We hopped in a cab and headed to the airport at 7:30. The cabbie did not speak English and I knew I needed to go to Fumincinio Airport but he was following the Da Vinci airport signs. I thought that they had two airports in Rome so until he communicated that they were actually the same airport I was pretty nervous.
Tiffaney got her bag searched again. We took off on time at 1030 local time. We landed on Washington DC 9 hrs later at 2:00 PM EST.
GOD BLESS THE USA!
For some reason the flight we were booked on did not depart till 10 pm so we luckily got in standby for the 5:30 flight. We landed in Denver safe and sound at 9:15 PM MST!
Trip over... Until next time (with a new lil DeShazer traveller)...
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Day 9 In Rome: Last Day - Trajans Marke
Our last day!!! We are about ready to be home and we are not looking forward to the long trip home.
We decided against riding up to Pisa to see the leaning tower (I should not have bought those rail passes) and instead just spend a leisurely day filling in what we missed and buying souvenirs.
We rode the metro to the Colosseum and realized the were having a parade in the historical areas so you could walk all the streets without fear of a cabbie killing you.
We went to Trajan ‘s Market next to the Imperial Forum. It is very well preserved. Trajan ‘s Market is like the world’s first shopping mall. Until his time if you want fish you went to the fish market need beef go to the beef market. He cut a huge semicircle out of the hill that butted up to the imperial forum and built a four tiered market with designated stalls for each vendor and internal walkways to increase the number of shops that could fit into the given area. You can still see the marble on the plaza, the mosaic floors in the stalls and the stall numbers still etched in the marble door frames after almost 1800 yrs! We then retraced our steps of the previous night tour and did some trinket shopping and haggling along the way. After we got to Piazza Novano again, we walked back toward Castel Sant ‘Angelo and the Vatican. At about 5pm (on Sunday) we took the metro back to our hotel and rested for a few hours. When we finally went out to eat dinner we realized everything closes early on Sunday. So we walked to the one place we knew would be open... McDonald ‘s! That just made us home sick. Tomorrow we are outta here!
M&T
We decided against riding up to Pisa to see the leaning tower (I should not have bought those rail passes) and instead just spend a leisurely day filling in what we missed and buying souvenirs.
We rode the metro to the Colosseum and realized the were having a parade in the historical areas so you could walk all the streets without fear of a cabbie killing you.
We went to Trajan ‘s Market next to the Imperial Forum. It is very well preserved. Trajan ‘s Market is like the world’s first shopping mall. Until his time if you want fish you went to the fish market need beef go to the beef market. He cut a huge semicircle out of the hill that butted up to the imperial forum and built a four tiered market with designated stalls for each vendor and internal walkways to increase the number of shops that could fit into the given area. You can still see the marble on the plaza, the mosaic floors in the stalls and the stall numbers still etched in the marble door frames after almost 1800 yrs! We then retraced our steps of the previous night tour and did some trinket shopping and haggling along the way. After we got to Piazza Novano again, we walked back toward Castel Sant ‘Angelo and the Vatican. At about 5pm (on Sunday) we took the metro back to our hotel and rested for a few hours. When we finally went out to eat dinner we realized everything closes early on Sunday. So we walked to the one place we knew would be open... McDonald ‘s! That just made us home sick. Tomorrow we are outta here!
M&T
Day 8 In Rome: Vatican City
Vatican Day! I was very excited about this day. Unfortunately Tiff was not feeling well most of the morning. We really liked our tour guide from yesterday and she was giving a Vatican tour the next day so we did our third tour with our new Aussie friend Hannah.
We meet the group at noon and headed into the Vatican Museum. Basically when Rome began to fall and throughout the Dark and Middle Ages the popes continuously expanded their collections to where they now have one of if not the best collection of Greek and Roman sculptures and art.
These sculptures had dramatic influences on Michelangelo, Raphael and other great Renaissance artists because they were not allowed (by the church) to examine the human body by examining models and doing autopsies like their Greek and Roman counterparts could. Many of the bodies painted in the Sistine Chapel were copied from Greek sculptures in the Vatican collection.
Let me back up one second. The Vatican hill was chosen to build the "headquarters" of the church because that is where Nero killed Peter, by Crucifixion upside down because Peter did not want to die as Christ.
Nero's bathtub was cool. It was the biggest single piece of Egyptian porphyry ever produced. It is like 7' across.
