Tour,sleep,eat,repeat!
We ask our host(who is stuck cleaning the B&B because his housekeeper is on vacation) how to get to the Appian Way and he advises us to get on the Archaebus, a hop-on-hop-off deallyoh that costs 25eu for 24 hours....Uh, No Thanks Paulo! We study the guide books a bit more, and take the metro to the bus to the Appian Way for about 4eu! Wait time-metro-2 minutes, bus about 8 minutes, total time for trip 25 minutes! That's how the intrepid tourists do it, my Italian friend! Leaving us plenty of spatch to buy a corronetto chocolate for Danny at the newstand where we buy the bus ticket! We chat up a Chinese woman on the bus and walk with her down to the Catacombe Di San Callisto, which is about a mile down the road from where we are droppped off. It is a lovely walk through the Italian countryside, and we hear birds! and see greenery! The road was called Via Regina, or the queen of roads because it was the first one the Romans built, and is still made of the original large black stones. You cannot go in the catacombes unescourted, so we hop on an English tour (they offer them in 6 languages!) and head down into the catacombes. This one was founded in the 2nd centruy and is the largest, with over 20km of tunnels and more to be excavated. It is beautifully cold below ground, and we go on the first ywo of four levels. The shadowy sepluchres hold 16 Pontiffs, 56 martyrs and over half a million regular Giovanni's. It is also the home of the Crypt of Saint Cecilia,. When her tomb was opened in 1599, centuries after her death, her body was there, perfectly preserved, with her fingers on one hand showing the number 1, for one GOD, and the other hand 3 fingers, said to represent the trinity. This inspired Stefano Modernos beautiful sculpture of the martyr, a copy of which we saw, and the original is in Basilica di Santa Cecelia in Trastevere. Our tour is large and our guide speaks "english??" extremely rapidly with a thick Indian accent, but the palce is fabulous! We learn alot and enjoy it and visit the gift shop-true sign of a good tourist stop! We stroll back down the street to the next catacombe and decide to visit:am I glad we did! This one was Basilica E Catacombe Di Santa Sebastiano. This was actually the first catacombe(in spite of its braggarty neighbor!) and is where the name came from. In Greek, kata kymbas-near the quarry, is where catacombe originated. Folks would say where their family was buried, and they didn't use street addresses like today. We toured the catacombes with just 2 other people, and a fantastic guide, who gave us so much history and information, about Saint Sebastion, a mighty martyr and patron saint of soldiers,athletes and plague victims, about all the christian symbols found throughout, the burial techniques,etc. It was so great! Danny really loved being able to move around the small rooms and poke his head into places. The timeline went like this,: site used for pagan burial in 137ish, then the catacombes used in 3rd and 4th century, then a house and gathering place for followers of Christ especially devoted to Peter and Paul built on that, then the Basilica built over that. The basilica is stupendous and contains both the arrows used to try to kill Saint Sebastion, and the miraculous footprints of Jesus himselfWhen St. Peter was fleeing Rome for his life, he met a vision of Jesus on this very road. He asked Jesus "Domine, quo vadis?" "Lord, where are you going?" Jesus replied that he was going to Rome to be crucified a second time. Then he disappeared, and when St. Peter wondered if he had really seen Jesus, he looked down and there were the marble footprints of Jesus in the dirt! And we saw these in the church! The end of the story is that St. Peter turned around and went back to rome and was crucified. Wow! We again head out to the road, and pass many more ruins on the way back to the bus stop. Also a Harley Davidson Club rally, just to keep things in the 21st centruy! We wait less than 10 minutes for our bus, and shoot back to our neighborhood with nary a blink. We accidently exit the metro through the wrong hallway, and after a brief twilight zone moment "umm, how has this whole street changed since this morning?!" we end up happy, because we find a bank (no credit welcome in Italy), a delicious take-out bar(stuffed tomatoes, croquets of rice,meat,etc fried, and of course, Pizza! and a gelateria that Danny visits and snags pistachio and fruit inglese for later. Oh yeah! When we get home, we meet Jill form Australia, who joins us for our meal and we share stories. Glad that Danny got to see the fun of the B&B with meeting other people! Ciao!
No comments:
Post a Comment