ROME & POMPEII
- Kari
- Oct 17, 2019
- 12 min read
It smelled like a ham sandwhich as we stepped into the shuttle to make our way from the car park to the Hahn airport. Our first day in Rome was about to begin, and little did I know, an important lesson was about to be learned--DON’T do a glute workout the day before visiting Rome.
Ryan and I had worked out yesterday with some intense exercises, and as we made our way around the city we peppered our light conversation with, “oh man, my groin! Ugh, I think I just pulled something” and “I think my body is telling me no more hills...”
We had hoped to ride scooters or take the buses/public transport to get around to a few sights in Rome. Even though we rented a car, driving in Rome for any amount of time caused us constrictive panic. Have you ever driven in Rome? Basically, there’s one rule coupled with one addendum: do whatever you what and you can be as rude as you want doing it. We passed so many dinged, dented, rammed, and scuffed cars damaged from sporadic and frenzied driving (so we guessed).
At one point we thought we were safe following a taxi through the city...until it drove onto some tram trax and we were suddenly racing trains on their own tracks!!! (We quickly got off) We pulled a Jason-Bourne worthy u-turn and shot between some oncoming vehicles...narrowly missing a few crazy motorists.
We started playing a fun game throughout the day called fill in the blank
Driving in a Rome is like _______________
• Making your way through a cluster of ants in their own anthill
• Getting caught in a pinball machine while trying to impossibly avoid all the levers, knobs, and doodads
• Playing bumper cars with all the bumps and none of the fun
But anyway... I digress.
When we arrived in Rome we learned that public transportation in Rome is not quite as efficient as it was in Paris (where we were just a month prior).
First of all, we walked right into a public transportation strike. (Apparently this happens often)
So, none of the metros were running.
I also think the strike may have affected electric scooters. Maybe? We were hoping to ride the lime scooters that arrived in Rome June 2019, but we couldn’t find a single scooter in the whole city!
So our last plan was to take some of the buses... well, every machine we found wasn’t in operation or was not vending tickets, and no bar or tobacco shop was selling tickets (contrary to what google said).
We ended up walking A LOT, which was a great way to see the city but our feet were very tired by the end of the day.
We had about 25,000 steps by the end of our day.
We definitely took a few gelato and pizza breaks. (Speaking of the delicious Italian foods, you have to try Aracina if you haven’t had it. Fried rice balls. Delicious.)
We parked near the Roma termini train station because there is free parking around there. Rome has a few different colored parking zone throughout the city. Blue zones are typically pay per hour spots, but they are free on Sundays.
Read more about Parking in Rome
From there we walked to the colosseum about 30 minutes. We learned that Gladiator was, in fact, not filmed there (booo), but Angels and Demons, Eat Pray Love, oceans 12, and MI 3 were filmed there.
If we were to go back to Rome again I would recommend doing one of the hop on hop off bus tours. They actually seem like a decent bang for their buck, and when all the public transport workers go on strike, you’ll definitely save your feet!
We walked and walked some more. Meandering can actually be quite fun, even when you end up at dead ends or walk up and down the same street 4 times, because you stumble upon surprising adventures.
One of our fun adventures came in the form of a man named Emil. Ryan really wanted to get a new fanny pack since his old one needed to retire. On our way to the pantheon we stumbled upon a leather shop owned and operated by an elderly craftsman named Emil.
At first, we walked in to his leather shop and looked about, not really feeling inclined to purchase anything. Emil started to walk us through (in italien) how he makes the leather and fashions the bags in his shop. Ryan was chatting with him in Spanish and they both seemed to get the gist from each other. We ultimately decided not to purchase anything... but after leaving the shop and making it a block or two Ryan changed his mind and so we went back for the fanny pack.
We ended up chatting some more with the gentleman and took a photo with him. The first one he didn’t like and told us it was no good, so we had to take a second photo.
Surprisingly, we can get by pretty well with Ryan’s Spanish.
On our way to the pantheon we passed several fun sites:
• Roman Forum
• Theater of Marcellus
• Torre del Milizie
• Trevi Fountain
• Pinocchio shop
• Church of Maria in Campitelli
For October, we were still pretty hot and sweaty after all the walking and sunshine. The sunshine was a pleasant break from our German rain and overcast skies.
We prepared to say goodbye to Rome and climbed into our vehicle to make our way to Pompeii. We opted to take the toll road as it was supposed to be 2 hours faster...
Our route was going quite speedily...and then we reached the tolls booths at the end where 2 of the booths had gone out of commission. If you can imagine a stuffing hundreds of cars through a funnel... then that was us! It was INSANE.
Everyone was honking, cutting each other off, yelling at one another, and we watched a couple of cars rear end each other. They just kept on their way without much reaction to the fender bender. Several times we got boxed out and had to work our way back into the line. Finally, after about an hour of sitting in this chaos, we reached the toll booth with about 6 or 7 cars in front of us.
Then the booth broke. We couldn't go forward. We couldn't go backwards. No left. No right.
We thought.... are we stuck? Crap. We’re never getting out of here.