Now the museums are cool but the Sistine Chapel puts it all to shame. It looks amazing. It was restored in the 90s because it had 500 yrs of soot on it but the church did not pay a dime a Japanese company did it all in exchange for the copyrights to all the images for 30 yrs so you can't take pictures inside.
The chapel was done by Michelangelo in fresco and was his FIRST fresco work. Fresco is when you apply a plaster to the wall the paint as it dries so that the paint is in the plaster and can not flake off which is why it still looks so good. However this is a very difficult technique because if you mess up you have to wait in it to dry a rip it all off and start over. Two other fresco painters turned down the project because they were working on other things. They suggested Michelangelo, a sculptor, because they were jealous of his fame but knew he could not turn down a request from the pope. They thought he would mess it up and they would have to come into to clean up after him. Little did they know it would be considered the best fresco ever in his first try at it. He was just such a perfectionist and would work 20 hrs a day 7 days a week for 8 yrs with no painting help from apprentices. Most of this time he spent on his back.
After the Sistine Chapel we went to the big show.. St Peters Basilica the largest Catholic Church in the world. It took 120 yrs to build which spanned through 9 popes. This place is amazing! You can flash photograph anything you want because there are NO PAINTINGS in there. Everything is mosaic. Once you know that your jaw drops. The statues are so big and amazing. Some of the statues in the second level up are 25' tall. Everything is big and everything is marble and a ton of it is the Egyptian porphyry.
We also went down into the crypt where most of the popes are entombed. Tons of people were crying and praying at Pope John Paul's grave. So what happens is after a pope dies they entomb him down there and then they open him up in 25 yrs if he has not decayed they consider it a miraculous sign and then encase the body in some material. They dip him in it and then put him in a sarcophagus up in the basilica. Some have been dipped in gold, silver, copper and I think the last one like 3 popes ago was dipped in wax (I think they cheaped out on that one).
We spent some time in St Peters square then went to eat. We ate the best food of the trip. The pasta was the most amazing Italian food either of us had ever eaten.
Long day. We hit the pillow hard. Very tired.
M&T
We meet the group at noon and headed into the Vatican Museum. Basically when Rome began to fall and throughout the Dark and Middle Ages the popes continuously expanded their collections to where they now have one of if not the best collection of Greek and Roman sculptures and art.
These sculptures had dramatic influences on Michelangelo, Raphael and other great Renaissance artists because they were not allowed (by the church) to examine the human body by examining models and doing autopsies like their Greek and Roman counterparts could. Many of the bodies painted in the Sistine Chapel were copied from Greek sculptures in the Vatican collection.
Let me back up one second. The Vatican hill was chosen to build the "headquarters" of the church because that is where Nero killed Peter, by Crucifixion upside down because Peter did not want to die as Christ.
Nero's bathtub was cool. It was the biggest single piece of Egyptian porphyry ever produced. It is like 7' across.
Now the museums are cool but the Sistine Chapel puts it all to shame. It looks amazing. It was restored in the 90s because it had 500 yrs of soot on it but the church did not pay a dime a Japanese company did it all in exchange for the copyrights to all the images for 30 yrs so you can't take pictures inside.
The chapel was done by Michelangelo in fresco and was his FIRST fresco work. Fresco is when you apply a plaster to the wall the paint as it dries so that the paint is in the plaster and can not flake off which is why it still looks so good. However this is a very difficult technique because if you mess up you have to wait in it to dry a rip it all off and start over. Two other fresco painters turned down the project because they were working on other things. They suggested Michelangelo, a sculptor, because they were jealous of his fame but knew he could not turn down a request from the pope. They thought he would mess it up and they would have to come into to clean up after him. Little did they know it would be considered the best fresco ever in his first try at it. He was just such a perfectionist and would work 20 hrs a day 7 days a week for 8 yrs with no painting help from apprentices. Most of this time he spent on his back.
After the Sistine Chapel we went to the big show.. St Peters Basilica the largest Catholic Church in the world. It took 120 yrs to build which spanned through 9 popes. This place is amazing! You can flash photograph anything you want because there are NO PAINTINGS in there. Everything is mosaic. Once you know that your jaw drops. The statues are so big and amazing. Some of the statues in the second level up are 25' tall. Everything is big and everything is marble and a ton of it is the Egyptian porphyry.
