Our first need
was laundry. We had our laundry done in
Florence for 15 Euros, about 3 times what it would cost us to do it
ourselves. Randy told us where they went
to do their laundry, so we decided to try that.
We made a dry run before we took the dirty clothes, just to make sure we
could find the place. We did find the
place, twice. It was probably 5 or 6
city blocks, so it wasn’t too far.
Besides, by now, we were good troopers, so to speak.
The Subway
Laundry done and
stowed, we set off for Vittore Manuel via the subway. It was the closest thing to a wild goose
chase that we experienced on our trip. I
think it was supposed to be a church, but when we got there, the building that
had the name inscribed in stone turned out to be a police station.
There was a huge
park enclosed by a big canvas wall. Here
and there folks had torn a hole in the wall to take a peek. We took a peek. In one corner was an old ruin that looked to
be made of adobe. It could have been a
church or a fortress. The entire place
was being revamped.
We took a walk up
a street. Most of the business were
being run by Chinese. The signs bore
Chinese characters. The restaurants
advertised Chinese food. We were in Chinatown.
We still had a
half a day on our Metro passes, so we took the subway to The Republic. When we popped out of the gopher hole from
the subway station, we saw the ruins of a huge wall and a big fountain.
We took a walk
and stopped into a church along our way.
You won’t believe it, but it was filled with art work. We wandered around further and stumbled
across the opera theatre. Later, as we
approached the subway station to head back to headquarters, we saw an ad for
some program, some star, or something we were mildly interested in. It was being held at the theatre we had
passed. But the program was that
evening, we were a long way from our hotel, and neither of us could stay awake
very late at night.
We stumbled
across an open market place that had vendors selling everything from fruit and
vegetables to shoes and clothes. The street
was closed to wheeled traffic, so only pedestrians to contend with.
We ambled into a bookstore. It was
huge by Rome standards. We
figured out we were at Exhibition Hall. There
was a nice coffee shop built to accommodate 50 people, but there were less than
a dozen in there. There were several
exhibit rooms scattered around the bookstore. They had removed a previous exhibit
and were working on the next one. Thus,
no crowd.
We took advantage of the peace and quiet
and no crowd to have a spot of tea and a crumpet, or something like that. We took the subway back to Spagna, the stop
nearest our hotel. Our Metro cards
expired that afternoon, so pedestrians the rest of the way, we were.
The Spanish Steps, near the entrance to the Spagna subway
stop, became our landmark. We could
always find our hotel from there.
Saturday, we
decided to visit some of the places we had already seen with the tour
crowd. Consulting the well-used map
carried in my hip pocket, we re-found Trevi Fountain. It was still majestic in the light of day,
and it was still crowded.
We followed the flow of the crowd. The Goodwife ended up mugging with a genii,
or whatever he was. We watched him set
up with the help of his assistant.
According to the
map, we could walk around this royal garden, so we tried. We took a wrong turn which we thought would
take us around the perimeter of the park.
Instead, we found ourselves in a busy tunnel, a long tunnel with quite a
few noisy cars and trucks.
Not a very nice
garden, those tunnel walls. Must we go
back through to find our way home?
A couple of blocks onward and things started looking
familiar. Lo, we were coming up on the
side of the exhibition hall we had visited yesterday, coming from another
direction. Nothing to do but drop in and
have a cup of tea and a snack. And the
restrooms were also nice.
Now having some
experience with where we were and where we had been, we were able to navigate
our way past the park after all. The
park path took us past government offices and what we were pretty sure was a
prison. The government buildings had
some of the best parking in Rome, or at least that part of it we had seen.
Bureau of Statistics?
We came upon a
plaza with a monument with a huge stone horse.
From there we could look out over part of the city. Another hour of wandering around and we were
ready for a rest.
Our visit to Chinatown yesterday, and having
our fill of pasta for a while, sparked an interest in a Chinese dinner. Back in the hotel, I googled it and found a
Chinese restaurant about eight minutes away.
We paid 27 Euros for a three course dinner, one of the most inexpensive
meals we had in Rome.
We took a circuitous route home past a busy center
where we watched buskers, dancers, musicians busy on a Saturday night. Back at the hotel, the Goodwife’s step
counter registered 17,000 steps.
Sunday, we
headed back to Poppalo. The vendors were
busy. Young fellows tried to sell us
flapping birds powered by a rubber band.
The birds actually flew.
Some old guys
had a circle roped off and were teaching kids how to ride a unicycle. This was a different type of unicycle, no
seat, no pedals. It was one big rubber
tire enclosed in a fender like structure.
The rider stood on foot rests down about halfway between the center of
the wheel and the ground.
It must have been much easier to ride than the
usual unicycle, because young kids who at first were quite wobbly and unsure of
themselves were able to ride fairly easily after a few tries. The device may replace the Segway. I didn’t try one.
A student
military group played a concert. We got
in on the end of it. They fell in and
marched out of the square. A man
soliciting funds for a charity had a kids wading pool with a few inches of
soapy water in it. With a mesh device he
controlled with two sticks, he could make thousands of bubbles with one dip in
the pool. If he could entice someone to
stand in the pool, he could use a big hoop, again controlled by two sticks, to
encase the volunteer in a huge bubble.
We looked for his collection bucket, but he didn’t have one. How did he expect to make any money?
We ended our stay
with a visit to the Leonardo Da Vinci Museum. We had seen the Da Vinci exhibition when it
came to Denver, so some of what we saw was not new to us, but other things we
had not seen before, so it was well worth our time.
After a rest, we
took our last stroll in Rome, as usual, looking for a meal. We dined on sea food for our final meal. Then back to the hotel to get ready for our
departure. Preparations included
ordering a 5:30 a.m. taxi to the airport and a 4:15 wakeup call. No clocks in any of the hotel rooms we stayed
in.
One other thing
about the hotel rooms. They all used the
credit card type key. Just inside the
room near the door, there was a slot that you slip your room “key” into, and
that turns on the lights. When you leave, don’t forget your key. About 30 seconds after you pull the key out
of the slot, the lights all go out.
Keeps the guests from leaving the lights on. One drawback, you can’t charge your device
while you are out. The outlets go dead,
too.
So our trip to
Italy was done. Our cab driver was right
on time. At that time of the day, not
too much traffic. Being dark, we couldn’t
see too much on our trip to the airport.
We got there before 6 a.m. We had
plenty of time to get to our 9 a.m. flight.
Italy holds some
great old buildings and monuments. You
have to appreciate those ancient builders who did so well, and the painstaking
tedium that must have been the case for the artists and craftsmen who
constructed so well. I am thinking in
particular of Saint Mark’s Cathedral In Venice, where the “pictures” on the
wall were created using little colored chips about the size of one fourth of a
fingernail. If you can imagine the size of the place, it took a lot of fingernails.
Italy is an art lovers paradise. It’s probably a wine lovers paradise,
too.
I often thought,
when we were in Rome, that I wished we had reversed our itinerary, visited Rome
first and Venice last. I certainly would
have appreciated Venice all the more, with its quiet, traffic-less, clean
streets. But then, maybe I would not
have appreciated Rome so much.
About a month after
we were in Venice, a high-water storm hit Venice, flooding many of the streets
and courtyards we had visited. As we
watched news coverage of the disaster, we could recognize most of the places. It is sad to think that Venice will probably
face similar events in the future.
In America, two or three hundred years is
old. In Italy, and Europe in general,
two thousand years is old.
As I view all the
things humans have accomplished over the centuries, I feel a sense of pride in
being a human. Conversely, viewing the
works of the past causes a feeling of insignificance. Our “three score and ten”
doesn’t amount to much.
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