We couldn’t reverse, we couldn’t go forward, we had metal barriers to our left and right, and no one was coming out to fix the machine that wasn’t working.
Then the gate went up, and stayed up. A couple cars creeped through. Then we were at a standstill again. Suddenly all these italiens came running up the sides of the road, flanking our line of cars. Boy did they get animated. After waiting in line for over an hour they were done with this ridiculousness. They started waving cars through and shouting with incredible animation. “Go, go, go! Everybody go! While the gates are up, go!” Or something to that effect.
We zoomed forward and... didn’t pay any toll... (blessing?) which I don’t really feel bad about because it took us about the same amount of time to drive that toll road as it did to take the road without tolls. It was about an hour faster, so I dunno. I think I still would have rather paid and saved our hour of time, but was grateful we didn’t have to pay since the route took us longer than it should have and it was so stressful!
One hilarious moment in the mix of all the craze, however, was a suped-up Mini Cooper full of Italian teenagers who were blaring their music. Normally we all roll our eyes and get annoyed by the shenanigans of these rapscallions, but in a heated moment when everyone was frustrated, cutting each other off, yelling, and at their wits end, it was enjoyable to have a gentle dose of comic relief.
At one point they shouted “oh come on! Just open up the gates! We all just want to go to Napoli.”
Later they started a game where they would honk their horn to that common dirty
Beep beepbeep beep beep... and then another car somewhere in the fray would answer with the remaining beep beep. This went on and on for several rounds of different cars throughout the parking lot responding to the beep beepbeep beep beep... beep beep!
We got quite a laugh. They also were trying to ask us something but we couldn’t figure out what they were saying so Ryan responded, “no hablo Italiano” and later when we responded with our own little beep beep they started congratulating “the Spaniard” (i.e., Ryan).
We finally reached Pompeii and checked in to the loveliest Airbnb. Our host was so sweet and helped get settled after a stressful drive.
Tomorrow we’re off to Pompeii!!
POMPEII
It was as if 15 atomic bombs exploded at the same moment when Vesuvius erupted. 25 to 50 mile plume of smoke rose into the air as ash and lava spread out from the volcano, burying the city of Pompeii and all of her inhabitants beneath 30 to 45 feet of ash. It was 79 AD and 16,000 people were dead. The coast was pushed out 3 kilometers away from the city, and Pompeii disappeared in an instant.
The Ruins of Pompeii, in comparison with what we saw in Rome, could hardly be considered ruins! We were greeted by in tact frescoes, courtyards, homes and takeaway bars, bakeries, and spas all immaculately preserved by the ash. The city was discovered in 1748 by a farmer who dug into the amphitheater! So, for 1700 years an entire city just vanished!
We took a 2 hour guided tour with an archaeologist named Felicia who specializes in the graffiti of Pompeii (of which there are over 10,000 instances). She has been studying the city for 22 years!
As she took us through the city, I felt I was walking the streets of an ancient Roman city. I could see the tracks worn into the street from the chariots, drink from the same fountains as ancient Romans, enter into their homes and even see mosaic doormats warning me to “beware of the dog.” Traveling around Pompeii further cemented my understanding that, deep down, we’re all human and that we’re really not that different from one another. They had takeaway restaurants, and pets, sought out relaxation at spas, graffiti, temples, valued freedom, and innovated.
One touching inscription our guide showed us was in a hallway where someone had graffitied a phrase about being a slave, working his way up to buy his freedom and said, “at last I am free.”
Pompeii had many slaves, though not in the sense we may think of slavery in the United States in the 18th century. Their slaves were perhaps more like poor workers or indentured servants.
Pompeii is so well preserved that archaeologists can determine who these people were, what they were like, what they ate and wore, how they cooked, what they did for their professions, and so on. There was a home we were shown where the archaeologist informed us that it was owned by two brothers, new to wealth who had purchased their freedom, and they know their names, how they earned their wealth, what their paintings in their entryway meant, etc.
I especially loved learning about the spas because I learned something new linguistically that I didn’t know before our tour. SPA is actually an acronym. It stands for salus per aqua or wellness by water.
Just think about that for a second. Roman and Greek culture were so extensively, globally influential that we are still using that word and idea of wellness by water our “spas” because of them!
Their city was so incredibly advanced. They had plumbing systems, running fountains with water, heated floors, and microphones (of course not with electricity but quite functional through using water and specially shaped pottery). How did history go from this life to the life we know in the Middle Ages?
I particularly loved learning of their ingenuity for lighting the city. Throughout the city there are marble stones embedded in the sidewalks and streets. As people walked with torches or lights in the streets, the marble reflected the light and made it possible to see at night. You can imagine an ancient Las Vegas Strip, and Pompeii would be it! There were of course more similarities to Vegas, but I’ll come to that in a moment.
Pompeii had many merchants, sailors, visitors from all over, and so language barriers were easily overcome through the use of pictures. There were also painted frescos menus in the takeaway restaurants, like a McDonalds or BurgerKing today would have.
There were also over 30 brothels. Throughout the city, there was a navigational system to direct people to the brothels. While fountains were the main landmarks used to navigate the city for every other purpose, on the walls people could find penises carved into the walls that would point towards the direction of the brothels. Yes, they had penis street signs.
