[Here's just a few thoughts and pictures that I wrote the day after we arrived but wasn't able to finish or add photos to until now, a week later.]
We seem not to get very much done while we’re doing it but at the end of the day there seems to be quite a lot to talk about.
But before I forget, last night at dinner (where last night was about a week ago) we had the following exchange:
Dad: Jason - I am worried about your sprite getting knocked over.
Jason: Dad - I am worried about you dying of old age.
Dad: Jason - I am worried about your being tickled to death.
Jason: <something about Dad and farts>
Are we doing a good job raising our kids?
The day before at a nice church, Sue was introducing the kids to a confessional. She explained it to them as best she could given her vast experience with them, and then later came up to me to tell to me what happened. Apparently Madeline took it all in and said: “I pick my boogers and eat them, what should I do?” Jason said, “I kicked Madeline in the butt.” That is the extent of our kids’ sins, as far as they are concerned anyway.
But let’s back up to the ride to the hotel from the airport. We had hired a car to drive us straight to the hotel and thank goodness for that - there were lots of turns, lots of made up lanes, and one accident on the way to the hotel. The driver - he was a little iffy. He was holding up a sign with our name on it in the airport, but that’s where the warm fuzzy feeling ended: he was on his cell phone chatting away in an animated fashion, and just motioned that we should follow him. When we got to his car there were a couple others there arguing with him as we loaded the luggage in his trunk. We dutifully sat in the car waiting for him to get in, and I ended up with the impression that the two guys outside arguing with our guy … well, frankly I thought they wanted our car. All the driver said, as he popped his head into the car fumbling through his large wads of cash for a second, was “There is a problemmmmmmme.”
Once the car started moving things didn’t improve. He was counting his money, organizing the junk in dash storage (where the CDs used to go), and occasionally looking up to make adjustments to the path the car was taking, with the occasional glare from presumably other Italian drivers who were not used to this behavior. This guy made up lanes, ignored all stop signs (except that he admittedly did slow down a little) and basically just “used the force” to get us to our hotel.
But then Sue started chatting him up, and that’s when we found out that he can’t afford to live in Rome, that your white shirts turn black if you spend any time in Rome (referring to the car pollution - they are into diesels in Europe …), that he prefers the quiet of country living and … oh yeah, he needs room for his 100 snakes, 400 frogs, and various other reptiles I cannot remember anymore. The part which sticks out in my mind is the part about the white python (I need to look that up) which is 6 meters long, which started out 18″ when he first got it, and how he used to drive around with the snake in his shirt when the snakes were still small, until a lady passenger spotted the snake and screamed and made him pull over on the side of the road.
Still who am I to complain? We got to the hotel in one piece and we’re quite happy with the hotel. It has the best bed configuration we have ever encountered for a single room: Mom and Dad in the middle, the kids separated on each side:
The next day we took one of those open top bus tours of Rome, and got off near an area that included the Pantheon. To get there we drove by the Coliseum and Forum and promised the kids we would go there the next day with our private tour guide. Here is the teaser:
That is one awesome building.
We ended up in a nice piazza with lots of artists in the middle, lots of restaurants on the side, and the occasional church as well, which is where the kids made their first official confessions mentioned above. We had a nice lunch, I had 1/4 carafe of red wine, the kids had pizza and/or pasta, and everything was goooood. The Pantheon was impressive. It said, “This is a sacrad place, please be quiet” but it was so loud in there I had to yell at the kids to be quiet ;-)
While wandering around Madeline was practicing her French counting. She’s taking french in school because she has to. She was originally upset about it, and three years behind of course, but now she sees it as a challenge and is attacking it the way she attacks all challenges: head on and relentlessly. Here she can be seen counting in French as she hops over barriers in the streets of downtown Rome. The girl in back of her tried to follow in her footsteps and almost hurt herself in the process:
Below is the woman Madeline very nearly bumped into (I am not kidding) because she wasn’t looking where she was going:
Our tour guide today was Olivia. She came on recommendation from friends we met where we live in London, who had the pour taste to leave shortly after we got there. Apparently she was good at dealing with kids with lots and LOTS of questions. However, she wasn’t entirely prepared to deal with kids who wanted to “go back to england” within 15 minutes of starting the tour!
