Roma - The Final Chapter

It all kinds of run together this long after the trip. I know of a few things that I wanted to write down but at this point it may be out of chronological order from the trip. One night we set out for dinner trying to find a place off of the beaten path. Many of the restaurants close to the main attractions are busy, overpriced, and not that great so far. Walking around on a main street we saw a restaurant on a side street, it looked abandoned except the lights were on. We walked in to a warm greeting, everyone here speaks English. I mean everyone. We thought we had it good in Germany, getting by with minimal German and most of the time we can find someone to speak English. In Rome it has not been a problem at all. I think every person that we have spoken to easily understands and can communicate with us. So at the restaurant the guy takes us around the corner to another room that was full of other diners. It was no so abandoned after all. The tables were pretty close together and several of the people around us were also speaking English. Soon one person started to stand out above the rest. A very loud American clearly with ties to the northeast part of the USA. She could be heard at every table and was talking non-stop. It was about this time that our bottle of water was being brought to our table. I picked it up to pour the water into all of our glasses all of the time thinking about the obnoxious annoying American embarrassing me as a fellow American. About that time the water bottle slipped out of my hand hitting the table with a loud "thud" and knocking over Katherine's glass spilling on her, the table, and the floor. All of the sudden I had more to be embarrassed about. We recovered quickly and I quit worrying about the other table so much. After that we had a nice dinner.

On Wednesday, prior to our domus tour we had time to stop for a quick coffee. We found a little place with an alley entrance off of the main street. At this point we have figured out how this works now. After spending 61 euros for a few pastries the other morning my senses were on high alert to make sure I didn't get screwed again. Most of the little places have a bar that you stand at to enjoy your espresso then you leave. Most of the locals just want their shot of pure caffeine instead of the Americano version of coffee that requires more time to sip and enjoy. When you drink from the bar there is no service fee and no table service charge, got it, I understand now. So we walked in to this place and found no room at the bar, especially for the four of us. Like the street vendors, most of the restaurants are very aggressive to get business. If you show the least bit of interest they are trying to get you to walk in and sit down. This place was no exception, the guy saw us and immediately led us to a table. I quickly scanned the entrance, no sign related to a service fee; nothing on the menu talking about a table charge or service fee. Okay we are good, after all we are only going to be here for ten minutes or so. Cindy and I order a coffee, he brings the check, 6 euros service fee, 1.50 per person. David and Katherine didn't even order anything. I asked the guy about it, he told me four people are sitting, four people pay and he walked away. We drank our coffee, used the facilities and got ready to go. I walked up to the waiter, he was not so friendly anymore. He just told me to go pay at the register near the exit. I gave the check to the guy, he was a manager or owner. I told him I refused to pay the service charge. He indicated that I had to. I told him there was nothing on the wall or the menu that indicates a service charge. He called the waiter over, they spoke in Italian, he gave in to my demands. I have learned a lot from Cindy's negotiation skills with the street vendors. It was only 6 euros, but I was not going to pay it. I am just glad they did not put up much of a fight.

Thursday morning and our Pompeii tour was finally here. We had to be at the meeting point by 7:15 that morning. It was about 2 km from our apartment due north. David finished off the box of Frosties (Frosted Flakes) at the apartment since he won't eat any of the fresh pastries or any other food on the way. The rest of us stopped into a coffee bar and got some breakfast to go. The traffic was pretty calm this early on these streets, but while typing this I am remembering other walks through Rome. The crosswalk situation is a leap of faith at times. It is clear that pedestrians have the right of way at uncontrolled crosswalk areas, but the drivers make you earn it. There are some controlled intersections with walk and do not walk signs, but others are a little more challenging. When we arrived at our first crosswalk early on during the trip I was waiting, being cautious with the kids. After a few seconds a little old lady walked up and just kept walking confidentially out into the street with oncoming traffic. Sure enough everyone stopped for her, so we followed behind. I learned that confidence and no hesitation is the key. If you walk out there and they have room to stop they will, any hesitation and the drivers can smell the fear, they will keep going until you make them a believer in your intentions to cross that street.

Our meeting point was the Piazza del Popolo. Above in the distance you can see the obelisk in the middle of the piazza. We made it there with a few minutes to spare and checked in with our tour. The guide started giving us some background on the piazza as we waited for the rest of the group to arrive.

It turns out this was a pretty interesting and important place in Roman history. In the distance above, and below on the other side of this gate; this is the northern entrance to old Rome. There was a wall that surrounded the city and this was the main gate from the north. 

The street between the below buildings was the main road leading through Rome.

