What Are They Doing?

The first stop on our journey today was the Basilica Di Santa Maria Maggiore. This was another spectacular cathedral that has a ceiling decorated with the first gold to be brought from the New World and beautiful mosaics. We also stumbled across the tomb of Bernini which is very plain and could easily be missed despite his importance in art and archetectual history. Next we visited the church of San Clemente, one of the most interesting churches we have visited. It is a 12 century chiurch, on top of a 4th century one, on top of an ancient shrine of Mithras. In the 12th century church there is an interesting mosaic in the apse which shows details of birds and humans in flower filled fields rather than religious artwork. I fell in love with the 12th century cosmati - a mosaic candlestick. We moved downstairs to the 4th century church which was damp and cool. It had some marble pillars still in place and an altar. There are some interesting frescoes including one which shows the transition from speaking in Latin to Italian. We descended even further to the ancient Roman level. This was very cool, dark and narrow. There was a small room with an altar and another room with a flowing natural stream. Supposedly there are some 5th or 6th century catacombs in another lower layer but this is not open to the public.
After arising from the deep, dark depths of San Clemente we ate our lunch on some of the ruins in the Roman Forum. We then wandered down to see Circo Massimo, the chariot race track. There is still a dirt track which would have been the racing track and up the sloped side would have been the seating for the 300 000 spectators. The track is still used by people as a running and walking track. We continued on our adventure by visiting the food markets in Piazza Campo di Fori and then on to Piazza Navona. This square (although not square, it has an elongated shape as it was built over an ancient Roman stadium) takes your breath away as you walk in to it for its shere size. You are walking down a really narrow street and you enter this enormous space. It has a great atmosphere, there are many buskers and free entertainment watching the street sellers being chased by police. We listened to a young boy playing the accordian and singing. He would have only been about 10 but he was really good. There was also a small jazz band which was really entertaining. I think the most entertaining was the street sellers who had the knack of packing up and moving on so not to get caught by the police down to a matter of seconds! In the square are 3 statues/waterfountains, the highlight being Bernini’s Fantana dei Fiumi (fountain of the rivers) which features symbolic representations of the rivers Ganges, Danube, Plate and Nile.
We finished our day off by a visit to the famous Spanish steps. It was crowded with people but you didn’t feel cramped. We sat for a while and enjoyed the sun and beautiful flowers. It was said that beautiful people used to sit on the steps in the hope that they would be discovered as models, unfortunatley neither of us were approached!

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Today we woke up early to head to Vatican City. We had expected that there would be crowds but when we arrived there were people and tour busses everywhere. All the people were walking around with yellow cards and they had to show these to get in the gates. We were a little confused as we didn’t have a little yellow card and couldn’t work out where to get one. Then we saw a big stage surrounded by thousands of chairs - today was the Pope’s audience! We decided not to battle the crowds gathering at the gate for a glimpse of the Pope so we walked around to visit the Vatican Museum. The line moved very quickly, however inside there were still thousands of people. Some of the rooms in the museum were interesting but the highlight was definetly the Sistine Chapel. The chapel was very crowded but we were lucky that someone was leaving their seat and we were able to sit. We listened to the explanations of the building and artwork on our Audio guides and just gazed at the walls and ceiling. We were in there for over an hour and we didn’t even realise it! Absolutely amazing! When we left the museum we went to a pizza shop for lunch. Here they advertised pizza for one, we asked how big it was and whether it would do both of us and they said “pizza for one”. So we ordered one each, when it arrived I nearly fell off my chair and Tone thought he was in heaven. If this is what one person ate for lunch I would hate to see what they would order if they were hungry. After our very tasty pizza, we hit the line for St Peter’s Basilica. We were very lucky that it was a warm but not hot day as the line was quite long and the sun quite strong. We entertained ourselves by doing some people watching and decided that we didn’t like pushy tour leaders. Eventually we made it through to the security check and then had more lining up and waiting to do before we actually made it in to the Basilica. We went and saw the tomb of Pope John Paul II. It is really hard to describe but you walk in your line with hundreds of other people through these cold marble rooms that house the tombs of different Pope’s. Then you come to the main attraction, the tomb of Pope John Paul II and the room is filled with emotion. There are people that are sitting on the floor praying. There was no typical type of person there, there was children, elderly, different nationalities, disabled all sitting or kneeling praying to the Pope. The line is ushered by security guards past the tomb. Both Tone and I came out and just looked at each other and said “wow”. When Tone first asked if I wanted to see the tomb or not I could have taken or left it. Now I am so glad I went just to experience that feeling in the room. We then moved on to the Basilica. We thought we had seen large cathedrals but this place is massive. Inside we touched the foot of a 13th century bronze statue of Saint Peter whose foot has been wron away by the touch pilgrims. A spectacular sight is Bernini’s massive 20 metre high baldacchino or altar canopy under which only the Pope can celebrate mass. A mass was about to begin so we decided to attend. This was another cool experience. The mass was conducted by many different priests and it was in Italian except some of the prayers of the faithful were in Spanish and … There was a choir which sounded beautiful in the cathedral. Although the crowds were large, the visit to Vatican city was a great day, which was topped off by a gelato on the way home!