We also went down into the crypt where most of the popes are entombed. Tons of people were crying and praying at Pope John Paul's grave. So what happens is after a pope dies they entomb him down there and then they open him up in 25 yrs if he has not decayed they consider it a miraculous sign and then encase the body in some material. They dip him in it and then put him in a sarcophagus up in the basilica. Some have been dipped in gold, silver, copper and I think the last one like 3 popes ago was dipped in wax (I think they cheaped out on that one).
We spent some time in St Peters square then went to eat. We ate the best food of the trip. The pasta was the most amazing Italian food either of us had ever eaten.
Long day. We hit the pillow hard. Very tired.
M&T
Monday, February 23, 2009
Day 7 In Rome: Touring Roman Landmarks
Today was a busy day! First stop was the colesuem. When we were walking up to get in line to buy tickets an American guy asked us if we needed a guided tour, after talking we decided to give them a try (great decision).
So we were in a group of about 10 other English speakers, mainly Aussies and Brits, the tour guide in the colesuem was Italian and had a heavy accent we later found out that she was just filling in. The colosuem is a very cool building it could hold about 50k people which is as many as most sold out major league baseball games. It was built in about 7 years from the slaves that were brought back to Rome after the Jewish revolt in Jersaluem a few decades after Christ died. The only thing they forgot was bathrooms makes you wonder what all those people did. Some cool things we found out were that the events were all free. Caesar (taxpayers) picked up the tab and food was normally provided, especially if they were killing animals. After the fall of Rome and after a earthquake took down one part of the structure it was used as a quarry were the marble was collected and used in other projects all over Rome.
After the tour we were told we could go on a free tour of Palatine Hill as well so of course we did. We got an amazing Aussie guide this time. Palatine Hill is where the Cesears built their houses and it overlooked the forums. It is a pretty tall hill but it used to be taller with two peaks but after those Jewish slaves got finished with the colosuem they came up and leveled the hill to make a flat top hill that bigger palaces could be built. Actually the were called "big houses" in Latin until this occurred then the houses became so big they were called palaces because of the palatine hill. It is where the word palace comes from in almost every language. But I digress... These palaces were huge now most if the walls are gone but you can see the outlines and we are talking 2-3 football fields. The floors and walls were totally marble a lot of it a certain kind called egyptian pophery (which is purple) they exhausted every quarry that had this marble and no more quarries have produced it in 2000 years it is worth $25,000 per sq inch today. After the buildings were destroyed the Vatican reclaimed a lot of it to build St Peters now 80% of the world's Egyptian pophery is within the Vatican walls (we saw some in the Louvre in Paris).
Next we went down through the forums. Cool thing is most of it got covered over and so when they started excavating in the 1800s alot of it was still intacted including the orginal roman roads.
We really liked the tour guide and their company was doing a night tour of alot of the other sites around the city so we paid our 20 euro/ person and took off again. I will just hit the highlights... Trevi Fountain is cool it is fed from a natural spring by a 1500 yr old aqueduct, no pumps, all gravity fed. Pretty cool. You throw a coin in the fountain and it said you are guaranteed another trip to the Eternal City the Vatican (charity) gets the money, about 6000 euro/day in tourist months. The fountain was commissioned by a pope who's family owned (and apparently still does) the square. Sorry if I am making a lot of anti Vatican statements but they did some pretty selfish stuff back in the day, more on that later.
The next cool think was the Pantheon. It was a very cool building from an engineer’s point of view. It is a huge circular building with a dome roof and a hole in the middle of the roof. The way they built the roof was to build the walls up and fill it with sand and build the forms and pour the concrete slowly with lighter and lighter concretes. Then they had a huge building full of sand... But the designer Marcus Agrippa was smart... as they were filling it with sand he dropped 1000 gold coins then when they were done he told the people about the coins and that they could only take one bag of sand per family at a time... The sand was emptied in 3 days.
When the Pantheon became a church (the first church in Rome) there was a "house of working women" across the street so the pope put a placard across the building saying basically may this evil business never prosper... Now under that sign is a... McDonalds!
Finally we went to Piazza Novona which is like this big oval plaza that used to be a Roman chariot race track. It has a famous fountain representing the 4 great rivers of the world. The funny thing our guide pointed out was that none of the people on the fountain face the church in the center of one side of the plaza and none of the statues on the church face the fountain. That is because the student of the guy making the fountain stole his commission to build the church. So they were building them at the same time and would throw tools and rocks at each other frequently.
Sorry that was long. Great day the tour guide makes things so much more interesting.
