12/11/18: roma, whoa

K, so, Rome is completely overwhelming and I don’t know what else to do next except move here. Maybe I would hate it when it’s thronged with tourists but I do live in midtown NYC so…how bad can it be? I’m here for just three full days—came in Sunday evening and leaving Thursday noon—and if I wasn’t 100% determined to come back I would be in a puddle of indecision over what to see since I can’t see EVERYTHING because there are SO MANY THINGS so I just have to hope that most of them will be here for a while longer. (Given that many of them survived the barbarians, the middle ages, and the 80s, I am optimistic.)

I’m sitting outside the Galleria Borghese right this very minute, waiting for my 3pm entry slot. I have a mobile hotspot thing from my hotel and at first I was like “Who needs that?” and now it is my most prized possession—did you know that Rome is not particularly organized in terms of how streets work?

Yesterday I accidentally packed in a LOT, starting with a guided tour of the Coliseum, the Forum, and the Palatine Hill. That experience was completely mind-boggling and so all I will say is that I really like the invention of the radio tour as I could wander away from the group but still hear the reassuring sound of Marco’s breathing in my ears. His stated goal was to give voice to the stories of the stones, which was lovely, and he was extremely informative and as a result I am FULL of fun facts, including the reason the stones of the Coliseum have so many holes (the barbarians digging into them the “recollect” the iron pins used in construction), what was wrong with Nero (“some problems in his head”), and one theory as to why women may have been relegated to the highest level of seating (so they would be too far away to get a good look at the gladiators’ “musk-oles”).

I learned all about the vestal virgins, which was very interesting, and it turns out that if you (a vestal virgin) messed up your job—which appears to have consisted of keeping a fire lit and not fooling around with dudes—your name was scraped off your statue and you were walled up into a hole in the basement and left to die. As far as I can tell it couldn’t have been that hard to keep the fire going so…hope he was worth it, nameless lady who was once the “maximus” virgin but had to get killed because of a man.

The Forum situation is quite confusing and, again, overwhelming, but by far and away this was my favorite thing I saw because it’s like WHAT there was once a whole huge building of this and now we just have THIS and it’s just standing there?

I found the place where they killed Caesar, which is a half-block of ruins about a half-block below street level so you can walk around it and look in and there is also a feral cat colony is there so in case the Caesar thing doesn’t do it for you they added CATS on top of the ruins and tbh that was a pretty excellent idea.

This is a very bad picture of a cat on the back of the ruins above.

I ran into the Pantheon on my way home—wow—and stopped at a very handsome plaza (apparently this is one of those places where you either put a sign on everything or you give up and put signs on nothing) and this morning I spent in the Villa Borghese Park where there were some decent birds and a lot of dogs.

My hotel has a lovely and enormous breakfast spread, including orange juice, grapefruit juice, and a big bucket of iced prosecco. Rome is a make-your-own parking spot kind of town, which I very much admire, and FILLED with scooters. They are completely lawless and buzz around everywhere. My favorite is when they all zoom up to the front at a red light then take off at full throttle as if not going as fast as they possibly can is somehow a crime. I have seen way more Triumphs than I have Ducatis.

I expect I will not be up to putting words (much less, god forbid, pictures) to the Borghese but I am pretty excited to put eyes on this joint and if I walk around with my mouth open in wonder the whole time it’s unlikely I will be the only one, right? At least this isn’t a maggot-mouth-pee situation, so agape I shall go.

Saw these gals on top of a building and not only do I think they share my feeling about pasta, I caught a BIRD in the middle of taking this picture!

Here's a bathroom trough in the Coliseum--have a sit on a rock and bob's your uncle!

This plaque commemorating George Washington (?) did not exactly get a place of honor. Message received, Italy.

Finally, stopped to admire this beautiful pond and big statue thing and then realized yes, that is a person in a fox suit going about in a rowboat. Alright, Italy, I'm with you.