when in rome...

too many times while i've been here the line from anchorman and laughed...almost out loud sometimes.

on my way here from florence i stopped in the small town orvieto on the advice of my friends steve and annette. it was a welcome change from florence and from rome...it's not that it not a tourist trap - it is - but it's a friendlier sort of tourist trap. in the big cities you have all sorts of people hocking all sorts of crap from fake designer wares to toys to aprons with the torso of the statue of david. while orvieto clearly benefits from the tourist's euros it doesn't do it quite so obnoxiously. it's just a small town perched on a flat hill top (the easiest way for us tourist to get up there is a 2 minute funicular ride that starts right next to the train station) from that point there are a plenty of sights to see. at some point a few hundred years ago popes used it as one of their residences so you can imagine that it has a large and ornate cathedral. i learned something about cathedrals in italy...they don't have a lot of stained glass windows like some of the ones farther north in europe because of the heat. the window let in heat where as the very thick masonary wall do not and this was very apparent on the day i visited it was close to if not in the 90's and upon entering the cathedral it felt almost as if it was air-conditioned. also upon entering i thought it was interesting that the man who walked in just before me dipped his fingers in the holy water, crossed himself and then proceeded to take his camera out and take pictures - which was clearly marked as not allowed. a question to my catholic friends out there...is this a "confessionable" offense??? this place isn't like other cathedrals i've visited where there are large crowds and many church workers telling you not to take pictures...here there was no one like that. anyway, the town was very nice - quaint and rather enjoyable to wander around the twisting streets and working my way to the walls of the city that all offered great views of the umbrian country side. the only two sights i went in were the cathedral and st. patrick's well. the well was built by order of a pope to protect the water supply incase of attack and it's interesting feature - other than it's 250 or steps is that there are actually two stairwells built in a double helix so that one is used for descension and the other for ascension. the reason was so that mules carrying jars of water up wouldn't have to pass ones with empty jars on there way down. after climbing a number of bell towers with narrow stairwells and tourist climbing and decending at the same time i wish more engineers had thought of this idea. here's the view from almost all the way down.

after wandering around and eating some pizza and gelatti (which has been 2/3 of my diet for the past 4 or so days...and i feel great) i got back on the train to rome. my first train ride from prague to berlin the air-conditioning wasn't working that well for the first 90 minutes...but it got better for the last 2 1/2 hours. i thought that was bad...it was nothing compared to the 65 minutes i was about to spend traveling from orvieto to rome with absolutely no air-conditioning and a considerably hotter day...it sucked. actually it was only the last two cars with this problem but the rest of the train, not surprisingly, was packed full.

my first full day in rome was spent checking out the forum, ancient ruins and the colosseum. for me this was almost 8 hours, with few breaks and hundreds of photos (although upon my first inspection of them i probably have about 75 or so keepers). i look at these monuments and just marvel at the ingenuity and precision that went into these. and when you move from the forum to the colosseum it just boggles the mind. now it seems to me that some of the artifacts that are strewn about seem that they may have been placed there...that's fine but i would have like to see a picture of how they were found if that's the case. i took a long way around from the colosseum to the pantheon to walk along the tiber river and am glad that i did beause i came across some ruins that i didn't know about. it was the portico d'octtavia and was the first four sided portico built around 45 a.d. and rebuilt as it is now in the early 200's after fire.

unfortunately when i got to the pantheon there was mass being preformed so only pics of the outside and from the door. i'll try again because i want to see it from the inside...if i remember correctly it's the largest concrete dome ever poured and in fact it is the only ancient roman artifact to survive intact. also on the schedule is the vatican visit to see how the pope is and how his wrist feels.

in 10 days i'll be home...on travel days like the ones with no a/c train rides i'm ready for it to be over...on days like today wandering the roman ruins...i could use a few more weeks, months...


happy trails,
dan