Rome, Florence, and Headed Home

Day 5 began with a visit to the Pantheon. It's literally about 100 steps from our apartment and we had passed it probably 20 times, but hadn't gone inside until this morning. The Pantheon was built by Hadrian and served as a convenient place for citizens to worship a variety of gods. The dome represents a feat of engineering that I find impossible to imagine, given the constraints of the second century world. The Pantheon's only light source is a hole in the top of the dome that -- unlike Cowboys Stadium -- is always open, creating a column of light that shifts with the sun and that is clearly visible throughout the day. In case you're wondering, the floor slants noticeably to the edges, allowing rain to drain to places unknown.

Our next destination was the Bocca Della Verita (Mouth of Truth), another Audrey Hepburn highlight. Typically I am rather anti-tourist, but any time I am able to occupy the same space as the second most perfect woman of all time I am going to do it. Legend has it that if you put your hand in the face's mouth and you are a liar, the mouth will eat your hand. Given that literally not a single hand was eaten during the 20 minutes we were standing in line, the most reasonable conclusion seems to be that the legend isn't true. One thing is for certain -- I definitely am looking forward to watching Roman Holiday for the fourth or fifth time after we get home.

Right around the corner from the BDV is the site of the Circus Maximus, which is where the Romans had their biggest and best chariot races (think Ben Hur). According to Pliny -- and really, are you going to argue with Pliny? -- the stadium surrounding the track held 250,000 people. I will let that sink in for a while. That's 50,000 more people than would fit in the Alabama and Texas A&M football stadiums combined. Can you imagine Game Day parking? And don't even try to get your brain around the Porta-Potty situation. Whatever the case, now it's just a gigantic oval / rectangular grass-and-weed-filled depression with roads going around all sides. Again, tourism-by-imagination.

We spent the remainder of Day 5 exploring what used to be the Jewish Ghetto and just wandering around and people-watching. The JG area of the city is my favorite. I had a great kosher burger and some terrific dessert pieces from two bakeries on the corner. If you're there, you can't miss them. The JG is tiny, but has some interesting small shops as well as great views of the predecessor to the Colosseum, which now has apartments built directly on top of it. Don't believe me? This picture is a very good synopsis of Rome in general: covering old stuff with new stuff.

To cap off Day 5, we had Mexican food. There are basically no Mexican restaurants in Rome (seems like a decent market opportunity), but I found one that looked like it probably would be good. The owner has been in Rome for 30+ years, is from Mexico originally, has cooked for various Vatican-sponsored events, and even has written a book featuring 100 Mexican recipes based on ingredients that are found easily in Italy. Plus, the name of the restaurant is La Cucaracha. So I figured we couldn't go wrong. At worst, the food would be terrible but we could say that we ate at a Mexican restaurant with the cockroach as its namesake. Anyway, the food was extremely good and it was nice hearing a bunch of people speaking a language we could halfway understand.

On Day 6, we took a 90-minute train ride north to spend 24 hours in Florence. I presented a paper in Florence in 2016 and spent 5 days there alone. It's my favorite European city, and I was really happy to have an opportunity to give Paige a whirlwind tour. Having seen most of the important stuff on my previous journey, I was able to play Ultrafast Tour Guide through the Duomo Museum (which houses Donatello's wood carving of Mary Magdalene, below, my favorite work of art in any medium), the Bargello, the Baptistery, the Accademia (where Michelangelo's David lives), Santa Croce, and the Santa Croce leather school (new purse? check) all in one afternoon. We also found a restaurant that I had visited before and really liked as well as the worst Asian food restaurant on earth. If you want flavorless beef in cayenne pepper -- I know, I know ... how is that even possible?? -- and chicken curry that tastes exactly like Campbell's chicken noodle soup, look no further than the highly recommended (how???) Alfani 149.

After dinner, we walked over to Ponte Vecchio -- site of the Medici's not-so-secret passageway between their residence and the governmental palace on the other side of the River Arno -- and got gelato for about the 25th time. Then we headed back to the center of town to people-watch, which proved even more entertaining than usual since this week turned out to be Florence Fashion Week (drawing fashionistas and their security guards from all over the world). Paige and I also decided that study abroad programs in Italy probably should be banned, given the hordes of unsupervised and trending-toward-inebriated young women that were around every corner.

On the morning of Day 7, we relaxed a bit and then went to the Museum of San Marco, a former Dominican convent featuring many of the frescoes of Fra' Beato Angelico and a fine series of 15th century illuminated manuscripts. Aspects of the monk lifestyle definitely appeal to me. Actually I guess the only part that genuinely appeals to me is the part where you get to hang out by yourself in the quiet. Anyway, I visited San Marco on my previous trip and thought it was even better the second time around.

