05.16.2009
TRAVEL JOURNAL: Rome, Day Six
DAY SIX
We could not go to Rome without seeing the Forum and the Palatine. There are a few different fora in Rome because Julius Caesar and his heirs kept building new ones and rebuilding the old ones. All of these are rubble now anyway. But even strolling through the ruins on Day Six, we could get the vaguest sense of what they must have been like in their heyday: grand enough to put any modern city to shame is my feeling. Relatively speaking, of course.
We actually started the day climbing the Palatine, the hill on which Rome was supposedly founded by two greedy babies and what was probably a rather startled wolf. Subsequent generations built huts and increasingly grand palaces on that spot until it became the center of the known world. So much of those structures has been lost to age, wars, natural disasters, and looters (I’m looking at you, Catholic Church), but the remaining puzzle pieces are still awe-inspiring. I’d like to see what New York will look like in two thousand years. Of course, this is where the emperors lived in luxury; the crude houses of the polloi have long been paved over. I might have been disgusted by the excesses of the Palatine as the Common Era got off the ground, but there is something romantic about a ruin.
By this time, I was starting to like Octavian more because according to his statues, he was actually sort of hot, but we chose not to wait in the line that led into the rooms of his house. Instead, after the ruins proper, we wandered around the gardens and found the steps down to the Via Sacra and the Roman Forum. Poor Rob was broiling like a lobster at this point, so we didn’t spend as much time there as we might have, but again, it was enough to give us a sense of the ancient life. We used our iPhones to snap photos like mad then exited at the far end in search of lunch.
And then: Nap Mountain.
As you have come to expect, our naps had grown to epic proportions. It was late in the afternoon before we got back to our room, but we slept and/or dawdled until nine or so, before wandering out in search of another of Father Craig’s recommendations. It was his favorite “cheap eat,” he had said, and another friend of Rob’s had confirmed this. So it was with much anticipation that we sat down to the most disgusting meal I’ve had in ages. I think we must have gotten the wrong restaurant, actually—another restaurant nearby must also have been named after an Italian bear—because the menu didn’t at all resemble what had been described. But by then, it was too late. The Roman gods had decided that Rob had avoided octopus for too long and the pasta with bacon that he ordered transmogrified somewhere before it reached our table into a plate of writhing tentacles. The beef I ordered medium well turned out to be a hunk of fat and gristle dripping with blood. Rob’s veal (which I traded him for even though I don’t like veal) tasted like very, very dry roast beef that someone had left out in an alley. After this depressing disaster, almost none of which we actually ate, we just paid and left. To cheer ourselves up, we wandered back by the Pantheon, which looked so enchanting in the moonlight that the gelatos we ordered in its shadow were a bit of an overkill. But just a bit, and they did serve to get the taste of dinner out of our mouths.
We walked home past the Trevi fountain, much less crowded after midnight. We sat for a while there, as well, and pooled our remaining coins in an effort to each toss three in. We had five, so I gave Rob the extra one and just tossed two; ten years ago, I had just thrown in one, so I figured my long journey was finally complete.
posted by
David at 11:04 AM
With all that gelato, now wonder you can't stay awake.
Good that you and Trevi achieved closure. The Circle Of... Loose Change. Often the best kind of change.
posted by:
Jeaux on 05.21.2009 at 8:44 AM
Jeaux: What about a Circle of Loose-Moraled Young Men? :)
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