Epic

Saturday, Febuary 7, 2009

We woke up late today. After being out until 1am this morning and then not going to sleep until 3, I dare say we needed it. We lunched at the same restaurant where we had the phenomenal pizza bread yesterday. We all got pizza and I downed an excellent cappuccino. Then we departed - in the rain - for the sights of the day, the first of which was to be a Tomb Memorial.

The view from the Memorial of the Colosseum, Roman Forum, and Constantine's Arch was breathtaking, but I realized halfway up the steps that camera wasn't working properly. For some reason my 1G memory card was not storing more than about ten photos. Even camera-guru Nick couldn't figure out what was going wrong. Therefore, my dear blog-readers, the photography from here on out is by my fellow travelers: Courtney, Jaimee, Jen, and Nick. I'm so lucky that they let me take copies of their photos.

We came upon a friendly little cat that lived in the Roman Forum, and we petted it for a while. After petting the kitty and admiring the Roman Forum from afar - the price to get in, we decided, was not worth walking around longer in the rain - we continued down the tourist-packed street to the Colosseum. We rented an audio tour and walked around on our own. 

The tour took us through the Colosseum beginning with the top floor and working its way down to the first. The intricacies of the building were amazing. The Colosseum, at one time, was frequently flooded for Naval battles and Swamp battles in which various different animals and warriors would be showcased - alligators, for example. Even in all of its green decay, the structure was truly something to marvel at. I couldn't help wishing that I could help in its restoration, or at least walk around in the dark and damp recesses of the lowest and unaccessible floor of the Colosseum. The only living thing - aside from moss - that was seen in this area was a young tabby cat, chasing after some irritated looking birds. Worked into our audio tour was the Arch of Constantine, which could be seen from the one side of the Colosseum. Pictured below, its beauty is hardly captured as so much of its elegance comes from miniscule details in the stone carvings covering it. 

The whole day it rained. Poor Courtney, her umbrella broke so she had to buy another for E5 off of a guy selling them in the street. Her hair ended up getting caught in that one, and it broke as I was trying to free her from its potetntially lethal grasp. (Note: Beware of umbrellas. They are frequently underestimated.)

After the Colosseum we wandered to the Pantheon.

 This famous building, hosting several masses each week, is a known piece of architecture because of two things that are usually taken for granted: the floor and the roof. 

The roof of the Pantheon is built with an enormous hole directly in the center. Opening to the heavens, it is meant to celebrate the god Jupiter. Because of this gap in the roof, the floor is angled downward from its center allowing any sort of precipitation to drain off to the sides and thus out of the circular temple.

At this point in the day, we were all needing to let our minds relax a bit. We walked out of the Pantheon and into the cloudy day, turning right and walking down a side street. We browsed shops, looking at knick-knacks and touristy things, and came upon a shop with beautiful leather purses in the window. Of course, as women - and Nick - we had to investigate. We opened the door to a brown shop. Now, when I say brown, I don't mean to give the impression that the walls were painted brown. When I say brown, I mean to say that there was so much leather in the shop that brown was all we could see. Upon further examination, though, bursts of colors from the purses we had admired through the window, and others hanging in bunches from the ceiling, assured us that we hadn't gone some sort of color-blind.

The three women who were working at the shop had made everything in it. One of them, a skinny, tanned woman, was sitting at a work table in the middle of the store pounding away at a leather belt while smoking a cigarette. I was sold. I bought a beautiful leather belt, which the same woman sized to fit my waist perfectly, for E20. Jennifer bought a pink leather rose keychain.

With a brand-new belt and pants that had no chance of falling down, I ventured with my four friends into other various shops, trying on Carnival masks. I bought a datebook for E4.50, during our first Italian mall experience, which is made of completely recycled material. Courtney almost bought an Italian leather purse for around E130, but decided not to. After having rained on and off all day, the weather got decisive and started dumping buckets of rain over the city. We almost went back to Hostel, but decided to walk to Campo de Fiori in the rain instead.

Luckily it stopped raining on the way there, affording us time to slow our pace and browse some more shops. Nick bought new hat, and Court bought another new umbrella (a sturdy one - we tested it) from a hat shop that boasted such clientele as Anthony Hopkins.

We ended our night with a simple dinner at American music-playing restaurant/pizzeria on the Campo. The Campo itself we discovered to be a major tourist trap. While quite picturesque at night, many of the bars around its edges were rather Americanized.

Walking back we kept our eyes peeled for a gelateria, but none were open.

I collapsed into my lovely down comforter after a hot shower, jotted down the happenings of the day, and closed my weary eyes for the night.