What did I learn about the Romans today (before I forget).
- The Roman empire was … large.
- So large it was split into west and east portions.
- Constantinople was the capital of the Byzantine (or eastern Roman) empire, Rome was the capital of the western part.
- It took 12 to 14 days for soldiers to march from Rome to London (amazing, if true).
- Rome got Christianity around three or four hundred AD.
- The western empire fell in the late four hundred AD time frame, the eastern one lasted another 1000 years or so until the Ottoman Empire kicked its butt (I think).
- The Coliseum was built in 8 or 9 years, in 72 AD or thereabouts.
- It was funded with Jewish gold stolen from Jeruselum. There’s a carving in one of the gates into the Forum showing a menorah in the hands of 12 men carrying it and the arc of the covenant.
This seems like a lame list. I was very interested at the time. Madeline just read some Roman series books (for kids) and since she has basically perfect memory (something I am very envious of, in a proud way) she was chatting away with our guide about all sorts of things. Things like, “Remember in such-and-such book when so-and-so said ‘blah’ around page 48 …” Madeline reads so much and clearly retains it all; it’s pretty scary for somebody like me to watch, since I read the same thing over and over just to retain 10% of it, and have been that way my whole life. Which is Jason’s lot in life for sure: if I ever get a whole sentence out of my mouth with him still listening at the end, it’s cause for celebration.
Here’s a typical scene with Madeline and Olivia going at it:
Here’s a picture as we approach the Coliseum of the extent of the Roman empire over time. I didn’t know until I moved here (sigh) that the Roman’s conquered England:
Here are some amazing pictures of the Coliseum. Wait - I said that wrong. Here are some pictures of the amazing Coliseum.
This one from the ground floor. They used to routinely flood and drain this place, to add variety to the ways people were killed:
Here we’re looking down into the arena, and Olivia is showing us a picture of how it looked back in its day. This picture was taken with our new, compact camera: Canon IXUS 800 SD with image stabilization (more on this sweet little camera, later …):
This one we’re just walking around looking for the beer before the game starts:
Back on the outside after our guided tour is done:
That is one kick ass building, still standing 2000 years later. I’d seen it 17 years ago, it’s still amazing.
The kids were quite bored today, to be sure. They said as much almost immediately. Still they stuck with it. On the way home we walked down a street which was basically closed to cars all day, closed as a suggestion more than anything. The reason they are doing it, apparently, is that they want to kill this particular road completely, a road built by Mussolini, because there is an ancient Roman city underneath it which is attached to the Forum that they’d kinda like to excavate. Here are some of the things we encountered along the way back to our hotel:
This guy was good, very good:
The next two are of Madeline and Jason looking at something. The purple on the side is a clue:
Here’s the wide-angle. It was just a fan blowing around this tube of plastic, to the delight of tons of kids and adults alike:
These “angels” ran around striking a pose trying to look like ancient statues:
Josh and Mike - I was sure we visited the Forum back in 1989. Do you remember when that young lady scolded us for being … um American dorks? Wasn’t that the Forum? If so … it’s changed. I am thinking it must have be some other place instead. Also, Josh, if you can remember where we stayed in Rome that would be great. I am curious. I have memories of it but really cannot figure out where it is on the map.
More later …
To be honest with you, I can’t remember the scolding you’re talking about. I remember some others, like after crossing the street instead of using the tunnel at L’Arc De Triomphe.
As for where we stayed in Rome, all I remember about that was that it was a small dormitory-like place on a Piazza or a Palazzo (what’s the difference?) with a fountain in the middle of a roundabout. I’ll look at a map and see if I can’t jog my memory.