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Today we decided to do the free walking tour offered by our hostel. Our tour guide was Willis, who works for the hostel, and on the tour was an American couple who study in France and a mother and her 2 daughters from America and us. As our guide Willis was also American, we were feeling a little bit overpowered! The tour was brilliant. Willis has a great passion for art and history and a great sense of humour which made for a great tour. Our first stop was the church of Santa Maria Della Vittoria. This looked like nothing from the outside and you could very easily walk past it and not notice but inside were some real treasures. This was the church that in the Da Vinci Code the cardinal was killed by fire. It contained Bernini’s sculpture “Ecstasy of St. Teresa” which is supposed to show an angel overlooking Teresa in ecstasy. If you look at the angels face from the left it looks angelic, if you look at it from the right it looks evil! In a small room out the back are paintings which tell the story of the 30 years war in Prague. Next we visited the Church of the Immaculate (the church from the Da Vinci Code where the cardinal was killed by earth). Here we saw the crypt of the Capuchins which is 6 different rooms. 5 of the rooms are crypts, each dedicated to a different body part (skull, pelvis, leg bone, thigh bone,) and one a chapel. All the bones belong to the deceased friars. I was fascinated by this place (some of the others thought it was morbid), to me it was art. Even the chandliers were made from bones. We then moved on to Fontana di Trevi which is a fountain built in commeration of the aquiducts of Rome. Its designer Salvi was said to have lived in the building attached to the fountain. Aparently his wife found out he had a girlfriend and his girlfriend found out he had a wife so he committed suicide by jumping out of a window into the fountain below and since then this window has been bricked off. We continued on to the fascinating Pantheon. Its amazing dome roof is 43.5 m in diameter with walls 6 m thick and was the biggest singular dome roof until the construction of the Florida Superbowl. It has a circular opening in the roof known as the porteclus that always remains open. Because there are only 2 openings in the Pantheon, the front doors and the roof, and with the effect of hot air rising the majority of the rain is blown away from the porteclus. If any does come in, it was constructed with drain holes in the marble floor. In here we saw the tomb of the painter Raphael and a monument to Queen Margarite. She wanted to create a cheap but substantial meal for the soldiers and so she invented the margarita pizza. As we headed for our lunch stop we walked past the monument to Marcus Areilius. It was from the top of this that he used to gives his speeches. Now it is owned by the Catholic church, along with most of Rome. Lunch was at what we thought was the best gelateria in Rome, Della Parma. It has over a hundred different flavours of gelato and mouses. I tried bacio and mars mouse. Delicious! After devouring our gelato we headed to the Forum, the social and political centre of ancient Rome. This is a fascinating place. We saw Julius Cesear’s tomb, a rostrum where speeches were made, and a most interesting building which was the monument to the goddess of love (it was actually a brothel). Because of its unholy use, the church tried to knock down it down but were unsuccessful (you can still see the indentations in the colums where they had attached ropes and tried to pull them down) and so turned it into a church. The end of our tour brought us to the Colosseum. Its original name was the Therian Amphitheatre however it became known as the Colosseum as out the front was an enourmous statue of Colosses of Nero and it was here that everyone used to meet. So most people called it Colosseum. It was opened in 80 AD as a circus where people used to go and see interesting and unique animals, but eventually was used for popular bloodthirsty specataor sports. The animals and gladiators used to be kept underneath the wooden floor (which was covered with sand) and when it was time for battle they were brought up from underneath by a lift. Apparently this was a real spectacle and then the battle would begin. When Constantine came to power, the use of the place for evil was stopped. It was raided for Marble and Iron and the Pope even used some of the materials to build the Basilica. When standing inside the Colosseum and looking around it was incredible, just imagining how they could build such a spectacular building (that is so big) in 80 AD blows my mind. That evening at the hostel was a free beer and pizza night. Never before had I seen a can of beer drunk so quickly.

