Roman Holiday

Listen up, fancy pantsies, we don't have all day. Things have been busy (except for today, when we woke up at 9:30, spent an hour eating a continental hotel breakfast, and have been laying around in the giant bed we made out of two beds in our hotel room). But busy nonetheless! This blog has fallen sadly by the wayside, gone the route that all my previous journals have taken, illustrated as follows: Stuff happens, I write about it, more stuff happens, I take some notes on it, fully planning to write about it, lots of stuff happens, the journal is days out of date, stuff keeps happening, I give up.

But not this time, boys and girls, no! Listen as we take you far back into the days of yore...

ONE WEEK AGO:

Turns out a 20+ hour ferry ride from Barcelona to some unknown port city near Rome with nothing but “Deck Passage” printed on your ticket is CRAZY. Also pretty fun. 10:30pm, we were herded onto our giant boat with the rest of the flock, but split off soon when most people went to their cabins and we continued up to Deck 10 – the party deck. Conveniently located under Deck 11 (the pool/disco/dog kennel deck), Deck 10 has a casino, restaurant, bars – plus ample couch space. That's where all the Deck Passage riff-raff collect, ready to spend the night crashing on Grimaldi Line's sofas.

Lucky for us, a German man (who only reinforced our notion that all Germans speak excellent English) befriended us. He was traveling with his dog (who reinforced our notion that dogs are really cute) and knew the inside secrets, like where the best sofas were (at the 24hr restaurant) and whether that guy at the disco was gay (he wasn't). We stuck with him until 4am, dancing at the disco, met up with him again the next day, lounging by the tiny pool, and followed him to successfully catch the train to Rome. Thanks, Christian (we think that's your name even though we realized none of us ever were introduced)!

Long cruises must be weird. You're traveling, but really you're just sitting, wondering what to do. It's like some crazy limbo state – surrounded by water, bored but guilty for being bored, not really anywhere at all and everyone's wearing a bathing suit. Mark and I listened to Radiolab and ate almonds. Actually, that sounds pretty fun. Hmm.

Anyway, we eventually made it to....

ROME:

When in Rome, do EVERYTHING.

That was our mindset when we landed there, and who could blame us (besides maybe the Pope, I guess). We somehow had to see a city with over 2,500 years of history in just 2.5 days. Ponder that golden ratio, Leonardo! I think we did a pretty good job of it, though. Which also means I don't really want to write about it because there's SO MUCH to say. Oh, the beloved tragedy of excess.

Night 1 - Hostel with a tiny door inside a giant door next to St. Peter's Basilica, beds that sagged in the middle even if you weren't lying in them, delicious pizza bread from a 24hr bakery.

Day 1 – We spent the morning at the Colosseum with 10 million other tourists baking in the sun (plus some men dressed as gladiators posing for photos), then walked to the Basilica of St. Clement, which we've lovingly dubbed “The Turducken Church.” A Turducken is a chicken inside a duck inside a turkey, baked together and served only in the United States of America. This church is an 11^th century church built on the remains of a 4^th century church, which was built on a 1^st century Roman house, that also had a Mithric temple in its basement. So many things in Rome are like that – everything just piled up on top of everything else. For me, it's so hard to comprehend history, really, when it goes back so far. There's no neat separations. My brain couldn't handle the idea that where I stood deep beneath the ground used to be someone's sunny front porch. Very cool.

We spent the afternoon wandering the Palantine Hill, the hill where the she-wolf suckled Romulus and Remus, where Emperor Augustus was born and lived, and where Nero built his extravagant grounds. It's where the word “palace” comes from. It was okay, I guess. I've seen bigger hills.

From the hill, we could look down on the Roman forum. Also astounding and entirely mind-bogglifying. We ran down into it like little wolf children and walked around in the setting sun, our feet in the same place Julius Caesar’s feet, the Vestal Virgins' feet, and thousands of other Romans' feet used to be. It made us immediately want to watch the HBO series Rome.

On the walk home, we stumbled upon Piazza Navona (a large and beautiful and crowded plaza), an ancient castle, and also the Pantheon, which is just there, in the middle of a plaza, surrounded by restaurants. All of Rome is like that. You're walking to a grocery store and pass by 3 beautiful churches, 2 Roman ruins, and a dog peeing on an ancient column. To find our way back to our hostel, we followed the lights of St. Peter's Basilica. Don't worry, we know we're sweet.

Above and below: The Roman Forum

When we stumbled upon the Pantheon.

Day 2:

We walked through the Capuchin Crypt, where for over 400 years the monks have used the bones of their order to decorate. They still do it. Patterns and scenes and stacks. Some of the skulls (of which there are hundreds), were old and dusty, and some were still juicing. I was pretty freaked out, but they seem to like it. This is what my good friend Mark Twain had to say:

“The reflection that he must someday be taken apart like an engine or a clock...and worked up into arches and pyramids and hideous frescoes, did not distress this monk in the least. I thought he even looked as if he were thinking, with complacent vanity, that his own skull would look well on top of the heap and his own ribs add a charm to the frescoes which possibly they lacked at present.”

Oh, Mark, you do have a way with words.

After Bonelandia, we took a tourist stroll, over to the Trevi Fountain, down the Spanish steps, into the Pantheon. The Pantheon is (how can I put this so I sound really smart?) SO COOL. It's a building that has been actively used as a church for TWO THOUSAND years. The same marble floors, the same roof, the same bronze doors. The reason it's still around when so many other Roman buildings fell is because it was dedicated as a Catholic church in the 600s, so they took care of it instead of letting it crumble. So bizarre, to see this ancient temple filled with statues of Mary and Jesus. And Raphael's tomb, what?

Wanders, all the stores closed because everyone in Rome just takes off the month of August, fountains to fill our water bottles, lunch at the steps of a church.

We spent our late afternoon visiting 2 churches that have paintings by Caravaggio in them. If you don't know about him, know that I am obsessed. He did things in the 1500s that no painter had ever really done – his saints have dirty feet, he used prostitutes as models for Mary, he devotes half a canvass to a horse's butt, and his angles are extreme (I think his angels are pretty normal though). Plus he was wild. Much of what we know about him now comes from his extensive police records. These are two of my favorite paintings that we saw:

The Crucifixion of St. Peter: http://www.shafe.co.uk/crystal/images/lshafe/Caravaggio_The_Crucifixion_of_St_Peter_1600.jpg

The Conversion of St. Paul: http://www.albany.edu/scj/jcjpc/figures/st-paul.jpg

We eat tired picnic dinners on benches after busy days such as these. Bread and cheese and tomato and balsamic in a plastic travel container we brought from home.

Day 3 - 6:30am, we were up and coffeed, ready to spend our last morning in Rome as the first people in St. Peter's Basilica. We maybe weren't the first, but we were among them, wandering with no lines through the biggest Christian church in the world. It's very beautiful and very quiet and there are many bored guards who tell you where you can't go. The more I think about it, the more I remember how huge it is. We paid extra to climb over 500 stairs to the roof of the dome, both the inside (where I secretly touched one of the mosaics), and the outside, where we stood up in the cupola and watched the rising sun over Rome.

Again, we know how sweet we are.

And now, dearest readers, you are caught up with our adventures in Rome (assuming you successfully made it through this novelette). You have our tales of train misadventures and Cinque Terre hikes and Ferrara Buskers Festival shows to look forward to. Right now, Mark is lying in bed watching footage on his camera from yesterday's shows. There's a giant stack of coins on our nightstand (since both $1 and $2 are coins in Euros). We have to get ready to go out and perform again today.

Wish our thighs luck.

-Marya