Author: claudia

Only three more days left here in lovely Rome! I broke down and did a bit more shopping today, but from now on I am mostly taking it easy and revisiting a few favorite places. (Plus FINALLY getting to the Roman Forum … aka the very first place I attempted to go and the only major attraction I’ve not gotten to even once!) But I have a couple of questions for Roman/Italian readers, things I have not been able to puzzle out on my own:

1) Prego is usually translated in English as “you’re welcome,” but I notice that people in stores and restaurants frequently say it even before they are thanked or have done the activity for which they would be thanked. So what does it mean really? Is it something like, “I am happy to help?”

2) A few days ago, when I was in the Borghese Gardens, I was going along, minding my own business and attempting to reach the Piazza di Spagna, when suddenly my only option was to take some stairs down and then take some more stairs down and suddenly I was in a series of subterranean tunnels and then I was in a Carrefour supermarket in the bowels of the earth. And then I kept going and I was in … the Piazza di Spagna. What happened, exactly? I didn’t dream the Carrefour, did I?

3) What in the name of our sweet baby Jesus are those Amore ads? The ones that appear to show an orgy in progress (European ads = not like American ads), but everyone involved is wearing dog and cat masks, which is just astonishingly disturbing. I have attempted to parse out the Italian beneath it, but if I understand correctly, these are ads for PET FOOD, and so I can’t possibly understand correctly, can I?

I’ve almost maxed out Flikr, so the rest of my vacation photos will be up in my first July update, but I promise many more to share then!

1) Even if the train from Ostia Antica to Rome appears to be heading in the exact opposite direction than it should, you should probably go for it asap instead of waiting until the doors nearly shut on you.

2) If the doors are nearly shutting on you, do not assume that they are configured like US subway doors, which will bounce open upon bodily contact to preserve human life. These Italian doors mean business. In or out, they say (in Italian).

3) This means that if you just barely manage to get in the train car, you will NOT be able to keep the doors open for your friends. Who are now outside the train. While you are inside the train. Which is leaving.

4) Yelling a curse word really loudly, in panic, as the people you obviously meant to remain with stand helplessly on the track while the train rolls away, turns out to be a LAUGH RIOT for people from many nations. (Though the laughter was not of the mean variety, more of the “dude, that sucks” variety.)

5) If you go to the next transfer point on the train and remain there, your friends will find you in the end.

So at least there’s a happy ending!

Well, I’ve had an absolutely marvelous trip in Rome so far, the high point of which was probably my birthday yesterday, which involved not only the best risotto ever but also a chocolate cake so good I suspect its consumption is a sin in some minor religions. But this morning I woke up with a cold. 🙁 It promises to be a bad one, too; my throat’s been swelling tighter and tighter throughout the day. Happily, “decongestant” turns out to translate just fine. If I need to spend the next few days in Rome piled up in my bed, writing and hiding from the heat, there are worse things to have happen … and as soon as I get better, I’ll still be in Rome.

Rome adventures included the epic trip to Pompeii two days ago. Only a handful of new photos, but check them out. Will be in touch soon, to either report on my recovery and continuing adventures, or to whine about the sniffles.

I went out and about, but decided that my touristy activities were going to be highly concentrated on museums and churches … i.e., cool places, because the blazing summer heat has arrived here in Rome. No photos today, because the single coolest/creepiest place I went doesn’t allow photography: the Capuchin cemetery, where the monks used the bones of lots and lots and LOTS of people to create, um, decoration. As in ribs and vertebrae embedded in the walls to create deceptively delicate floral patterns. Or skulls stacked on top of skulls to create high arches. Or a child’s skull with scapula on either side to look like cherubim wings. Some complete skeletons have been dressed up in monk’s robes. I hope they really were monks. One thing to be displayed after death as what you were; another to have someone come along after you’re deceased and gad your corpse up in the equivalent of a Halloween costume.

The writing is going really well here. Maybe I write better when I eat lots of pasta. Oh, I hope this is true.