Just got back from a long, long trip halfway around the world. We’ve had alot of pent-up energy from not being able to travel much for the last three years. Around Xmastime Lizzy asked if we could do one more family vacation together this summer and Jeannie happily agreed. We brainstormed some possibilities and decided to go to Italy.
Our flight left NYC at midnight Saturday night and arrived in Rome Sunday afternoon in the middle of a heat wave. We stayed in a hotel right in downtown Ancient Rome, walking distance from the Colosseum. The first evening we took a short walk down, and seeing the Colosseum in real life just knocks you out. We had dinner at a restaurant right across the way, wonderful Italian food, pasta and wine, and the girls started a long streak of drinking Aperol Spritzes. After walking around a while more, we went back to the hotel and cranked up the AC. Let me tell you, European air conditioning is not up to American standards.
The main event the next day was a tour of the Vatican. It was a hundred degrees out. We were part of an organized tour that met outside the Vatican walls, so we arrived early had lunch nearby, drinks and desert. The tour itself was quite interesting, first of all because the Vatican is somehow technically it’s own country, separated from the rest of Rome by a medieval castle wall, so there’s this customs and security checkpoint. Our tour guide called it the world’s richest and weirdest country. Inside of course it’s all about the renaissance artwork, numerous galleries of sculptures and paintings and artifacts, with a big focus on Michelangelo and his muscular nude men, languidly posed and casually yet precisely composed. Honestly to modern eyes it looks pretty strange and festishistic, and not always exactly spiritual or uplifting. Kinda made me want to hit the gym rather than contemplate God.
Still there’s something impressive and admirable about the talent and vision behind it all, the scale and technique and craftsmanship, the dramatization of characters and scenes from the bible freely mixed with ancient mythology, and the whole renaissance project of revitalizing and connecting to the aesthetic of an civilization that’s been gone for a thousand years. I studied art and architecture in college, and had seen alot of this in books. Still, it’s something else seeing it up close and in context at real life scale. Everything is so visually busy, the art, architecture and sculpture all merge into one giant system. The famous ceiling of the Sistine Chapel looks kinda like a comic book, telling a story in a set of panels with bright primary colors. That doesn’t really come across from the photographs. I must say the Pieta was genuinely beautiful and moving.
The last thing on the tour was St. Peter’s Basilica, which is just absolutely massive and incredibly ornate, with probably thousands of statues and paintings and other ornamental items, all rendered in carved marble with a few mummified old popes as well. My favorite thing there was the window behind the alter, which wasn’t stained glass, but rather different kinds of stone in different colors, cut so thin as to be translucent.
We took a cab back to our hotel. Air conditioning never felt so good. Later when the sun began to sink toward the west, we went up to the bar on the roof of the hotel and enjoyed some drinks and the view of city. Then we went out to dinner on Tiber Island at a very charming restaurant. Afterwards we walked along the river and checked out the shops and the whole scene.
Next day it was even hotter. The main item of the day was a tour of ancient Rome, starting with an area containing the ruins of the Forum, the temples of Jupiter, Saturn, and other important temples and public buildings. Next, up the hill was the former palace of the Emperor. The guide gave us alot of interesting info about the history of the place, how it was built of over time, then fell to ruin, and later excavated and to some extent restored or at least made worthy for public display. Alot of active archaeology still going on.
The last stop was the Colosseum, and we got to go inside. This was truly impressive for its massive scale and its ancientness, but also how its conception and layout as a sports arena still feels very modern. One side of it is standing relatively intact, while the other side partially collapsed in an earthquake centuries ago, and the stones were hauled across town to use in the construction of St. Peter’s. So it was with alot of structures after the empire fell. The floor of the arena had been excavated and partially restored, and we did epic battle with the sun god while our guide explained the history and various used of the place throughout the ages.
Afterwards we retreated to a nearby Irish pub, because Jeannie had read that the Irish pubs in Rome tend to have good air conditioning. Well it was okay by European standard but not actually cool. Still it was much better than outside, and the drinks were refreshing. The food, nachos and chicken fingers, was pretty terrible, but we weren’t that hungry anyway.
We finally mustered the energy to walk back to the hotel and took another break. That evening we went to the famous Trevi Fountain, which was wrought with statues of Neptune, very beautiful. Lizzy posed for pictures. Dinner at a nearby restaurant, then more checking out the shops. Jeannie bought a bobble head of the pope.