Rome 1

  What a city Rome is! Antiquities everywhere you turn yet the city runs on smart phone technology. Yes, completely. Even the ubiquitous "selfie stick peddlers" are using smart phones. From every vendor in the outdoor markets to the Vatican, Rome runs on smart phones. EXCEPT FOR US.

  Our iPhones were still useful but only via wifi. We missed having them for directions and on the spot Euro conversions and translations, but otherwise we did fine. Since there are few direct routes or straight streets, if you knew the direction you needed to go, you could simply zig-zag in that direction. We had a paper map to zero in on destinations and enjoyed getting temporarily lost when that happened.

  The first day out we went to the Forum and Colosseum. We didn't actually go in the Colosseum but thought we'd go back another day for a tour. That never did happen, but there were so many other things to see it was obvious one could spend months, years and maybe a lifetime seeing it all. We are back in Louisville now and last night we watched a documentary on the Colosseum. Some truly horrible stuff took place there and it illustrates the idea that absolute power corrupts absolutely. The main entertainment seems to have been great acts of death and destruction perpetrated on the losers of Roman conflicts and the "criminals" of the time, according to the PBS Nova documentary, "Colosseum-Roman Death Trap". All in THREE SHOWS A DAY. 
 The photo on the left shows the colosseum as it is today. The center photo shows an artist rendering of what it looked like in it's original condition.
 The Colosseum was the largest building in the world and was financed by the plunder and destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, 70 C.E. 
 The panels below from the Arch of Titus 81 C.E. shows the Romans with the spoils of The Temple.

Colosseum today

Artist's rendering of Colosseum as designed

Arch of Titus

Panel on the Arch of Titus showing the looting of The Temple

  Rome has over 900 Catholic churches, one more grand than the next. It is a kind of saturation marketing, like Starbucks. There will be churches almost next door to each other. Most look almost plain from the outside, but none that we saw could be described as simple on the inside.

  Many that we saw had huge pipe organs and all of them were filled with columns and gold. There is marble of all types everywhere you look.

  We were able to get tickets to the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel. In the first section of the museum we saw funerary items of all types. Death is a big theme. The items were displayed in a long hall. One side of the hall had pagan statues and funeral crypts. The other side was Judeo/Christian. Both had plenty of symbolism of course, but the pagan side had nature images of multiple deities. Once the Hebrews came along, that changed. It was all fascinating.

  One large room was full of all types of animal sculptures,  many depicting the hunt.

  The scale of everything in the Vatican Museum seemed to be larger than other places in Rome. It made me think it was the "Texas" of museums.

  As we discovered, museums can be exhausting. After a few hours we went to their lovely outdoor cafe and had a leisurely lunch from the typical Roman menu, along with wine of course.

By the way, there is wine, beer and hard liquor available everywhere, even at the coffee bars. That said, we did not see one overtly drunk person. We did encounter lots of cigarette smokers, but it wasn't overwhelming.

The ceiling in The Sistine Chapel

  Good food was plentiful and great food not uncommon. We only saw American fast food in and near the train station. On the same subject, even in this country with cereal grains as a big part of their diet, there were very few obese people. Cheese, pork, lamb, beef, seafood and fish in all forms along with veggies, fruit and wine make up the menu.

Via del Pellegrino

  What a country---we loved it. People seemed to be eating constantly, but the actual restaurants were usually closed

from about 2:00 or 3:00 PM until 7:00-7:30 PM when they reopened for dinner. Our earlier American eating schedule gave us an advantage since we could show up at 7:00 and be seated without a reservation.
We had a sweet little VRBO in the Campo di Fiori area so we were able to cook a little or just enjoy wine and cheese at home. But, who wants to do that when there is good food everywhere one looks. There was a Co-op around one corner and a PAM grocery around another, for water and incidentals. The Campo di Fiori was about 200-300 feet away and had a daily market for veggies, fruit and flowers, along with trinkets and clothing. The photo above left is the door to our building. The photo above right is Bonnie in the vestibule. The photos below are of some of the food available at the daily market.