January 15, 2012

Before we dig into the next trip report, the kids school, named Taipei American School (TAS), is directly across the street from Taipei Japanese School (TJS).  There was an incident at TJS yesterday and we received an email from our school's Superintendant excerpted as follows:

"This afternoon around 4:00PM outside the Japanese School, a man with a knife threatened a group of people and stabbed one of the parents waiting for her child at the Japanese School. She was stabbed in the thigh and taken for medical treatment. This happened across the street from us on the corner near the large intersection, and one of our faculty members witnessed the event. My account is based on his first hand report, and on what our director of security learned from the police and from the Japanese School security people. After the man stabbed the woman, he put the knife on the ground and lit up a cigarette. The man was arrested and taken away by police."

At first, had concern as anytime you put the word "American" on anything, it becomes a possible target for someone looking to make a statement.  Taiwan seems to be one of the friendlier nations towards America, but you never know.  But you have to wonder that if this nut job was in the US, he likely would have had a gun and the violence would have been worse, but my favorite part is that he put down the knife and "lit up a cigarette".  So the lesson obviously is less guns and more smokes.

I am a history lover...was always my favorite subject in class, will never switch channels on a good historical documentary...damn, I'll even READ a history book from time to time.  So getting the chance to visit Rome was special as it has played a significant part in European and World history almost continuously since they started writing the stuff down.  Everything I have and will relate that we saw in there (and tons more I am leaving out) is within a 20 minute walk from each other.  Have already done the Catholic/Church side of the trip, so now we come to ancient Rome.  There are gobs of ruins everywhere.  We walked the Circus Maximus a couple of times...is just a long vacant lot with an old tower and some walls now, but it was not hard to close the eyes and imagine 300,000 blood thirsty fans cheering Charlton Heston while he kicked some Roman (and Persian) ass.  We saw a pile of other ruins, like the Trajan Markets, Arch of Septimus Severus, and Temple of  Vesta that were severely decayed as ancient Rome's buildings were used for centuries as a quarry for new buildings and churches, and it takes a good imagination to recreate what must have been.  By the way, the Temple of Vesta was where the Vestial Virgins were housed...I had not learned about what they were before, but theses girls were recruited at ages 6-10, spent the first 10 years learning their duties, the next 10 performing their duties, and the last 10 teaching the new girls, and after those 30 years, they were free to lead normal lives.  They "enjoyed" high status and financial security, but had to remain virgins.  The penalty for transgressing was to be buried alive.  To be fair, the men concerned were flogged to death.

While most of the ruins were just that, there were three that were still in good condition that helped in making the others come to life in the mind.  The Coloseum is an image that is ubiquitous, but as with all such places, seeing it is more impresssive than you can imagine.  It's size is bigger than I had imagined.  It had a 45,000 seat capacity, the same as a Major League Baseball stadium, but was more vertical than a current stadium, so the fans were on top of the field and all had a great sightline.  My favorite part was how the floor was engineered, with two floors of rooms and cages below the field that housed the gladiators and animals that were going to battle above.  There was a system of elevators that would raise the participants onto the field when the games began.  It was easy to picture 45 thousand fans going nuts watching man v man, or man v beast action.  You can draw a direct line from the Coloseum to today and makes understannding the allure of the bloodlust that is the NFL easier.  Pics don't do it justice, but here you go.

After our tour, our kids were inspired to become gladiators (or beasts).

It was early morning when we went to the Coloseum and saw the horse drawn carrige vendors (and their beasts) getting ready for the day.

The next ancient site that impressed were the catacombs...all the kids said this was their favorite part of Rome.  We went to the Catacombs of Domitilla, which are said to be the largest in Rome.  This was the only site that we could not walk to as it is out of the city, but a 20  minute bus ride got us there.  The website said they were open on Wednesdays, but once we got there, there was a sign on the gate that said they were closed for the holidays.  We were bummed.

The gate was ajar, and we needed to go to the bathroom, so we went in to use the toilets.  As we're sitting there trying to figure out if there was another site we could walk to, a caretaker came out to see who was invading the space and he offered to take us in/under (with the entrance fee paid under the table).  We were then delighted.

