Last night in Rome has come and soon will be gone … after four days here, we are pretty worn out. Lots of walking on some very old, and very hard roads … our feet and legs are tired, and we’re ready for a break.
Tomorrow is a travel day – we’ll be riding the train to Bari, a port town on the east coast – it’s about a 5 hour trip. We’ll have the afternoon and evening to ourselves in Bari, and then we’ll be boarding an overnight ferry to Croatia, destination Dubrovnik (10-day forecast is for 10 days of sunshine). Tomorrow is really a new start for us … we’re heading off the map so to speak, and off onto our own. Up until now, we’ve been traveling in fairly easy places, with accommodation booked well in advance, etc … we’ve got two nights booked in Dubrovnik, and then we’re on our own. No other firm plans for the rest of the trip, but we’ve still got almost a month to go.
Following our trend of ‘last nights’ in previous countries, we’ve gone out for a good meal of local food, and then had a few drinks. Our waiter treated us to a limoncello, a super-sweet, super potent after-dinner liqueur. We’ve got a bottle and a half of local wine and some local brew as well … better keep this note short.
We hit a few of the highlights here in Rome, and we’re both pretty satisfied with what we’ve seen. We made 3 visits to the Vatican … yesterday we toured the museums including the Sistine Chapel. Obviously the art in there is pretty powerful … things were a little spoiled by the countless dozens (hundreds?) of fools (tourists) that ignored the plentiful signs and multi-lingual announcements to not take photos, videos, use flash, etc. Every second there were flashes popping all around us … people sticking their cameras right in front of us to take shots … of course I would have loved to take photos too, but, sooner or later you need to draw the line. If you don’t respect the Catholic Church or the Vatican, that’s one thing … if you don’t respect the signs, the announcements, or the other people who are trying to enjoy their experience there, that’s another thing … but if you don’t respect Michelangelo, and the years of pain and sacrifice that he put into painting the Sistine Chapel, that’s unspeakable. He was known to be a bit of a nut … I was wishing that he’d come back to life, and smite all of the pointing and shooting fools around us. Now that would have been photo worthy. Anyway, the Sistine Chapel is small, hot, but beautiful, and should be added to your ‘things to do’ list if it isn’t already there. Find a way to avoid the crowd, and please don’t bring your camera.
Also made it to the Pantheon today, which I have to admit that I didn’t know much about before. It’s another of Rome’s 2000+ year old buildings … it was converted into a Catholic church about 1400 years ago. In a nutshell, it’s a building with a huge semispherical dome, that has a hole in the top (on purpose). Much more impressive in person, than in words. I’m not sure if you’ve had a chance to check out my photos recently, but, I’ve added a few there.
Speaking of photos, for those of you who care, I’ve had an awakening here of sorts. I bought my digital camera in December 2003, and after the purchase, never shot another frame of film again … until we arrived in Italy. I’ve seen things here that just need to be shot on film (and digital) … maybe it is the Planet Propaganda-ness in me coming out … doing things the old fashioned way, just because. I can’t wait to see how the slides and B&W film turn out.