M&T
So we were in a group of about 10 other English speakers, mainly Aussies and Brits, the tour guide in the colesuem was Italian and had a heavy accent we later found out that she was just filling in. The colosuem is a very cool building it could hold about 50k people which is as many as most sold out major league baseball games. It was built in about 7 years from the slaves that were brought back to Rome after the Jewish revolt in Jersaluem a few decades after Christ died. The only thing they forgot was bathrooms makes you wonder what all those people did. Some cool things we found out were that the events were all free. Caesar (taxpayers) picked up the tab and food was normally provided, especially if they were killing animals. After the fall of Rome and after a earthquake took down one part of the structure it was used as a quarry were the marble was collected and used in other projects all over Rome.
After the tour we were told we could go on a free tour of Palatine Hill as well so of course we did. We got an amazing Aussie guide this time. Palatine Hill is where the Cesears built their houses and it overlooked the forums. It is a pretty tall hill but it used to be taller with two peaks but after those Jewish slaves got finished with the colosuem they came up and leveled the hill to make a flat top hill that bigger palaces could be built. Actually the were called "big houses" in Latin until this occurred then the houses became so big they were called palaces because of the palatine hill. It is where the word palace comes from in almost every language. But I digress... These palaces were huge now most if the walls are gone but you can see the outlines and we are talking 2-3 football fields. The floors and walls were totally marble a lot of it a certain kind called egyptian pophery (which is purple) they exhausted every quarry that had this marble and no more quarries have produced it in 2000 years it is worth $25,000 per sq inch today. After the buildings were destroyed the Vatican reclaimed a lot of it to build St Peters now 80% of the world's Egyptian pophery is within the Vatican walls (we saw some in the Louvre in Paris).
Next we went down through the forums. Cool thing is most of it got covered over and so when they started excavating in the 1800s alot of it was still intacted including the orginal roman roads.
We really liked the tour guide and their company was doing a night tour of alot of the other sites around the city so we paid our 20 euro/ person and took off again. I will just hit the highlights... Trevi Fountain is cool it is fed from a natural spring by a 1500 yr old aqueduct, no pumps, all gravity fed. Pretty cool. You throw a coin in the fountain and it said you are guaranteed another trip to the Eternal City the Vatican (charity) gets the money, about 6000 euro/day in tourist months. The fountain was commissioned by a pope who's family owned (and apparently still does) the square. Sorry if I am making a lot of anti Vatican statements but they did some pretty selfish stuff back in the day, more on that later.
The next cool think was the Pantheon. It was a very cool building from an engineer’s point of view. It is a huge circular building with a dome roof and a hole in the middle of the roof. The way they built the roof was to build the walls up and fill it with sand and build the forms and pour the concrete slowly with lighter and lighter concretes. Then they had a huge building full of sand... But the designer Marcus Agrippa was smart... as they were filling it with sand he dropped 1000 gold coins then when they were done he told the people about the coins and that they could only take one bag of sand per family at a time... The sand was emptied in 3 days.
When the Pantheon became a church (the first church in Rome) there was a "house of working women" across the street so the pope put a placard across the building saying basically may this evil business never prosper... Now under that sign is a... McDonalds!
Finally we went to Piazza Novona which is like this big oval plaza that used to be a Roman chariot race track. It has a famous fountain representing the 4 great rivers of the world. The funny thing our guide pointed out was that none of the people on the fountain face the church in the center of one side of the plaza and none of the statues on the church face the fountain. That is because the student of the guy making the fountain stole his commission to build the church. So they were building them at the same time and would throw tools and rocks at each other frequently.
Sorry that was long. Great day the tour guide makes things so much more interesting.
M&T
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Robbed in Rome
We got robbed by a cabbie today.
We had just got into Rome on the train and did not want to find the
hotel ourself so we jumped in a cab. I told the cabbie the hotel name
and asked how much and he said "meter meter" which let me know he
would try to rip us off. When we turned the corner to the hotel the
meter it said $8 but when we got out it said $20 he said bag charge...
I called him out on that but he was adamit and I had no proof
otherwise (I now know there is only a flat fee of $2 + $2/bag then
$0.50/km so it shouldve been 10 euro).
So then I rustled through my pocket and gave him a $20 from a wad of
bills, I turned around and he must have switched it with a $10 and he
said "it's $20" so I took the $10 and gave him another $20 b/c I
thought I had only given him a $10.
About tem minutes later I remembered I was out of 10s all I had was
20s so I had to have given him a $20 in the first place!
