Rome - Palatine Hill and the Forum

The weather finally cooperated on our last day in Rome. We had partly cloudy skies with a couple of quick showers, but I'll take that to the downpour we had yesterday any time. When the sun came out from behind the clouds, it was actually shirt sleeve weather.

Rich and I spent the first part of the morning on Palatine Hill (where emperor Dioclesian built his palace). From there, we wandered through the Roman Forum, walking roads that Julius Caesar once walked, and imagining what this area must have looked like 2000 years ago. It still astounds me that so much has survived.

We also visited the Baths of Dioclesian (now a church, as are so many former temples in this city). The church was immense, as the baths must have once been, since they could accommodate 3,000 people. It's hard to imagine a gym or spa that size.

This is my last blog post as we leave early tomorrow morning for Zurich and then on to San Francisco. We'll be spending the weekend with Ashley and Brent and then home Sunday night and back to reality. See you all soon!

Rome - Capitoline and Pamphili Museums

Weather wise, today was a miserable day! We decided to try to stay inside as much as possible and see some museums we had never visited before: the Capitoline Hill museums and the Doria Pamphili Gallery. We borrowed an umbrella from our host and set off across the Tiber early this morning. Our first stop was the Capitoline Hill museums, containing artifacts from ancient Rome: the bronze statue of the nursing she-wolf, symbol of Rome; fragments from a huge statue of Constantine; a gilded bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, emperor of Rome, etc. From there, we walked to the Doria Pamphili Gallery, which was the private home of the Doria Pamphili family, descendents of Pope Innocent X. While viewing all the beautiful paintings this family acquired (most of them during Pope Innocent's reign), one wonders how a priest of the church (who took vows of poverty) accumulated all this personal wealth.

After our museum tour, we had lunch at a small, typical Roman restaurant and then braved the weather again in the hopes of doing some shopping. All we did was get wetter and wetter as we tried to maneuver the narrow Roman sidewalks with thousands of other umbrella-clad people. Rich refused to use the umbrella's shelter, claiming that I was going to poke out his eye (honestly!!) and, in the process, got thoroughly wet. We finally decided to give it up and walked back to our hotel, keeping to the path along the tree-lined Tiber to escape the rain and the crowds. By the time we reached our destination we were both soaked through to the skin. Let's hope the weather tomorrow is a little better, as it will be our last day in Rome. Hope your Halloween was drier than ours.

Fragments from the Statue of Constantine

View of the Roman Forum

Rome - Vatican City

We woke this morning to such clear blue skies it's hard to believe we had such a downpour yesterday. Hope the weather holds for the next few days at least.

We caught an early morning train to Salerno and from there took an express train to Rome. I never realized how fast these trains really are. At one point, we were going 180 miles/hour. The trip was uneventful (although I'm glad this is the last time we have to schlep bags on/off trains and up/down stairs) and we arrived at our bed & breakfast @ 11:30. We're staying in the Trastevere neighborhood, which is on the Vatican side of the Tiber, so we decided to visit the Vatican museum and St. Peter's Basilica this afternoon. We've been to the museum on two previous trips, but this was the busiest it's ever been. It was exasperating trying to maneuver around all the tour groups. Two and a half hours later we exited the Sistine Chapel (as awe-inspiring as ever) into St. Peter's Square and made our way into the basilica, which wasn't near as crowded as the museum.

By the time we exited the church it was almost 6:00 PM (quite dark already as Italy changed to standard time last weekend) and we were able to get the following nighttime pictures of St. Peter's.

 



From St. Peter's we took the metro to the Spanish Steps and then wandered from there to the Trevi Fountain and back across the Tiber to our hotel. Rich's Garmin clocked 6 miles, but I'm guessing that doesn't include our time in the museum. By the time we got back to our hotel at 9:00, our feet and backs were tired and it felt so good to kick back and relax.

Salerno

Well, today was an interesting day; not what we had planned and not one I would care to repeat any time soon. As we left Cava de Tirreni this morning to drop our car off in Salerno, it was raining on and off, but was nothing to a couple of Portlanders used to rain. We did borrow an umbrella from the hotel and planned to stick to our original plan to do some sightseeing and shopping in Salerno followed by a visit to the Greek ruins in Paestum. If we had to do a little sightseeing in the rain, so be it. By the time we got to Salerno, it was raining heavily but, intrepid travelers that we are, we set off to see the city and the old town. We wandered through the old town a bit, but there weren't that many sights to see so we decided to make our way back to the train station and head to Paestum. Also, a majority of the shops were still closed, either because of the rain or because it was a holiday or because this is Italy and no one keeps to a set schedule.

