DAY 113

Tuesday 1 November 2011

All Saints Day, not much for U.S. Catholics, but a major holiday/holy day in Catholic Italy. A day for families to gather. So, shortened holiday schedules and lots of things closed all day. Could the Andrews still make the most of their last day in Rome?

Bernini's Triton fountain

Arrived around 10, as usual, after shuttle bus/train/metro rides from Happy Camp, and after pausing to gaze at Bernini's wonderful Fountain of the Triton we went straight for one of our top undone to-do's, the famous baroque masterpiece Trevi Fountain. It's such a huge, spectacular creation that it's hard to imagine it was pretty much overlooked until the movie made it a star. We  gawked and took photos and tossed our three coins in the fountain, guaranteeing we would all come back to Rome someday.

We then turned around and marched up and into the church of Saints Vincenzo and Anastasio, the parish church of popes when they lived up the hill in the Palazzo de Quirinale. Supposedly built on the spot where the beheaded St. Paul's cranium bounced to the ground (and a spring immediately burst forth) -- although there are two other sites that also claim this -- it's also known for a macabre claim to fame: the hearts and intestines of a couple centuries worth of popes are preserved there. We didn't see (nor smell) them.

Sign outside Capuchin monastery

So we then marched up the hill to the Quirinale, home to popes and the kings of Italy until the end of WWII. Another huge and magnificent monument there, and Dian went horizontal on the cobble stones to get a great shot. Charles had to warn her of a fast-approaching, unsmiling policeman bent on preserving the dignity of the place. There were many of them around the palazzo piazza -- did we mention all Italian uniforms are reeeeally stylish? -- police and army, because it turns out their HQ are there, and just down the street, the Department of Defense.



Having narrowly averted carabinieri incarceration, we took off for another post-Halloween sight, the Capuchin monastery on the Via Veneto, formerly the street of movie stars and other glitterati. For a mere one Euro donation, you can see what the monks did with the bones of 4,000 fellow monks when they had to relocate their burial spot: they turned them into art, with half a dozen rooms and ceilings covered with skulls and bones, vertibrae and entire skeletons in brown robes. We loved their explanation of the spiritual reminder you're supposed to get from all this calcium: "What you are now, we once were; what we are now, you will be."

Roman street art

Charles had gone there on his European sojourn 40 years ago and wanted the girls to experience that unusual site/sight, and also another that impressed him, the catacombes. So we hopped the metro for the closest stop and switched to a bus for the ride down the Appian Way to where three catacombes bump up against each other, choosing to visit the renowned catacombe of St. Callixtus, burial (under)ground of 56 martyrs, 16 popes, 18 saints and half a million other Christians. When the heat was on the Christians would celebrate mass in the 'combes, and if the Man got word he would send Roman imperial soldiers down to find them and wipe them out. If they had some warning they could hide in the huge labyrinth of tunnels, if not, well, at least one pope was slain there as he was saying mass. Also it was the site of the tomb of Saint Cecilia, patron saint of sacred music, who survived the maximum three strokes of the ax on her neck and walked away, but died shortly thereafter. It's hard to be a saint in the city.

Stain glass window

The ride down the Appian Way was an unexpected treat, a delightful country lane with walls on both sides that took you way back: it was the main thoroughfare of ancient Rome, stretching all the way to the coast at Brindisi, and you could easily imagine an endless column of troops clattering down the cobblestones on their way to conquer Greece or Macedonia or Turkey not to mention the merchants.

But we had more fish to fry and we tried to make it to the Colosseum to go inside, but no bus went very close and we got off at a wrong stop and had to hoof quite a ways. Our journey was made pleasant, though, by our walking companion Roberta, a local woman ("born in the center of Rome." she proudly declared) who not only gave us directions but went with us, on her way to visit her 88-year-old mother. Alas, the joint closed at 3:30 -- !!?! -- maybe because of the time change and early darkness, maybe because schedules in Rome seemed pretty random. But we made the best of it with a recommendation from sweet Roberta (in her broken English: "give a kiss to LA for me when you go back.") for great pizza in the neighborhood. We didn't find the exact spot she was telling us about but did find a great little place with outdoor tables on a small piazza filled with families. We splurged on a pizza and a drink for each of us, fully rounding off our last day in the Eternal City.

Dian, Roberta and Charles in front of the Coliseum 

Finding angles everywhere

Our dinner

One last bonus: we nervously waited for the last train to leave and watched our watches hoping to make it back for the 8:30 PM shuttle bus back to Happy Camp, and not have to wait for the last one at 9:30. Oh joy, the driver waited an extra 5 minutes and we made it. Happy.