So he got 20 euro extra out if me, 10 by lying about the fare then 10
by just stealing.
First lesson... Rome is full of crooks watch your wallet!
Night Train to Rome
Wow! So we will never ever do a night train again! The train looked
like it was fifty years old and never washed (the outside). Each car
has six "rooms" that fit six people. When we get to our " room"
michael sees that there are already six people in our room 4 adults
and two children! The two kids did not count as passengers! So there
were 8 of us crammed in 6 ft by 6 foot space. Needless to say this was
going to be interesting. About thirty or forty min into the ride I
went to the bathroom and when I came back michael told me the lady
with the two kids changed the younger ones poopy diaper in the room!
CRAZY GROSS! After that the other couple in our room decided to
upgrade. A little while later we turned the seats into our beds and
tried to sleep as the kids are humming and making other noises. The
mom didn't care she was asleep. At least she had both of her kids on
her bed. For some reason on this perticular night I had to use the
bathroom every 15 min for the first hour of trying to sleep. After a
while you get used to the weird sounds the train makes and then you
just wake up when the train stops. Which was about five different
times on this night. One of the times I woke up on a stop the mom of
the kids was coming back inside the room I noticed a pickle jar or
something like it in her hand. Didn't think much about it then, but in
the morning I realized that I never saw the older of the two kids go
to the bathroom... and he was not wearing a diaper. So my conclusion
was the kid used it as a potty!!!!!!!!!! We were up by nine and
listened to the kids cry (b/c the lil one needed another diaper
change), scream and make sounds over and over again until we were off
the train at noon. I know kids do this but in a small room with not
enough sleep you slowly go crazy. I jumped off the train so fast!
Michael was nice enough to say goodbye, I just grabbed my bags and
left! So glad it was over! Never again!
like it was fifty years old and never washed (the outside). Each car
has six "rooms" that fit six people. When we get to our " room"
michael sees that there are already six people in our room 4 adults
and two children! The two kids did not count as passengers! So there
were 8 of us crammed in 6 ft by 6 foot space. Needless to say this was
going to be interesting. About thirty or forty min into the ride I
went to the bathroom and when I came back michael told me the lady
with the two kids changed the younger ones poopy diaper in the room!
CRAZY GROSS! After that the other couple in our room decided to
upgrade. A little while later we turned the seats into our beds and
tried to sleep as the kids are humming and making other noises. The
mom didn't care she was asleep. At least she had both of her kids on
her bed. For some reason on this perticular night I had to use the
bathroom every 15 min for the first hour of trying to sleep. After a
while you get used to the weird sounds the train makes and then you
just wake up when the train stops. Which was about five different
times on this night. One of the times I woke up on a stop the mom of
the kids was coming back inside the room I noticed a pickle jar or
something like it in her hand. Didn't think much about it then, but in
the morning I realized that I never saw the older of the two kids go
to the bathroom... and he was not wearing a diaper. So my conclusion
was the kid used it as a potty!!!!!!!!!! We were up by nine and
listened to the kids cry (b/c the lil one needed another diaper
change), scream and make sounds over and over again until we were off
the train at noon. I know kids do this but in a small room with not
enough sleep you slowly go crazy. I jumped off the train so fast!
Michael was nice enough to say goodbye, I just grabbed my bags and
left! So glad it was over! Never again!
Ah... the memories...
T&M
Day 5 in Paris: Versailles
Day 5: We got up this morning and headed to Versailles at 10am. It is
only about 30 min outside of Paris by train. It was cloudy but it did
not rain just misted.
only about 30 min outside of Paris by train. It was cloudy but it did
not rain just misted.
Versailles was the palace that basically became the seat of government
of France. It was built to it's present size by Louis XIV with the
help of his wife Maria Antoinette. It is three stories tall and has
hundreds of rooms. We toured the main complex which included the
famous "Hall of Mirrors". The rooms all had beautifully painted walls
and ceilings as well as marble floors. We also walked through the
gardens but the wind was blowning and it was cold so we just did some
souviner shopping and headed back to Paris.
All and all we were disappointed in the famous palace. Schunbrun in
Vienna (where Maria Antoinette was born) is way better! Go see it.
Versailles is a cheap trip so we would still go but it got stripped
down a lot during and after the revolution and it still needs
restoration.
After arriving in Paris we headed to the train station to catch our
night train to Rome. That is another story on it's own so I will leave
that to Tiff.
M&T
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