When we tried to buy our train ticket to Paestum, we were told there was a strike and the ruins weren't open (this was the main reason we had decided to stay in the Salerno area, so we were a bit disappointed). Again, intrepid travellers that we are, we decided to head up the Amalfi coast to see the town of Ravello and perhaps visit Amalfi/Positano again. Well, to get to Ravello we had to first go to Amalfi and transfer buses. We stopped in Amalfi for some lunch and to do a little shopping. By the time we decided to head to Ravello, we were in the middle of a MAJOR downpour. We stood out in the rain for more than 30 minutes waiting for our bus, trying to stay somewhat dry under our borrowed umbrella (by this time we had scrapped the idea of visiting Ravello and just wanted to head back to the hotel and some dry clothes).

To make a long story short, our bus finally came, but broke down along the way so we had to wait for a second bus. By the time we got back to Salerno, it was @ 4:00 and we wanted to catch a 4:07 train to Cava de Tirreni. We got out to the track, but the train that was there wasn't going anywhere and no one knew where the 4:07 train was (again, you gotta love Italy!). One minute it was on the schedule on track 3T, the next it was gone with no indication that it had been cancelled or anything. The next train wasn't for another hour, so we bagged it and took a taxi back to the hotel. Needless to say, we didn't take a lot of pictures today, but here's a few (most from the window of the bus).

Hope you're all having better weather than we are here!

Cava de Tirreni

Today was another travel as we made our way from Matera to the town of Cava de Tirreni, about 5 miles west of Salerno. The day started out rainy and cold in Matera and continued that way during our entire drive. We arrived in Cava de Tirreni at @ 1:00 PM, checked into our hotel, left the car in the parking lot and set out to explore the town and have some lunch. By this time the rain had stopped, but the day was still quite cold. The weather has definitely turned and my short sleeved shirts and capris aren't going to cut it any longer. Everyone here is wearing wool coats, sweaters, scarves, skinny jeans and boots. I did finally break down and buy a pair of long pants, but it's not going to be enough. Hopefully, we'll have time to do some shopping tomorrow in Salerno. Thank goodness I bought a warm Patagonia jacket before we left Portland and Rich brought his fleece vest. They're the only things that are keeping us halfway warm.

We didn't do much sightseeing today, but here are a few pictures from our wanders this evening. Tomorrow we're off to the Greek ruins in Paestum and shopping in Salerno.

Matera

After breakfast this morning we set off, bags in tow, for the car rental agency so we could get an early start to Matera, a 2.5 - 3 hour drive away. The weather report had been predicting rain and the clouds were threatening, but we didn't hit the deluge until Taranto, about 2/3 of the way to Matera. To add insult to injury, there was a lot of road construction and detours and we somehow found ourselves going around in circles, as if Taranto was that infamous Boston MTA train in the Kingston Trio song... we wondered if we would "ever return". We finally did figure our way out of the maze and as soon as we left Taranto, the rains stopped. From there it was smooth sailing to Matera.

Matera is an incredibly unique city filled with sassi, cave and stone houses built into the side of a ravine. These homes have been inhabited since the Paleolithic age and, until the early 1950's had no running water or bathroom facilities, so the sanitary conditions were abominable. Italy passed a law in 1952 condemning the sassi as unsanitary and forcibly moved its inhabitants to government built housing outside of town.

We toured one of the sassi districts and viewed underground churches, cisternas (cisterns for holding water), cantinas (wine cellars), and a refurbished cave dwelling depicting what life was like living in a sassi. Typically, a sassi housed a family unit with 6-7 children all living in a small 4 room cave: the kitchen/children's bedroom area, the parent's bedroom/eating area, the stable for the animals, and the wine cellar/food storage area. The pictures below don't do the area justice, but will give you an idea of what the sassi looks like.

Panoramic view of the Sassi

Altar fresco in one of the underground churches

Kitchen cooking area

 

Stairs up from the wine/food cellar

Stable  area (parents' bed at top of stairs)

Lecce

This morning we shuttled from our masseria in Otranto to Lecce, considered by some to be the most beautiful city in Italy and by others to be grotesquely ugly. I'll let you draw your own conclusions once you see the pictures below. Although our bike tour is over and we're sad to leave some of the new friends we've made, we're excited to visit other areas of Italy we've never seen and to revisit some of our favorite places in Rome.

We narrowly avoided disaster this morning, however! As we were getting ready to board the bus for Lecce, I happened to check outside our room (where we had left our luggage for pickup) and noticed that the hotel staff hadn't brought our luggage to the bus! I would not have been happy if we had reached Lecce and discovered we were without our luggage.

We spent the afternoon and evening wandering through Lecce's baroque "old town". There seems to be a church on every street corner, and a highly decorated one at that as you can see from the pictures below.

Campanile (Belltower) in the Piazza del Duomo

Basilica di Santa Croce, the most famous example of Lecce's baroque style

Another view of Santa Croce, a little over the top for my tastes

Sant'Oronzo, Lecce's patron saint

Tomorrow we're off to Matera, where the majority of inhabitants lived in one-room caves until the mid-1950's. It's now a Unesco world heritage site. Wish us safe travels as we venture out onto Italy's highways again.