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This morning we had a little bit of time before we had to catch the train to Rome so we checked out, and headed to the rocks to paddle in the water. We were sad to be leaving such a beautiful place but we were also excited to see what Rome had in store for us. We left Riomaggiore and had to change trains at La Spezia. Here we had to pick up our tickets. I sat with the bags while Tone went and picked up the tickets. I waited and waited and waited and waited and then started to get really nervous as Tone had been gone a long time and the time to board our train was getting closer and closer. When I was almost to the point of picking up all our bags myself and going in search of Tone he arrived very stressed! There was a woman in front of him in the line who was purchasing loads of tickets - very slowly! While we were on the train to Rome I started thinking about how peaceful both Venice and the Cinque Terre had been as they had no vehicles allowed in the towns. How loud was Rome going to be? We arrived in Rome and found our hostel really easily. After staying in Riomaggiore - the town of eternal steps - the last thing we wanted to see were more steps. Where do you think our room was, yes thats right, the 3rd floor and there was no lift! We dropped off our stuff and went exploring. We found the Roman Forum and were amazed. Our wandering brought us to a Chinese restaurant where we had dinner (crazy having chinese in Italy but a nice change) and then wandered some more. This wandering found us at the Colleseum. It was so exciting seeing these things for real, not just in pictures. I navigated us home, but unfortunately it was through a very suspicious area. We walked very quickly and decided to note it down as a place to avoid in future!

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Happy Easter! Thanks to Mum and Dad, the Easter Bunny found us in Riomaggiore. After breakfast and an obligatory Easter Sunday chocolate, we decided to finish the walk. This time we started from Riomaggoire and walked the Via dell’amore (the walk of the lovers) to Manarola. This walk hugged the coast line and provided beautiful ocean views the entire way. It was a nice easy stroll and today was being enjoyed by many people. It was wonderful to listen to the variety of languages and accents of the many people on the walk. Along the walk is a monument to the lovers. Here instead of graffiti people engrave padlocks with special messages to each other and lock them on to the railing, what a unique idea. Manarola was very busy with many people wandering in amongst the shops and down to the water’s edge. We didn’t actually stop in Manarola but just on the other side of the town on a bench with views of the town and the coastline. After a relax we continued the walk to Corniglia (where we had stopped yesterday). This was my favourite walk. Instead of catching the train back we decided to walk back the way we came and soak up a bit more of the beautiful sunshine. Back at home we had left over pizza for lunch and then spent the afternoon down on the beach (we had to arrange the rocks so that we could lie down and be comfy) reading and sleeping in the beautiful the sun!

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Today we woke up late and unfortunately were greeted with overcast weather. We didn’t let this stop our plans and we decided to catch the train to Monterosso, the 5th town in the Cinque Terre to start the walk between the 5 towns. Monterosso was a very busy place. It has a nice beach and many interesting shops. We decided to have a toasted sandwich for lunch from a little takeaway shop. It was very busy with people coming in and buying pizza. They bought it by weight and size rather than per slice. We sat down in a park to eat our ham and cheese sandwich and boy was it tasty. It was made on bread that was like a pizza base and it had ham and mozerella cheese - almost a mini pizza! After our lunch we started the walk. This section was very hard going - a lot of up hill with many steps. As we were still not 100% in health, we had to stop several times to rest which wasn’t a problem as the scenery was amazing. We walked through the terraced farmland with mountainous secenery on our left and the beautiful mediterranean sea on our right. We eventually made it to Vernazza. This town was full of tourists! Rather than being a beach, this one had a marina. We rested here for a while just watching the comings and goings. When we had some energy back we headed off on the walk again toward Corniglia. This walk was slightly easier and had different scenery, many olive groves. Corniglia was situated on the top of a hill. It was much quieter than the other towns. By the time we had made it to here we were very tired and decided to catch the train back to Riomaggiore and complete the rest of the walk tomorrow. So we made our way to the train station and walked down the 80 metres of vertical steps (all I can say is that by this stage of the day I was so glad I was going down them and not up!). For dinner we ordered a supreme pizza. It came in two sizes, either pizza for 1 or pizza for 5! It was cheaper to buy a pizza for 5 than two pizza’s for 1 so this is what we did. It was enormous and very tasty! After a very exhausting day we welcomed sleep!