We came from the south and our bus was parked outside of the northern gate. Below is the street outside of the original city wall. We were one of the last people to get on the bus so we ended up near the back for our three plus hour drive.

We stopped a little over halfway in a valley town called Cassino at a shop that had a coffee bar and restrooms. There were two groups on the bus divided between two tour guides. Our guide was Roberto, who was very easy to understand and had a voice that was also easy to listen to. The other guide was a woman from southern Italy that I had a hard time listening to and understanding. During the drive they took turns sharing history about the different regions that we were seeing along the way. The road that we traveled at one point crossed the old Roman road where you can still see the trees that lined the road the entire way up Italy.

This tour usually goes to the crater of Vesuvius, but we were about a week early for that to be open for the spring and summer. Instead our bus drove to Naples to the The National Archaeological Museum of Naples. Entering the area I was shocked at what I was seeing. I had no idea Naples was such a mess. The guides explained that there are few building codes in Naples and you could tell. I really thought I was looking at the poorest neighborhoods in Brazil, that I have seen in pictures and movies. This picture does not really capture it, the city was dirty and very crowded. Cindy and I don't think that we need to go back anytime soon.

The museum was interesting. It is located in an old palace in the heart of the city. This place housed a huge number of statues, mosaics, and other artifacts from Pompeii. I guess when they dug out Pompeii they would not be able to protect these things from the elements or people if they were left, so they are here now. We spent about two hours getting into the city and checking out the museum, then it was on to lunch.

Leaving the city we had some good views of the island of Capri and the coastline. The buildings just go on and on for miles. I cannot believe how many people live in this area.

Vesuvius appeared in the distance. Coming towards it from the north it looks like a single peak, it was only later as we made our way towards Pompeii south of the volcano that you could see the two peaks. The guide explained that before the eruption in 79 AD it was one peak and that the volcano had lost half of its height from the eruption. When half of a mountain blows up, that is how you can lose a city completely.

Now as we were getting closer to our destination I was further struck by the population that exists today so close to the still active volcano. They told us that nearly three million people live within the "red zone" if another eruption occurred.

Lunch was at a restaurant within a few minutes of the Pompeii entrance. We got the whole story on the history and invention of the modern day pizza in this region, and we got to have said pizza for lunch. Back in the bus and seven hours after the alarm went off that morning we are finally at our destination. It was pretty exhausting getting to this point. I was very excited to have finally made it. After all of the worrying and rushing around to get our sight seeing done in Rome, the rain held off for the most part. It had rained earlier that morning in Pompeii, but that just cleaned the sky for the visibility to improve for our visit that afternoon. Our tour guide turned out to be just a guide for the bus trip there and back. There was another guide that was at the site to take us through Pompeii. After exiting the bus we followed him on a pretty long walk to get to the entrance of the city. We stood in the entrance in front of a courtyard surrounded by columns. Along the walls of the courtyard were the cells, prison like, quarters for the gladiators that were in training. Pompeii had an arena and trained gladiators for the big show.

Off of the courtyard we were led to two theaters, one that seated around 500 that was indoors back in the day, and another that was an outdoor venue that seated a few thousand. The small theater is above and below with the original marble floor still evident.

Here from the top of the seating in the large theater you can see the courtyard entrance from earlier. Behind the theater Vesuvius looms.

Most of the sitting area has been reconstructed. They left some of the original stone seating seen below, and built the rest to make this an active venue. The seats and rows are numbered and they host concerts here. Pink Floyd was the first to perform at Pompeii back in the 1970's.

I missed the best part of this, but the kids got into the scene and started performing for all.

This was the second time. The first time the people that were standing around started clapping for them, so they did it again.

So I did not have a very good understanding about what happened here, other than it was lost for hundreds of years after a volcano. When I saw the condition of the streets and some of the structures I started thinking this was a conspiracy and this had just been built as a tourist trap. After all, after a volcano how could you have these streets like this? Below Katherine is standing on the stones used as crosswalks, because the streets were so dirty people on foot stayed on higher ground. One thing I thought was cool were the ruts that you can see in the road from the wheels of the transportation of the time. These rocks for the crosswalk are spaced to allow the beast of burden and the cart to pass between them. On the lower right side between the lower and middle rocks you can see one of the ruts, and you could see them in other high traffic areas too.

So back to my conspiracy. I am not sure I am 100% convinced, but they do have a good story. It turns out there was no lava flow here. The city was buried by the mountain and ash, more than 30 feet of it covered the entire city in a matter of minutes. Digging out after they found the city was a matter of lose dirt and volcano ash. There was no lava rock to separate from what used to be the road. They hauled all of the dirt and ash off and built roads out of it. More than 30% of the ancient city is still buried. The economy, lack of funding, and for some further preservation has prevented further work from being done.

