Last Day in Rome

I figure I’ll get the announcement about who won my blog giveaway out of the way before I write up my last day in Italy, just because Brittney nagged me about it. ;-)

I swear this contest wasn’t rigged, but the winner is my mom, with her guess of 1,974! The total number of pictures I took was 1,989, putting her darn close!! OK mom, let me know which picture you would like–pick any one you want, it doesn’t have to be one from Rome. :-)

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Ok, back to the picture post. :-)

Our last day in Rome, John was still feeling somewhat green around the gills, so we scrapped plans to climb up to the top of the dome on St. Peter’s Basilica, and instead caught the metro out to Ostia Antica, an archeological site that once was the ancient port city of Rome (before the coastline shifted.) The city was founded around 7BC, but the earliest remaining ruins are from around 3BC.

Ostia Antica was a lot like Pompeii in the sense that there were a lot of ruins, but at the same time, it was very different. First of all, it wasn’t buried under tons of ash like Pompeii was, it was just abandoned. Second of all, it’s not nearly as well kept-up. Pompeii was on a more dry hillside, and it was kept weed-whacked and cordoned off. Ostia Antica, on the other hand, was in a rather lush part of the countryside by comparison, and there were tall green weeds that grew everywhere in and between the buildings, which you could pretty much wander in and out of at will. Despite the relative lack of restrictions about where one could go, things were surprisingly well-preserved. Also, thankfully, it was considerably smaller than Pompeii… None of this wandering around all day business. :-)

Well-preserved mosaic floor--look at all the color! Beautiful!

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2000-year-old amphitheater. Oh wide-angle lens, how I will miss thee when I have to return thee... Sigh. Anyone want to donate to my lens fund so I can buy this lens? :-)

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The bricks of these buildings would likely have been completely covered with a facade of some sort--this picture gives a pretty good idea of how that all fit together.

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Apparently the ancient Romans had no compunctions about group toilets. Ick.

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Neat building!

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This just doesn't look 2000 years old! (To be fair, the frame around the fresco was added to preserve it, but still...)

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Clearly this is an ancient Roman pot farm.

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Somewhere I have a picture I took of this cactus two years ago. I'm weird.

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Kitteh!

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This castle actually dates to much later than the city of Ostia Antica--I think it's around 500 years old or so. Didn't get to go in--I wish!!

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When we got back to Rome, John rested a bit while I offloaded pictures from my camera for the umpteenth time, then we headed out in search of something interesting. We were thinking interesting like a church or something, but we ended up at, surprise surprise, another protest ! Not sure how I managed two in one trip, but there we have it. This one was for women’s rights.

It was definitely a march, but it had more of a parade atmosphere in some respects. I found it amusing.

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I thought it was neat that there weren't just young women there. Very cool. Oh, except for the part where I heard a dad who was walking along the sidewalk with his son, who looked to be about 8 or so. The kid asked the dad what they were marching for, and the dad said it was a bunch of women who hated men and thought all boy babies should be killed. Weak, dude--so weak. Unfortunately, the extent of my ability to reply in Italian is quite limited, and the only thing I could come up with at that moment, in my somewhat shocked state, was a few choice cuss words. If the kid hadn't been there, I may have used them... Alas.

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Like the other protest, the Carabinieri were there. Unlike the other protest, they weren't in full riot gear, and they marched along behind the protestors. I guess they felt like a women's rights march would be less threatening than a labor protest. :-)

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The street sweepers brought up the rear (both in the truck and on foot) and I was amused that the truck carried one of the same signs the protestors carried ("Basta" is Italian for "Enough".)

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Funny story… to me, anyway. John was worried I was going to get killed. So there was this little car that was driving along in the middle of the parade, and it had a loudspeaker attached to it, and someone inside it was chanting/yelling slogans.  Typical protest fare, right? Well, the car pulled over pretty much right in front of where we were standing, so of course I had to get closer to get a good look. Turns out it was having engine trouble, so people gathered around to see how they could help.

This was one of the street sweepers, helpfully opening the hood of what we all thought was a steaming car... Turns out it was actually on FIRE! The second after I took this picture, he opened the hood, and flames shot out, so we all jumped back. Then people were bringing out water bottles to try to pour on the fire, which I would have taken a picture of, except that John was afraid the car was going to blow up, and made me get back. Although it didn't blow up, he was probably right--a bit of distance was probably safer. :-)

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Fire's out... Ummm, so now what? (You can see the water they poured on the engine on the bottom right, and that white thing behind the front tire is actually a bottle cap from one of the water bottles that well-meaning bystanders produed to try to extinguish the fire before a shopkeeper showed up with a large bucket.

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After this, we headed to Termini to try to buy stamps for postcards, which turned out to be a ridiculous endeavor. I forgot to mention that earlier this morning, we’d gone to a post office and spent 40 minutes standing in two different lines to try to buy stamps, only to discover that they were SOLD OUT (how the heck does a post office sell out of stamps?!?!?) We kept getting sent to a variety of tabacchis (tobacco shops that also sell lottery tickets, stamps, candy, metro tickets, and other random stuff) and every tabacchi told us to go to another one. Grrr. We ended up only being able to find enough for Joel’s postcards and then a few more, so John and I split them and I picked two postcards at random from my stack and stamped and mailed those (Dad/Kathy and Adrian, consider yourselves lucky!) Good grief that was difficult. Note to self–always look for stamps first thing when arriving in a new country. And yeah, I actually knew this… I was just lazy. :facepalm:

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Heading out of Termini, we met a cheerful crowd of protesters on their way home.

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Finally, it was back to the hotel to pack up and leave early for the airport the next morning–our trip was over, and it was time to head home! Bye, Italy–it was a lovely trip. :-)

Cute embroidery on our hotel curtains. The cat is looking out at Rome's skyline--that's St. Peter's Basilica in yellow. I love it. :-)

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