Colorado Cruiser: Italy Day 3 Rome

We awoke at 6:30 to the sound of rain outside. It didn’t last very long, but it did promise to leave the air thick and humid for the rest of the day. We ate in the hotel restaurant again, but had to sit inside because all of the outdoor furniture was soaking wet.

By 9:00 we were on our way to the Metro and Ostia Antica. It turns out that the train out to Ostia is just a part of the Rome Metro system. So for 1 euro we travelled all the way out to the coast.

Ostia was the ancient port city of Rome. It had as many as 75,000 people at its height around 200ad, and dwindled and was finally abandoned around 700 ad. After it was abandoned, the city was silted in by the ocean and when they dug it out there were still allot of walls, floors, and even ceilings still intact. We came here rather than spending 14 hours round trip trying to get to Pompe.

The city is about ½ km from the train station it’s not a long walk over (it felt MUCH longer on the way back though).

We arrived at the entrance to see hordes of school children gathering up in groups to go in. We bought our tickets quickly and tried to dash in before too many blocked the way, but found that a large number were already inside. It became a recurring thing to either dash up to see something before a group got there, or have to wait for 10 minutes for them to leave.

The first thing you see upon entering is the grave yard or Necropolis. The dead were always buried just outside the city walls. We were beginning to look in some of the crypts when an English lady (60+) approached us and started talking very fast asking if we wanted her to guide us through the city. She said she was a college graduate who had studied the area and could show us much more than we could see by ourselves. After our previous experience with tour guides, we politely begged off and started to move away.

But she didn’t stop. She kept following and asking and talking and walking until we said we were just starting and if we thought we needed her, we’d let her know. Finally she stopped and dropped back a bit.

We finished the necropolis and started into the city itself, starting with some warehouses and shops. As we were going up one row, we noticed the English lady was still following us over a couple of rows. She was acting very interested in some information signs, but every time we moved, she would move as well.

With the walls around the buildings we couldn’t always see her, but if we stood on tiptoe, we could sometimes see her white hat. It felt like Jaws and the fin of the shark circling us so we’d start to hum the jaws theme everytime we spotted her hat.

It was nearly an hour before we no longer saw her.

Just after the warehouses we saw the first of the baths. They were huge and had very elaborate mosaics on the floors. One building had been restored with a roof, and we climbed to the top to get a few pictures of the mosaics. That’s when we also got a real feel for the full size of the place. This was a city, not a small village. We had already walked about 1/2km from the entrance, and we’d barely begun to enter the ruins.

We went down into the bath area and climbed in and around some of the walls. 2 years ago, Mike and I toured part of England, including the city of Bath which is named for its roman baths. We’d seen how the baths were heated and saw the same arrangements here, but we were right up close and able to look down into smoke stacks, look under raised floors, peer through fire pits, and actually walk around in the baths themselves.

After we finished there, we saw that the next thing was a huge amphitheatre was the next thing. We climbed up to the top and sat and tried to imagine what a typical performance might be like. With 200+ kids yelling and running around, it wasn’t all that hard.

After the theatre, we really started roaming the back streets and buildings. There are hundreds of rooms to explore, so we had no shortage of things to see. We climbed up several reconstructed apartment builds, saw wine or vinegar jars, we even saw a restaurant with a bar in it. Mike had me get behind the bar so he could take a picture, and a german lady asked me to stay there so she could get a picture too.

The only thing we really couldn’t get a picture of, was the toilets, because the kids wouldn’t leave them alone long enough for us get our own pictures sitting on them.

We saw temples, mansions, buildings dedicated to shops where the shop owners lived as a small community to themselves. We saw the low income housing where the ceilings were barely over 5 foot high (or would have been if they’d have had ceilings).

Finally after hours of wandering around the ruins, and with the heat up in the 80s (quite all you Arizonan’s), we decided it was time to start our way back out. It was a very long and hot treck back out of the city and over to the train station. And wouldn’t you know it, the train was packed so we had to stand up the whole way back into Rome.

By the time we reached our hotel it was just starting to rain. We rested in the room for a bit to see if the rain would let up. Oh, and I forgot to mention that the whole of Ostia was filled with uneven paving stones which left our feet very tired and sore, more sore than they have been at any other time (so far).

After an hour, the rain didn’t let up, so we decided to go try to find the Harley shop that was nearby. We found it, but it was just a clothes shop with only about 20 shirts total to choose from. I might still have bought a few shirts, but I couldn’t bring myself to pay $70 for T-shirts, so no Coliseum Harley shirts for Kyle, John, or me. Sorry guys.

After the Harley, we decided to look for something to eat since we had skipped lunch. Each time we’ve walked up or down Via Veneto (the road our hotel is on), we’ve passed 4 or 5 restaurants which are set right out on the street in glass rooms. These are different from café’s that just have tables and chairs under awnings; they are actual structures with glass all the way around. Mike has mentioned several times that he’d like to try one, so we figured that would be a fine thing to do on a rainy day.

We walked down to a French place called Café de Paris Restorante. I ordered Onion soup, Mike ordered Risoto, a couple appetizers and sodas. I’ve blanked out the price, but doctors assure me that severe trauma can cause that. We sat there eating and enjoying the warmth of the food, but I felt a bit out of place. We looked like, if maybe not smelled like wet dogs.

Once we left the French place we went back to the room to dry off. Then Mike headed down to look for some jewelry for his mom and I wrote one of the riveting trip reports.

When Mike got back, he reminded me that we were leaving Rome the next morning, and asked if I felt we had missed anything, or needed get better photos of anything. Of course, I said we needed to visit Trevi fountain since we’d only been there 5 times. Just kidding.

I said that I thought we’d done a poor job outside the coliseum. We had been so frustrated by the whole tour guide thing, that we only snapped a few outside shorts and left as quick as we could. It had also been mid day, and I figured pictures of the lighted coliseum would be great to have.

We got down there just as the sun was setting and started trying some shots from various places. As it got darker and darker, the drama of the shots seemed to get better and better. I brought the tripod that I carry on my motorcycle, so we didn’t have to worry about fuzzy photos during long exposures. Many people looked at us in envy as we kept taking better and better shots.

There were guys around the coliseum selling tripods, but they were asking allot of money for cheap tinny tripods. By the way, these are the exact same guys that were selling umbrellas during the rain, small models of the coliseum during the sunny days, water during the heat of the day, lighted crystal images of the coliseum, and probably 50 other things depending on what the crowd needed. There must be a huge truck that they have their stuff stored in somewhere nearby because they switch out different things very quickly.

Anyway, we were taking pictures from right near a bus stop, and a woman and child walked up to wait for the bus. Her son became fascinated with the pictures we were taking and kept trying to see the screen. Finally after one photo of me, I walked back over by Mike to see the photo, and the little boy ran over to where I was, and posed as if to say “My turn”. His mother looked horrified, but we just laughed and told him where to stand. But the instant Mike pushed the button, he was running back to see his photo which made the long exposure a bit blurry. But it was still neat and we let him see it. Then their bus came and off they went.

We finished the pictures, including a few with the moon right beside the coliseum, but we couldn’t get us and the moon and the coliseum in the same shot.

We were about pasta’d out by this time, so we found a good Indian restaurant in the guide book and headed over there. Mike’s an Indian food coinsure, so he order a few appetizers and some main dishes. Once that was done, we were only too ready to get back up the hill and go to sleep.

Hordes of hormones at Ostia Antiqa