This house was spotlight for the tour. It was one of the largest and best examples of high society in the city. Most of the homes had the same conceptual design; rooms surrounding a center courtyard. The floor in this main room above had an area that would catch rain water from a ceiling opening for fresh water. It is believed that before the eruption they had enclosed the roof and made this into a water feature as they had improved methods for getting fresh water around that time.

It was at this house that I decided that I did not like our local Pompeii tour guide. Since the beginning it was clear he was not super excited about this tour and he was simply going through the motions. It was a shame because the company that we used had been so good and our guides from Rome were very good and had a lot of energy. This guy took a step further at this house. He was carrying around a stupid umbrella and using it as a pointer. Every time I raised my camera to take a picture he would have that umbrella in the picture. After a few times I was pretty sure he was doing it just to entertain himself. For all of his efforts I have managed to keep his umbrella out of these photos, at least in close range.

The public baths were a major stop on the tour. Above are lockers from the men's side. Below is another center courtyard in the baths area. They went into detail about the floor heating system that was distributed throughout the area.

This is a stone bed from one of the local brothels. Cindy took Katherine on a detour from this part. There are still paintings on the walls that represent some of the talents that the employees of this establishment were proud to show. The guide said there were more than twenty of these in this city. The most curious thing I saw was the street signs for the brothels. They literally used a true phallic symbol that, uummmm, pointed in the direction towards the closest establishment. Google it, these people were laser focused on this symbol all over the city. I thought we had already made it past all of the uncomfortable parenting moments at the museum with the 200 anatomically correct male statues that had been recovered and put on display.

Above was a kitchen with what looks like a pizza oven.

The town square was really interesting. There was enough there for me to be able to imagine the rest and what it might have been like. Our guide was completely checked out at this point. We had some time to walk around here and enjoy the weather.

This is supposed to be the famous dog from Pompeii. They had other molds of people that they found too. The actual remains are not there, just molds of how they found them, including this dog. We were told that the dog made his way around the world as part of a traveling exhibit.

The drive back to Rome was pretty smooth. Katherine got a fever and was worn out during the drive. We decided to forego the 2 km walk back to the apartment and get on the public bus. It had worked well to get back and forth to the Vatican earlier in the week. This time not so much. We found a bus stop that both Google and the app for the local transit said had a certain bus coming every 11 minutes. We stood there for more than 30 minutes and that bus never came. We then decided to move to another bus stop on the south side of the piazza. We waited through the first time period a bus was supposed to show up, no luck. Again all of the mobile apps were saying it should be there. Finally, after it had been more than an hour since our bus got back the right bus showed up. We got on along with a few others and sat there. The driver was taking a break I guess, even though three of this particular number bus should have already been there and gone. He sat there looking at his stupid little phone, the bus got more and more packed until nobody else would fit, and he sat there. This was the most frustrating thing ever after a 13 hour day or touring, we just wanted to get back. He finally decided to go and within a couple of minutes we made it to our stop only a few meters from our door.

The last drama for the trip revolved around 36 euros in cash. The apartment owner wanted to me to pay the city tax by cash. Early in the week she had left a note asking me to put the cash under a stack of maps they have in the common area of the three apartments that they rent. She is only there once a day at random times so meeting her in person was not given to me as an option. I was not going to leave cash sitting out there. I thought through what would happen if someone did find it and take it before she got to it. She would say that I never left it there and I would have no way to prove otherwise. During the week she left me three notes and eventually she had the booking web site send me an email demanding payment. I emailed her to explain that Friday morning we were leaving early for the airport and I would leave the cash in our room behind a locked door. She had the nerve to reply back and tell me that if she said it was okay to leave it out front than that is what I should have done. I resisted the temptation to tell her how I really felt about her plan. She eventually confirmed by email that she received the cash and we were all paid up and in good standing.

Now for the last question of the trip, would the prepaid van driver show up to take us back to the airport at 7 am on Friday morning as planned? We woke up early, got packed up and dragged everything to the curb. Sure enough the guy was already there waiting on us. The plane got us to Germany, our luggage arrived just fine, we got our taxi back to TI in Freising, and rode back home in the car. I love it when a plan comes together.

Overall I think we had a very exciting and fun trip to Rome and surrounding area. Cindy and I both feel like it rates very high on our list of favorite places so far. More than a week after we made it back home all of us are finally healthy I think. The weather has been beautiful and the sun has been out for several days back here. Spring is coming.