Palantine Hill

Monday June 4^th

We checked out of our villa this morning in Florence and headed for Rome. Of course, nothing is ever entirely straightforward, so there were a few small snags in the process.  We planned to check out of the villa at 8am and then take the bus to the train station at 8:30, arriving by 9am for our 9:30 train.  However, after all the trouble with the buses last evening, we decided we couldn’t risk a bus ride and would call a taxi.  We tried to order one last night for 8:30 this morning, but they said just to call in the morning.  In the meantime I checked the train tickets and the station that the train was leaving from was not the main Florence station.  Good thing I checked! I can just see us showing up, looking for our train and it not being there.  There are two other small stations, and we were booked on a train out of one of the little stations.  I then checked the Italian railways website to make sure it was a real train, and luckily it was, all the info was correct and we needed to get to the little station. So now we really needed a taxi as I had no idea how to catch a bus to that station. 

This morning, as soon as our landlady showed up to check us out, Paul began to call for a cab.  The first company he called said there were none available, call back later. The second put him on hold for a long time and then came back to say there weren’t any available.  This was not good!  The landlady then offered to try to call one, and on the first try got a cab to agree to pick us up in three minutes.  Apparently speaking Italian helps you get a cab much faster in Florence. – keep this mind if you are ever in Florence and need a cab quickly. The cab showed up in three minutes and we were at the train station in plenty of time. 

The trip to Rome went smoothly.  It is only 80 minutes by high speed train, and before we knew it we had arrived.  We easily found our way to the metro, got weekly passes and were on our way to our new apartment.  Katie is so relived to be back in a city with a metro system. She hated those buses worse than any of us.  Every single ride she looked like she was going to get sick.  Between the traffic and the crowds, and the difficulties with the tickets, and the buses not showing up on time, we have had more than our share of bus travel.

We are staying in a nice quiet neighborhood around the back edge of Vatican City. We are on the 7^th floor with a nice balcony and can see the back of St. Peter’s dome. Of course, being a dome, it doesn’t look like the back, so it is a great view.  We picked up a few groceries from the tiny grocery on the corner.  This morning we plucked all the leaves off our Florentine basil plant and brought them with us to Rome, so no issues with basil here.  Plus the store is really small with few choices, and easy to check out – no crazy scanner guns here!

This afternoon we headed to Palentine hill.  Palentine Hill is one of the ancient sites of Rome, the location of the emperor’s palace.  It is one of the lesser visited sights, but comes in a two-day combo pass with the Colosseum and the Forum.   We will hit the other two tomorrow. 

We walked right past the Colosseum and got some great photos.  Katie was completely blown away by it, having no idea that it was so massive!  Palantine Hill was a really nice visit, and using the walking tour in our guidebook we got a great feel for the palace grounds and what it looked like in Roman times. It is so cool to sit down on a fragment of marble to rest and know that it stood in Julius Caesar’s house!

An interesting aspect of Palantine Hill is that beyond the palace there is an excavation of some ancient Iron Age huts that are likely the huts where the shepherd who rescued Romulus and Remus raised them. Romulus founded the city of Rome right here on top of Palatine Hill. In fact, the den where the she-wolf was found with the twins was discovered in 2007 on the side of this very hill.  Almost unbelievable, but the legend seems to actually be true.

After finishing with Palantine Hill we went to visit the Mouth of Truth.  It is pretty hokey, but fun to do.  The story is that if you tell lies and you put your hand in the Mouth of Truth it will bite down on you.  There were some very mischievous little blond boys about 2 and 3 years old in line in front of us, tumbling all around and constantly wrestling. We figured if anyone would get a nip on the fingers it would be them, but they made it through no problem, as did we.

We wound up the day with a visit to St. Peter’s in Chains church. This church has an excellent Michelangelo statue of Moses.  The statue is part of a larger wall of statues, and it is so much better than the other statues, it is unbelievable.  It looks so real that the legend is that Michelangelo himself threw his hammer at the statue yelling, “Speak!! Speak!!!”

The church is also noted for possessing the relic of the “actual” chains that bound St. Peter. In fact, there are two sets of chains – one that bound him in Jerusalem, and another set that held him here in Rome during his final imprisonment in Mamertime prison. Allegedly when the two sets of chains both came into the possession of this church they were brought near each other and miraculously fused together. Today the two sets of chains are displayed in a glass case at the altar.  Rome is full of relics such as these, and they are pretty interesting.  One church claims to have parts of the original manger and another has the stairs from Pontius Pilate’s house with blood stains from Jesus on them. I think we may go see the stairs and the pilgrims that climb them on their knees.

We are looking forward to tomorrow, not only for our visit to the Colosseum and Forum, but also because we are having dinner with a friend of ours from our days in Minnesota. Our friend Cristina who lives here in Rome did a post-doc year with me in Minneapolis.   We visited her here in 1998, and she visited us in Philly in 2002, but we have not seen each other in almost 10 years. Tomorrow evening we are going with her to a “real Roman” restaurant with traditional Roman foods.  But no matter how long it’s been since I’ve seen her, I refuse to eat tripe.