In early afternoon, we boarded the train back to Rome, packed, had dinner, walked around a bit more in the JG, and -- you guessed it -- got gelato. We also came back and took the last load of clothes out of our all-in-one-washer-and-dryer (aka The Wrinkler). If you've not had the privilege of using one of these European wonders before, you are missing out. You put in three or four pieces of clothing (because really, who would ever need to wash more than that?) and then turn on the machine to let it run through 2 hours of wash and 2 hours of dry. When you hear the machine stop, you then pull out the damp, not very clean clothes and hang them over chairs to dry for real ... and you end up with a finished product like this. Perfetto!

We head back to Kansas tomorrow morning. In the last seven days, we've had a nice break from reality, seen a lot of cool stuff, and eaten a lot of good food. Despite the fact that my Fitbit tells me I've logged 167,000+ steps (which translates into roughly 76 miles), I plan to stay away from the scales for at least a week. Rome definitely is a worthy travel destination. That being said, I would put it in the bottom half of the European cities that I have visited. Don't get me wrong -- there's nowhere else I would've rather gone this summer and it certainly is a place that people considering travel abroad should keep in mind. It just doesn't have quite the character / appeal (to me) that, for example, Florence, Istanbul, Edinburgh, Paris, and Prague have. Not sure what might be next ... maybe Spain with Hollis, to let him test his pseudo-fluency in a big way? We shall see.

Thanks for checking in and have a good summer.

Mike

Rome, Days 3 and 4

Day 3 in Rome brought visits to three churches, the Scala Santa (Holy Stairs), and two substantially more tourist-ridden places. Our first stop was at Saint-Peter-In-Chains. This church features two cool things, one of which is verifiable. The verifiable thing is Michelangelo's Moses statue, which is awesome. The other thing is the namesake(s) of the church. The church was built in 440 specifically to house Peter's chains (no, the chains aren't that big). The altar contains a case with two sets of chains linked together -- one set that supposedly was used on Peter when he and Paul were being held in the Mamertine Prison (near the Roman Forum of yesterday's entry) and one set that supposedly was used on Peter when he was jailed by Herod in Jerusalem. True or not -- one does have to admire the Catholic sense of tradition.

Next on the list was the Church of San Giovanni in Laterno and the right-next-door Scala Santa. The Church of SGL is famous for being the first Christian Church in Rome, having opened its doors in 318. It was the home of the popes until St. Peter's was finished and the Vatican was renovated. The three coolest things about the Church of SGL are (1) the bronze columns that they swiped from the Temple of Jupiter (ironically, pagan Rome's holiest spot); (2) the gigantic bronze front doors, also swiped from pagan Rome (see Paige in the picture below for a perspective on size); and (3) the Bishop's Chair. To this day, new popes have to sit in the Bishop's Chair to make their election / papacy official. Paige suggested, with acknowledged sacrilege, that I jump the ropes, take a seat, and get a quick picture, but we thought better of it.

As for the Scala Santa, during her pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 326, Constantine's mom pulled some strings and sent back 28 marble steps from Pilate's house that Jesus climbed on the day of his sentencing. (Insert joke about Constantine's fundraising advisors recommending that he sell "My Mom Went To Jerusalem and All I Got Were These Lousy ... " t-shirts.) Anyway, many devout Catholics come to the Scala Santa every day to both see the stairs and climb them on their knees while simultaneously reciting the proper prayer for each step. We were just spectators, of course, but the place definitely has a thought-provoking vibe to it. Baptists just don't have things like this.

Our last church stop for the day was Santa Maria Maggiore. SMM was built in 432, between the time that Rome had been sacked by the Visigoths and the time that the popes started replacing the emperors as the powers-that-be. This church feels older than all of the others, probably because it has some Byzantine-type mosaics mixed in with the other art. It also has a very nice stained glass window. I hadn't thought about this much, but I don't recall seeing many of those here at all. Maybe that was more of a Gothic-and-beyond thing.

Other cool stuff we saw today included a cigarette vending machine (which I think we actually had in the States before the Surgeon General started minding people's business), a place where you can buy priest / bishop / cardinal clothes and accoutrements (presumably with the addition of some sort of secret handshake or union card), and a Metro station example of true government cost-cutting ingenuity. I mean, why actually go to the trouble of fixing a mechanism when you can rig a taped plastic bag with rocks to keep should-be-automatic doors from closing? I also made the mistake of actually going into a men's store instead of just window shopping for lightweight sport coats. I'm not sure my carry-on is going to be accommodating enough, but we will hope for the best. 

