyday. I even saw the area where the Roman Senate discussed the matters of state before the time of the Emperors and the site where supposedly Julius Caesar was assinated.

By then we had been walking a long time and we were quite ready to collapse into the bus and be driven back to our hotel for the evening. How some folks regained the energy to go out for an evening on the town I really don't know, but they did. Ah, to be 60 again! We geezers were happy just to pack up our bags for our departure from Rome the next day, set the alarm clock, and crawl into bed.

Copyright 2009 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt
Index
Prolog Map of Transatlantic Cruise Map of Northern Italian Bus Trip Map of Eastern Mediterranean Cruise Epilog

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