December 23rd, 2008 This is Elliott again. Today was another sunny brisk day in Roma. Our first stop was at cathedral called St. Peter in Chains. The cathedral is believed to contain the exact chains that bound Peter when the angel came and freed him from prison. Within the cathedral, was a statue of Moses that was done by Michelangelo. This sight was great since it was right next to the metro stop. We then hopped back on the Subway and went to the Roman Baths of Caracalla. These baths were gigantic from what we envisioned! The Romans were big into hydro therapy and used the baths as a social gathering place. After experiencing the Roman baths, we walked down to where the Circus Maximus once held 375,000 screaming fans. Its massive oval shape is kind of like ancient NASCAR. There is no longer a building there but using your imagination you can picture the grandness of the structure built during Imperial Rome. From the Circus Maximus, we headed toward a beautiful white building many people call the wedding cake (the Italian monument of the unknown soldiers). I have never been to the U.S tomb of the unknown soldiers, but I’m sure this one put ours to shame. From there we walked down Cavour street, then took the subway back to our hotel. For dinner we found a restaurant right next to our hotel that makes homemade ravioli. It was our first official sit-down restaurant. It was pretty good, but we were disappointed with the chicken cacciatore.
December 24th, 2008 Day VIJust so you know this is Elliott. Its Christmas Eve and Molly and I took a tour to Naples and Pompeii. We woke up around 6:00 am since we had to be in the lobby of our hotel by 6:45. This was a big deal since I have been letting Molly sleep in since she is not feeling well. We fortunately made it down stairs in time and was told by our concierge that the bus is not going to pick us up; we have to taxi to the agency. Of course the agency paid for the taxi, so it wasn’t all that bad. Our bus left around 7:30am and had both Spanish and English speakers. So the tour guide would tell us everything in English then in Spanish. I didn’t mind since I got to hear everything twice. The drive down to Naples is about 2 ½ hours. Our first stop was at the Naples Dock. We walked from the dock to the city center where we passed the largest working opera house in all of Europe, the house that the kings of Naples use to live in and the center city plaza that was constructed after the same manner of the city plaza in Moscow. Naples was pretty dirty and we were not too impressed.
We then headed back to the bus and drove to Pompeii, which is on the other side of Mount Vesuvius in relation to Naples. Once we got there, they took us on a tour of a cameo and shell shop. Cameos are portraits made out of shell. I didn’t know what they were, but if you saw one you would be like, “O ya, my grandma has one of those.” After the tour on how the shells are carved, we were fed dumplings, pasta, pork and salad. We meet some interesting couples from Canada and Houston. Everyone on the tour was very nice except for this old guy from Spain who smoked these smelly cigars. The weather was sunny and brisk, which made the walk around Pompeii very enjoyable. Pompeii is very well preserved, having intact mosaics and murals. You can still see the rivets in the stones from the carts in the streets. We saw the courthouse, market, baths/sauna, money changing, rooms where people kept their personal effects to be watched by slaves, the head governors house, and Molly’s favorite the brothel. The governor’s house was enormous, complete with garden, slaves quarters and four dining rooms for each season. The brothel was interesting with many sexual explicit frescos so the foreigners could point at what they wanted. Even the roads had a phallic symbol etched into them directing the way to brothel. They have actually found bodies preserved by the ash in the position that they were buried. They have them on display (they are the pics of the grey looking corpses). Pompeii is a must for everyone interested in how ancient civilizations lived.
When we reached to hotel, we were nervous that we weren’t going to find a place to eat since Christmas Eve is a holiday spent eating with the family. Fortunately our concierge made some phone calls and found a place nearby for us to dine. The food was OK. Molly will tell you that the pizza is awesome here but everything else is mediocre so far (except for the gelato!!!).
Thursday, December 25, 2008 Merry Christmas from Rome! This is Molly again, Elliott has been helping me keep up on our blogging journal since I’ve been so sleepy from being sick. I’m still sick, but I’ve been trucking through it, determined to have a great time! We got up around 9:00 and ate our free breakfast. Then we came back to the room and slept some more. I don’t mean to be so sleepy, but we figured it didn’t matter because it is Christmas, and Rome is literally a ghost town today. So, there’s not much to report on because pretty much everything is shut down, even the Metro. We decided that one day in Venice is not going to cut it, so we had our concierge book us a hotel room for tomorrow night in Venice. I’m glad we have a concierge because he got us a nice hotel room for 68 Euro, including breakfast! We were impressed seeing as how hotels in Venice are incredibly expensive. Then we made our way to the Termini train station and bought roundtrip train tickets to Venice. These were also on sale, so we saved some more money, which always makes me happy. Luckily, we found a McDonald’s near Termini so we grabbed some food since EVERYTHING else is closed. I was thinking we were going to have to fast on Christmas, but good ol’ Mickey D’s came through for us. It was getting dark, and all of our books and tour guides have said to avoid the Termini area at night b/c it is a bad neighborhood, so we booked it out of there and came back to the hotel. Now we are reading up on Venice and preparing for Molly’s most anticipated part of the trip! Merry Christmas!