After dinner, we spent a bit more time walking around and managed to make it to both the Spanish Steps and Trevi Fountain -- two gigantically popular destinations near the center of the city. I don't entirely get the mass appeal of either place, but nobody asked me. Actually, I do I sort of get the appeal of the Spanish Steps since Audrey Hepburn sat on them in Roman Holiday. But there are countless fountains in Rome (fountains are a good way to show off the fact that you invented the aqueduct). Anyway, as many of you know, legend has it that facing away from the fountain and throwing a coin over one's shoulder into the fountain ensures one's return to Rome. Of course one still has to have sufficient vacation time and enough money to buy a plane ticket, etc., so it seems like a routine of questionable value. But again, nobody asked me. 

On Day 4, we went to the Borghese Museum. Borghese was a cardinal purely because he was nephew of one of the popes. He wasn't religious but he did use his station to set up some fabulous digs and buy an extensive assortment of art and sculpture (some of which would've been viewed as rather scandalous at the time). There is an entire room of Caravaggios. I'm not much of an art guy but I've always liked Caravaggio. The palace also has Bernini sculptures scattered all over the place. I think Paige and I are at the point now where we've seen enough art, sculptures, and churches for a while, though, so tomorrow is mainly going to be walking around and looking at stuff / people in different neighborhoods.

In closing, I have noticed in Rome the same thing I have noticed across Europe. People talk about income disparity in the States, but all one has to do is look at clothing and cars in Italy to notice the effective absence of what Americans would view as a "middle class." For example, of the cars in Rome (I noticed this in Florence and across the Tuscan countryside a couple years ago as well), maybe 5% are mid-level. In other words, virtually no one drives the European equivalent of a Honda Accord. Then you have 10% Mercedes / Porsche (below) /  high-end BMW and 85% cheap, tiny cars with lawn mower engines (below x 2).

So the rich are rich and the "working class" are legion. I guess that shouldn't come as too much of a surprise, given the extent to which most European countries dis-incentivize productivity. If you make less than $40,000 a year in the States, your average tax rate is about 11%. In Italy, it's north of 30%. In Italy, if you make $70,000, your tax rate is over 40%. That's double the rate for the same income level in the States. Never mind the additional 20% Value-Added-Tax on all goods and services you purchase when you're lucky enough to be born in Europe and the added benefit of paying $8/gallon for gas. "Free health care," indeed. And yet -- puzzlingly -- the Italian government is massively in debt (around 140% of GDP) and unemployment is double-digits. Waaaaaaaaiiiiiiit ... you mean that if you tax the life out of John and Jane Doe, they decide there isn't much upside to working hard / innovating and your economy goes down the toilet? Hooray for Democratic Socialism!!

(Ends discussion of basic economics.)

Almost forgot ... here's the grown-up version of the red Little Tykes car that literally everyone with kids knows well.

Peace,
Mike

Rome, Days 1 and 2

On Wednesday afternoon, Paige and I left for a much-needed (particularly for her, given the recently announced KU budgetary disaster) vacation to Italy. Our flight from Kansas City to Chicago was delayed for close to two hours because it was sprinkling at O'Hare, so our layover evaporated and we literally got off the plane at C1, walked quickly to C21, and boarded our flight to Rome. Our apartment is centrally located, just a couple hundred yards from the Pantheon on a very quiet side street. If you have plans to visit any time soon, let me know and I will hook you up with Carola.

Paige crashed for about an hour and a half after we arrived, and I used the time to walk around and get my bearings for a bit. Then, we headed out for the "Ancient Rome" part of town. The stretch of Rome that includes the Roman Forum, Palatine Hill, and the Colosseum is fascinating for two reasons: first, because of what the stuff is and second, because the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill areas in particular essentially represent tourism-based-on-imagination. To bring this closer to home, imagine yourself walking from the White House to the Lincoln Memorial and then across the National Mall to the Capitol Building, passing the National Gallery, the Smithsonian, etc., en route. Now imagine thousands of tourists thronging to that area to see quarter structures (if that), random bits of columns and concrete remnants, and signs indicating what used to be there and what used to happen there. Undeniably, it is cool to see a portion of Caligula's palace, the grassy spot where the House of the Vestal Virgins used to stand, and a few scattered remnants of the Temple of Julius Caesar. And really, I guess a lot of European tourism is at least somewhat comparable. It just struck me as particularly brilliant that in the case of this part of Rome, there's just not a lot left ... and yet people come to see "it" in droves.

The Colosseum requires a bit less imagination. The reconstructed floor on the right side of the picture below would've been covered with sand and extended across the entire base of the arena, with ancient elevators carrying gladiators, animals, and unlucky "participants" up from the holding areas below (which you can also see in the picture, although it requires some imagination from that angle). The various parties then carried on to the amusement of the emperor, various dignitaries, and 50,000 other well-wishers. While we were there I couldn't help thinking about having a time machine (my fantasy of fantasies, as some of you know), loading up a few dozen of the high school girls taking duck face selfies overlooking the arena, and seeing what 1st century Romans would think about that.