In the brothels they also had frescoes painted on the walls, “menus” if you will, to pick whichever sexual service you wanted to receive.
Pompeii is nicknamed the Lasagna city because archaeologists can see 7 different layers of time eras throughout Pompeii (even before Romans arrived). There are parts of the city that date back to 7 centuries before the eruption (so about 600 BC) and the Romans arrived 2 centuries before the eruption.
Pompeii was absolutely incredible to see.
I think it would be really awesome if a part of the city was up and running like a revitalized, restored section of Pompeii. How cool would it be to eat some takeaway like they would have eaten, see them dressed up in textiles of that era, take a chariot ride, hangout in a spa.
Maybe someone wants to create a Roman Disneyland? (I would definitely go!)
We loved our time in Pompeii and then decided to then head out to hike mount Vesuvius.
As we walked to our car we saw a moped go past with a driver and his Labrador standing between his legs on the moped!! We also passed several horses pulling carts and scooters/mopeds held together by TONS of duct tape.
We wanted to go back to our Airbnb to change our shoes so we drove back and... that’s when trouble struck.
Ryan caught the edge of the gate and several panels on the car got scraped pretty bad. Ugh! There’s nothing like damaging your rental car to dampen a traveling adventure. Instead of heading to Vesuvius, we spent the next couple hours trying to figure out how much the damage was going to cost us, and getting a claim filed. Blah!
We had been doing so good! Even with all the INSANE driving in Rome, we had no accidents-- just with ourselves. How does that happen? Lame.
Anyway, we sucked it up and decided to enjoy our evening on the beach, relaxing in the black sand and splashing in the ocean. On our stroll to get there we passed lots of boutiques, several of which had decorated their mannequins with pasta. Funny, right?
Only in Italy :)
ROME
Back to Rome we drove like banshees, pleading with every breath that we would make our tour.
We had a 10:20am tour to see the Vatican, and 3 hours to drive from Pompeii to Rome. There was plenty of time for us to make our way, until my alarm didn’t go off and we slept in. Yikes!!
Dashing out the door, we started our drive watching our ETA all the way. 10:11am... 10:15am.....10:13am....10:18am....
Every few minutes we would make up a bit of time, and then lose a few due to construction, traffic or taking a wrong turn. We tried calling GetYourGuide to see if we could reschedule our tour. They couldn’t put us in one until the 17th, which wasn’t going to work because we were leaving the next day. Customer service was kind, but I had a hard time understanding why 2 people couldn’t be moved into the next tour or one later in the day (especially since we got there and I saw how many people jump on earlier tours and HOW many tour groups there are, it really would have worked out fine... but whatever).
We found the closest parking garage just across from the Vatican museums and parked at 10:15am. We BOLTED from the parking garage at full sprints (thank goodness we both are runners). We made it to our tour at 10:19am.
It was an answered prayer for us for sure! There’s no way we should have made it, but we did.
This was my second time in the Vatican and it surprises me every time with its ornateness. The pieta by Michelangelo is one of my favorite pieces of art. I feel so blessed to see it for the second time.
Michelangelo signed his name only once in any of his artwork. It was here, on the Pieta. It is said that Michelangelo invested so much love and labor into this early work of his that he left a part of himself in it by writing his name--something he never did in any other work he created. I have always loved this sculpture because it is not perfectly proportional yet it is truly gorgeous. Clearly Mary is too large, her calf measuring half the height of Jesus, yet the statue is delicate, refined, and carefully posed. To me it is a message of how beginners can make beautiful things and that perfection is in the imperfections.
We left the Vatican and grabbed some lunch with our friends who were meeting up with us. Then we checked into our bnb and headed to the Rome temple of the Church of Jesus-Christ of Latterday Saints.
This was my favorite part of our trip. The temple is a sacred place where we enter into the House of the Lord to gain knowledge, participate in ceremonies called ordinances, be married for time and all eternity, and perform ordinance work for our ancestors who did not have a chance when they were on the earth. They can then choose whether to accept the work or not.
In the Rome temple there was such incredible peace. In my short interactions with the Italian people, I watched them embrace one another, welcome complete strangers into their arms, touch one another with gentle love and kindness, and smile. There was such love in the Rome temple. I watched as a woman clearly distressed and sobbing had one of the temple workers bring her a golden box of tissues and wrap her arms around her just while she cried. I saw a couple getting married, so happy :) we also met some lovey people from California and Florence who became sweet friends.
I am so grateful for my knowledge of Jesus Christ and our Heavenly Father who I know love me and are aware of my every need. We were so blessed to travel and experienced many miracles. From meeting up with friends and finding new ones, to making tours that were clearly impossible for us to make on time, to being kept safe on crazy roads, rental car damage not being nearly as bad as we expected it to be, to running into friends in the airport on our flight home.
I’m a firm believer in divine intervention--God has ever greater presence than we often realize. I don’t believe in coincidences, but I do believe in a hand of God that reaches into our lives and touches us with love.
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