Day 6-7: Rome- *Blasphemy Alert*

Days 6 and 7 were spent in that place that all the roads lead to, Rome. I made it a point to use the phrase "When in Rome" as many times as I could, either to myself or others, because where the hell else is that phrase nearly as applicable? The first day was mostly spent getting to Rome from Venice, but we had a nice half-day, seeing the Pantheon, which is mindblowing in its scale, not to mention how ancient it is. It's nearly impossible to not gape as you see stone columns several stories high while your brain simultaneously tries to figure out how it in the hell people would build it now, let alone 2000 years ago. I would get used to this sort of feeling during my time in Rome, as it applies for most of the ancient architecture there.

The next day was absolutely exhausting--it was hot, even for me, humid, crowded and filled with nonstop walking. Not that any of that was a surprise, I'm just setting the mood. We started off at St. Peters Cathedral, which I felt I should see simply because I'd never been in a Cathedral before.

The cathedral is big, I'll give it that. It's also gaudy. Really, really, really gaudy. Gold and marble everywhere. The inside has monuments to every pope inside it, and they're running out of room, so it sort of looks like a art museum made love with a marble quarry, found Jesus, and then puked.

"I won't blaspheme, I won't blaspheme..." I told myself, but if you know me at all then you know that that's just impossible. But, let the record show that I only said "goddamn it" only three times while inside, and they were all accidents. I had hoped that the overwhelming spirituality of the place would outweigh my utter hatred of the Catholic church, but sadly, it couldn't. All I could think about as I looked at marble statue after marble statue was how much money this all must've cost, how many cultures were destroyed, how many peoples were turned into little more than slaves in order to feed the beast that built this church. It's supposed to be a monument to god, but it looked more like a monument to cruelty and greed to me.

But the real reason we had gone to St. Peter's rather than the Vatican muesum (other than the fact that I would probably have burst into flames upon crossing the doorway) was for St. Peters dome, which rested on top of the cathedral, way, way, way up. The elevator they have will only take you so far up, and then it's just marble stairway after marble stairway. It was quite an experience, because as the staircase winds up the inside of the dome, the wall on one side begins to curve into the ceiling, and the limited space means that the walkway is such that you have to almost walk sideways up it. The steps seems endless, and their pattern changes seemingly at random, curving along the inside wall, then up some normal flights, then more curved, vertigo inducing stairs, all getting steeper by the step. Finally, you go up a staircase that is so tightly wound that they hung a rope through the middle of it to keep you from falling down it after you get dizzy from turning around. This rope is a sight in itself--imagine how many hands have touched it--it's black, sticky, and throughly disgusting, but if you don't want to die, you've got to hold onto it to get to the top. The view from the dome once you finally get there is worth it though. You can look over the entire city unobstructed by anything except the massive air pollution. It was amazing to me, given how crowded the city is, how much undeveloped land there is, huge tracts of hilly parks. Clearly, the Romans understood something about city design that we have forgotten: people need open spaces.

The roof of the cathedral (lower than the dome, but still way high up) has a gift shop that smells exactly like chicken Mcnuggets. They also sell shot glasses there. If that weren't a disturbing enough image, the likeness of Pope Hitler's Youth the Third glares balefully at you from about a million different postcards, crucifixes, paintings, refrigerator magnets, and so on. He looks like he wants to eat your face.

So: If you find yourself in Rome and you're not deeply religious, skip Vatican city. You're not missing all that much.

What you shouldn't miss in Rome is the pizza and the gelato. Pizza places there are, obviously, far superior to anything we have in the states. For example, they don't serve it by the slice. Intstead, they have one huge square that they cook all the pizza on, making it essentially one giant pizza with different areas of toppings, you point out which kind you want, sort of measure it with your hands, and they cut if off and hand it to the cashier, who weighs it. That's right, you pay for your pizza by weight! The dough is also this light, flaky amazingness that kind of ruins american pizza forever. The gelato there does the same to ice cream. I don't really go for chocolate, but the chocolate gelato I had was far beyond anything i've ever tasted that was supposed to be chocolate. In retrospect, eating anything that sugary was probably not the best choice when the temperature is in the upper nineties and water is roughly six dollars a bottle, but still, it had to be done.

By midday the heat was intense, amplified by the pollution that had no breeze to carry it away. I really just wanted to find a shady spot and fall asleep, but the overabundance of pickpockets made that option completely ridiculous, and besides, no matter how uncomfortable, I didn't get all the way out to Europe to fall asleep. Instead, my friend Ryan and I went to the Coliseum, which was...underwhelming. Sure, it's big, but not that big. What I found most intriguing were the unmistakable signs of age--stone steps with giant grooves in them, signs of untold numbers of feet climbing them. I suppose I was hoping to get some mystical sense of history, some indescribable feeling that sitting on a stone ledge that had been sat upon by people whose bones were now dust, but instead, I couldn't conjure up anything except some disappointment at it and myself. My inability to be impressed may have been a mixture of MJ telling us that this wasn't the only coliseum built, that they were built all over the Roman empire, but that this one was special because...it was Rome's Coliseum. So basically, it's special because people say it is. Also, the sewer vent's that surround the outside spew a mixture of urine and feces into the air, making stepping over them a mixed blessing, as the smell makes you instantly gag, but cool air from the sewers is a welcome reprieve from heat.

As the day wound down, Ryan and I headed to the last destination--the Cappuchin monks Monastery. The monastery isn't open to the public, so really, it's more like five normal sized rooms side by side. What makes these monks special, however, is their tradition of only being buried on monastery grounds, which presented a problem a few hundred years back when they grounds ran out of room for all the bodies. Instead, those wily monks came up with a solution: who needs to be buried? And for that matter, who needs to be kept together? Thus, the rooms are covered, nearly from top to bottom, in bones. Skulls are stacked in artful columns surrounding a coat of arms made out of femurs and pelvises (pelvisi?) in one room, in another, a withered, still decomposing monk sits on a bench made out of ribcages. Although the signs were in Italian, I found out later that each room represented a stage in man's journey through death. This was probably my favorite sight in Rome. It wasn't creepy, or morbid, it was a frank display of the human condition, a not so subtle reminder that regardless of who you are, you will one day be indistinguishable from anyone else.

Ryan and I headed back to the hotel around nine, after about thirteen hours of being on our feet. My sandals had compressed so much due to the heat and the constant pressure that I could feel every stone I stepped on. Sandals are not recommended for that level of touristing.

With the caveat that by the point in the trip I was pretty travel worn, both mentally and physically, which undoubtedly contributed to my feelings about Rome here's the bottom line: If you simply have to go to Rome, don't do it during the summer. If you aren't really that interested in Rome to begin with, skip it-- you're not missing anything that pictures won't capture.