All in all, this particular part of Rome is extremely interesting if for no other reason (and there are plenty of other reasons) than providing one with perspective. When Paul and Peter were imprisoned here, there were more than a million people living in the city. I'll let that sink in. Talk about the Center of the Universe. There was no other city in the world with more than a million residents until London and Paris in the 19th century. And then after the Fall, the population supposedly fell to a low of about 20,000 during the Middle Ages. For the Texans in the crowd, that's basically like Austin turning into Brenham.

On Day 2 we went to St. Peter's Basilica and the Vatican Museum. We got to St. Peter's a little after 7 a.m. and there were only a couple hundred people in the entire place. So that was pretty fabulous.  The construction of St. Peter's took 120 years (not unlike the restoration of I-35 between Austin and Dallas) and the funding of the project (St. Peter's, not I-35), was sort of what pushed Martin Luther over the edge. As a good Protestant, I get that. However, one does have to give the Catholics credit for putting together a heck of a church. I can't say that I like it any more than some of the other cathedrals we've seen in Europe, but it does seem to have a bit more gravitas.

After finishing up at St. Peter's we headed around the corner to the Vatican Museum, a.k.a. the single most crowded place on the planet. I had bought advance reservations, as always, for a timed entry at the opening bell, and that basically let us skip to the front of the line. But once inside, it still was completely ridiculous. I honestly cannot imagine how it would be an hour or two after opening. We battled and jostled and used our best Indy car driver moves and saw all manner of old and cool stuff that legions of Popes and their minions have preserved for posterity (including an ancient Greek statue of a young boy very ill-prepared to fight in World War II, pictured below), and ultimately made it to the Sistine Chapel. As much as I hate to say it, the Sistine Chapel was underwhelming. Yes, Michelangelo's work is amazing and I find The Last Judgment (with Muscular Jesus as Judge) even more impressive than the Creation of Adam centerpiece. But until arriving at the Vatican Museum, I wasn't aware that "Sistine" is Latin for "put on a straitjacket and glance at some amazing art before they make you leave." You seriously only get like 45 seconds in the room until they open the rear cattle chute and force you out. So my personal recommendation is that if you (1) are into Michelangelo and (2) want to see the Sistine Chapel properly, you should (1) go to Florence and see David (which you may stand and look at from all angles, all day long) and (2) skip the Vatican Museum and buy a really nice book on the Sistine Chapel.

When we escaped the Vatican Museum and saw the masses forming to enter St. Peter's, we congratulated ourselves (again) on having been there a few minutes after the doors opened. We then headed back to St. Peter's Square and decided to trek back to the apartment for a bit. As we were leaving the Square, Paige passed by a vendor's table, did a double-take at these little round discs like clear Skoal canisters with pictures of Pope John Paul and Pope Francis on them, and said "Hey look ... they're selling red Pope jelly beans." Ummm ... try rosary beads.

In addition to all of the cool stuff mentioned above, I've also developed the following insights in our two days in the city: (1) Rome pizza is nowhere near as good as Florence pizza; (2) Roman men dress better than American men (although that isn't a particularly high bar these days); (3) Rome's traffic and the ingenuity of its drivers rivals that of Istanbul; and (4) Rome's labyrinthine alleys and corridors often leave Google Maps crying in a corner. I've also been amazed by Rome's street vendor market. We went to Sea World 17-18 years ago in the middle of summer. I do not recommend doing this. Those of you who have been to Sea World in San Antonio know that it is approximately 97% asphalt and there is no shade anywhere. Practically every family we saw had a 1-to-4 year-old child who was crying / screaming / not really having a good time at all. I thought this was sort of interesting, given that the only reason a moderately sane adult would ever go to Sea World (particularly when it is 112 degrees) would be so that "the kids could have a good time." Anyway, while we were there I commented that if we quit our jobs and convinced park administrators to let us open a kiosk selling kid-sized shirts that read "I Was a Pain in the Ass at Sea World," we would be able to retire in no time. Having been in Rome for two days now, I believe a similar strategy would work if one were to sell adult-sized t-shirts with a picture of the Colosseum captioned "Veni, Vidi, I Got Asked If I Wanted to Buy Water or Selfie Sticks."

But I digress.

As our second day transitioned into afternoon, I started writing this while Paige crashed for a bit. We then headed out for a very late lunch / early dinner and to see four of the churches that are in the general area of the Pantheon (which we still haven't visited). We made it to two of them and will hit the others tomorrow or the next day. One of the churches -- the Church of San Luigi Dei Francesi -- has three panels by Caravaggio. The other -- Gesu Church -- is, I believe, the very first Jesuit church (fun fact: Pope Francis is a Jesuit). It has some cool artwork and the following sign-of-the-day:

And with that, I will close. I've no clue what the next few days will bring, but will provide updates when I can.

Cheers,
Mike