Day Five - In Rome

The day started with a discussion over whether to attend a church service in English or Italian. English won over (eventually – LOL) and we journeyed over 2 buses to attend church in a 1700 year old chapel. WOW! The decorations were all labeled in Latin, but thankfully the sermon/music were in English. Good way to start the week. :D Back across town to the apartment for lunch where we rested up before journeying out again.

I got the bright idea to head around the corner to the grocery store to find ingredients for supper, only to get around to the store to find out that the store, like many others around here, is closed from about 1-4 pm… and at 1:30 would not be selling me groceries regardless of how sadly I peered in the window. NOT that they had a window to peer into. The stores around here, when closed, have essentially steel garage doors that come down completely concealing the merchandise in the store, and then a steel barred gate that locks in front of that. Both of which have endless scrawls of colorful graffiti. Sigh.

Returned home where it dawns on me that I didn’t take a key out of the apartment… and getting back into the gated community is going to be a little tough. Why me?? I stand out on the curb, wait for the traffic to dissipate (which actually can happen on an early Sunday afternoon) and spent the better part of 5 minutes calling up to the 2^nd story windows hoping SOMEBODY would take notice. They finally did and let me in, just in time to turn around and journey down a couple more buses across town to the Appia Antica where the Catacombs of St. Callistus awaited.

The bus-ride(s) over to the catacombs took us over to another side of town we hadn’t yet seen and the transfer was at the Piazza of St. Giovanni, which didn’t mean much to me at the time except I’d read something about it the night before in some book, but couldn’t remember what. As we’re walking around the corner trying to figure out where the NEXT bus will stop, we notice a large obelisk near the street. It’s HUGE… and when you look closely, it’s NOT written in Latin OR Italian, or even Greek like most everything else around here, it’s written in Egyptian Hieroglyphics. It’s one of the 2 Egyptian statues donated to the Roman Empire, one by Rameses II and the other by Thutmoses III. (Turns out that the photo DH took of BooBoo in the last post is in front of the other one).

Finally found the bus and made it to the catacombs unscathed (no photos allowed, but see if you can find them online...it's fascinating). The kids are actually quite adept at getting ON and OFF the buses, even when crowded. We had a FABULOUS tour guide that, when you paid attention to his Filipino English, was really quite funny. One woman asked, “Why are these tombs filled with bricks on this side? Are they still full of bones?” and he said, “Oh no ma’am, the bones have been taken out long ago, those layers of bricks are actually quite new (which in Rome doesn’t mean the same as in the US), and were installed only for support. It’s kind of an old cemetery.” ROFLOL!!! Yes, a cemetery founded in the 3^rd century and abandoned after the 9^th century, and forgotten until the mid-19^th century… is ‘kind of old’ – ROFLOL!

The kids were really taken in… especially when it was announced that of the 500,000 people buried in this ONE set of catacombs, 40% were children.

Back home again where the grocery store was INDEED open this time and we made our purchases. Is it a good thing that the owner, butcher and cashier all recognize my MIL and the kids?? LOL!!! I guess so, b/c as we were leaving the cashier turned to the owner and said in Italian, “What beautiful children.”

After 2 days of tombs/cemetaries, and 5 days of “really old stuff”, tomorrow will be very different as we’re signed up to take Italian cooking lessons from an Italian restauranteur/chef on the other side of the Tiber River. It’s 4 hours long and promises to be another adventure to remember :D.

Adding to the “interlude” theme of Day 3: The pastor at this morning’s service graduated from the same small NY college as my FIL and a group of ladies moved into the apartment below us for the week. When DH helped an elderly lady with her bags we made another connection. They’re traveling from a small town in Haiti… where it just so happens DH lived as a child.