ARRIVEDERCI ROMA

A shop window in Rome airport

We spent the day chasing the sun.  The seats were not horribly uncomfortable (we had a little knee room) and we were fed lunch and a late snack.  I watched 3 movies and read some.  An okay way to spend an entire day.  Rome to Philadelphia was 8 1/2 hours.  We went from 8:30 pm to 2:30 pm. by landing in Philly.  Already a long day, but we had more to come.

In Philadelphia we went thru customs, reclaimed our bags, re-checked them and went thru security again.  No problem- we had lots of time.

No movies were available on our flight from Philadelphia to DFW, so I read some more.    We had some turbulence on the way home, with the pilot coming on the speaker saying the wind/storm was so bad he might have to land somewhere other than DFW.   He said he'd let us know in 20 min or so.   He didn't get back to us, we did experience some uncomfortableness but before we knew it, we'd landed.


We waited for bags, and not one of our group's bags came on the ramp from below.  We waited and waited some more.  Finally someone went to talk to the person in the baggage claim area who seemed to be in charge.  She told our representative that our bags had been put on another plane and that plane had just landed in Houston.

The plane with our luggage was landing at another terminal in a while.  Our bus to take us to our cars at the Sr. Center was there and took us to the other terminal.  After a short wait, we all gathered our suitcases and got on the road to New York Avenue.


We got home about midnight-- having been up for approx 25 hours.

Good trip, lots of fascinating sights and interesting memories.

The Food and the Folks

Since we stayed at the same hotel for the entire trip, we became very familiar with the breakfast buffet.  When I go to breakfast, I rarely take my camera.  I wish I had; to record this unusual spread of food.  When we’ve been in Europe on other trips, beans were usually a part of breakfast, but not this time.

The majority of the left side of the buffet contained pickled eggplant, and olives with cucumber pickles and various kinds of olives all cold.  There were several kinds of deli style meats  and slices of several types of cheese(all cold).  To the end of the buffet table were scrambled eggs (sometimes hot and sometimes cool) and  bacon which was not done enough for me. Weiners, usually hot, were near the eggs. The other side of the buffet held pastries of different types and dry cereal with milk.  There were fruit jam pies cut into wedges, yogurt,   The end of the right side of the buffet held 4-6 different types of juices—Orange, pineapple, mango, apple

Other than the breakfasts, the food I ate was mediocre.  The salads were interesting, the second course, pasta was usually not done enough for my taste with various sauces.  Entrees were usually chicken, veal, fish, and beef.  Since I’ve never met a dessert I didn’t like, I can tell you that all the desserts were quite good.

We had 3 meals together as a tour group  the pictures below come from the first one.  I don't really know all the names to put with the pictures, and if I don't have your picture, forgive me--- and if I have your picture and you wish I didn't, forgive that also.  These are the traveling companions---

Last tour day—Ostia Antica

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Before I discuss our last tour, I’d like to talk about things that were going on in Rome the week we were there.  Our first day, Monday, a transit strike was called (trains/buses)  which did not affect us at all.  On Thursday the cab drivers went on strike (for one day)  Didn’t really notice any difference, other than our tour manager commenting on the fact that the traffic seemed lighter.  We were a little concerned because we needed a taxi to pick us up Friday morning at the hotel to be at Piazza del Popolo at 7:14 am for our Pompeii tour.  There was no problem- the strike was truly a one day thing.

On Saturday Rome hosted a 60^th year celebration of the beginning of the Common Market, later known as the European Union.  Forty heads of state were converging in Rome for the celebration.  The city was filled with police and Carabinieri everywhere you looked.  There were buses of police all around the city—getting into place on Friday to be ready for Saturday.  We saw motorcades of black limos and large black SUV type vehicles.  They drove through red lights and didn’t slow down.  Six different protests were planned around the city and this would have been  a perfect time for  a terrorist attack. As far as we heard, everything went off without a hitch.  No violence, no problems, everything happened as it was planned.   We were outside the city in the morning and returned just after noon.  Many, many roads were closed and many attractions were also closed—the Colosseum, the Forum and parts of the Vatican were not open at all

.  Our bus driver both coming and going had to find open streets to get to our hotel and to get us out of the city for our last activity—Ostia Antica, an ancient port of Rome.

This tour was much like Pompeii—a “lost” city that has been unearthed.  Differences are--  Ostia was covered by sand after tit was no longer the primary port for Rome.  There was no sudden death, no explosion, just with lack of employment ---people left and the sand took over.

We saw theatre, with the original masks

Original theatre masks

This is evidence that these apartments were multi story buildings

exercise field,

 homes, shops and the “famous” bathhouse and toilets of Ostia.

Before we actually entered the city, we walked through the necropolis (cemetery)  There were family “crypts” with niches for the bodies of important relatives  and places for urns containing ashes.

Our guide lined 7 of us up on the road and explained that the roads were that width so a “cohort” of Roman soldiers could travel it comfortably.  7 in a row X 7 rows + the leader= 50 soldiers

This city was founded as the major port of Rome over 2400 years ago.  We saw places where the entire town was raised several feet to provide a place for deep foundations for new apartments being built by the  Emperor.    Some marble from Ostia was recycled in the building of St. Peter’s.

Water  was brought to the town via aquaducts and was stored in tanks for use in the fountains and bath houses and also was piped into some private homes.

Mosaics in the street in front of a shop described that type of shop it was.    There were shops selling goods, there were bakers, laundry, a place to hire ship workers and builders.     

One of the houses showed a dining room where the eaters reclined and the slaves brought in food in the center of the room.

 We saw a bathhouse that offered cold pools, tepid, hot pools and saunas.  These hollow bricks brought hot air to the sauna.

 Near the bath house were the toilets—Didn’t see anything like this in Pompeii

We entered a restaurant where the guide showed us the “menu”--- a mosaic on the wall 

 

and the fridge (which was a place for the amphora filled with liquid to be kept cool in a hole in the ground)

The ancient fridge

Olivia

As all attractions we’ve visited, we browsed the gift shop, where N found a cap and made friends with Olivia, the shop cat.

We got on the bus and napped a little until we got back to Rome.  Streets were still closed and seemed deserted and again the bus driver had to twist and turn through the few streets that were open to find a way to get us back to our hotel