The reason the catacombs are outside of the city walls is that they are the gravesites of the early Christians, who were considered heretics in the first three centuries AD and were not allowed to be buried within the city wall.  These are not above ground graves, but are a series of narrow tunnels that are lined with graves dug into the walls, or various crypts for families.  There were 4 below ground levels of these tunnels of this catacomb that measure a total of 17 km (10 miles) long.  There were a couple of claustrophobes in our group (including yours truly), and it was freaky walking into them, but with the history and excitement of the place, this was easily overcome.  There was artifical light, and we only went in a relatively short distance, but thinking about living back in the day and going to visit a loved one at the end of one of these tunnels with only an oil lamp to light your way made the hair on my neck stand on end.  Carolyn was impressed with the size of the graves...they were mostly small, which suggested that people were not only shorter then, but that a lot of children died young as well.  A must see on any visit to Rome for sure.

All of the tombs and graves were empty and our guide told us that in the 6th century, after Christianity became the only religion in town, all of the bones were removed to be given a proper burial in the City.  All of the bones were said to be buried under the third (and my favorite) ancient site in town, the Pantheon. 

It is impossible to refer to the Pantheon without calling it The Parthenon (even wikipedia says not to be confused with the Pantheon).  The Pantheon was a temple of the Gods built in 27 BC and is the one with the ocular hole in the ceiling.  I'll direct you to the link for the size details and history, but it is another of those things that has to be seen to be beleived.  Paul instantly recognized it from a video game of his where you have to descend from the hole on ropes to get at whatever enemy you need to shoot up, so he was on board with this site.  The adults loved this one so much that after a long day of touring, the kids were beat and wanted some alone time with their games at the hotel, so we gave them Metro money to go back and the parents walked back to commune inside the Pantheon in peace.  Of  course, we had a glass of wine before going in to assist with the communization.

 

There are two other "must-do" sites in Rome to mention...both were between our hotel and our other destinations so we were by and around them often.  The first is the Trevi Fountain.  It is the connection point in the city of three aqueducts, so its place in the city was symbolicly significant to deserve a great monument.  And you can drink the water.

I've said that it's got to be seen to appreciate a lot, but here is another one. Baroque to the extreme, high levels of detail in every nook, and just beautiful day or night. Like the Sistine Chapel, everytime we'd be there it was mobbed with people taking pictures and not allowing much room to just sit and enjoy, which lessend its allure a bit. However, on the night after the Mass at the Vatican, we had to walk back to the hotel as the buses/metro were not running due to it being NYE, and taxis were not only scarce, but were charging triple/quadruple rates as they were the only game in town. As we passed by the Trevi, we saw only a few people, mostly young (er than us), hanging out.  Since I had just made it through an entire Catholic Mass, felt a gelato as reward was in order. So we got one (mine was caramel cream) and enjoyed it by the fouuntain. As the clock struck midnight making it Christmas Day, our party friends opened their champagne and did some hootin' and hollerin'. Very nice moment to share.

The last site to see are the Spanish Steps.  They, and the Piazza di Spagna at their feet have been the meeting place for Romans for centuries.  Even in the end of December, people were sitting on them day and night talking, resting and people watching.  On the day we went to the catacombs, our intention was to get back and relax that afternoon at Babington's Tea Room, which is right next to the steps at their base, for high tea.  We had read about them and since Betty has a thing for the Royals and Mary Poppins, it was a no brainer.  As we're going in, we see a crew setting up speakers and a stage at the base of the Spanish Steps for what we would find out was to be an opera performance at 4PM.  That fit our schedule perfectly, so after our tea (which was quite good), we came out to watch members of the National Opera company perform.  I would have prefered some good ol' rock and roll or some jazz, and opera is in my top 3 of most despised musical genres, but the scene was just too perfect not too enjoy.  And they played the hits...I don't really know what are opera hits, but they sang all the songs from the Bugs Bunny cartoons, There is a lot of classical music in Looney Tunes, my only exposure to the classics, and since I have made it a point as a father to expose my children to these classic cartoons, we were all quite happy.  Very good times.