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We left our cosy accomodation for our first train trip in Italy. We arrived at the station with a bit of time to spare as we had to collect our ticket that we had pre purchased on line. When we looked at our printout we hit panic stations - we were at the wrong Venice train station! When then had to make a mad dash, the ticket salesman told us which train to jump on (it left in 4 mins) and it should get us to the station we needed leaving us with 10 mins to get our ticket and board the train! As you can guess, not the kind of stress we needed to begin our day but we made it and were on the train to Riomaggiore in the Cinque Terre. Although we had asked for seats together when we booked, we didn’t get them. We were very lucky the lady sitting next to me was travelling on her own. She realised that Tone and I were together so she offered to swap seats with Tone. The train ride was great, the scenery was beautiful. As we were getting close to Riomaggiore the scenery turned from beautiful to spectacular. The train would come out of a tunnel and the view out the window was like the scenery on the drive from Cairns to Port Douglas, and then you would be in a tunnel again! We arrived in Riomaggiore and were greeted by beautiful weather. We found our accommodation, an appartment which had a roof top balcony with ocean views. We explored the town and then lazed on the rocks in the sun (yes, warm sun, that thing that we hadn’t seen in so many months!) for ages. Our apartment was right next to the town square where all the children played games. We loved just sitting, watching and listening to them playing. We cooked ourselves a pasta dinner and ate on our roof top balcony admiring the views until the sun disappeared. As we were lying in bed we could hear a marching band playing outside. We opened up the window and outside was a Good Friday Mass taking place, but as a procession through the streets with the priest on a microphone and PA system. We felt sorry for the man who had to carry the huge cross as it looked really heavy and there are many hills in Riomaggiore!

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After breakfast we decided to walk to the church of Santa Maria Gloriosa del Frari. It is one of Venice’s Gothic buildings and its second largest church. It is filled with lots of interesting pieces of art and sculptures. It has an interesting layout where the front half of the church is very open with many sculptures, it is then closed off by the choir screens and stalls which are beautiful carved wood and lead to the altar.

After leaving the church we walked to the famous Rialto Bridge. It was packed full of people! This bridge was originally the only crossing of the Grand Canal. Spanning across the bridge are row of shops facing one another which were really busy the day that we were there. Most of the shops sold Ornaments and Jewellry made from Venitian glass. I don’t know how they made a profit as they all looked like they had the same stock! We continued to wander the streets until it was time for our afternoon boat tour of the Islands (the one we had missed the previous day - we now had specific directions of where to meet). On our travels we discovered a pizza shop and decided this could be lunch. The shop sold enormous pieces so one piece fed us both (and you know how much of a pizza fan Tone is!). The pizza was tasty despite not being cooked in a wood fired oven (wood fires are banned on the Island due to the risk of fire).

We made sure we were there nice and early to meet the boat and at 2:30pm away we sailed towards the Island of Murano. It is an Industrial island but has a bit of a run down feel to it. There are many factories that lie derelict. Glass is the product of the Island and it has been since the 13th century when it was moved out of Venice because of the fire risk. Our tour took us to a working factory where we saw how they make glass ornaments. I found it very interesting and skillful even if the impatient American lady behind me didn’t!

We then moved on to Burano, the fisherman’s and lace makers Island. It is the opposite to Murano - very clean and its canals are lined with brightly coloured cottages. We had time here to explore a little of the Island and see a lace making demonstration. It was interesting to hear that the owner employs 7 people as each person is skilled in one particular type of stich and they need to work together to complete the product.

The final island on our tour was Torcello. It was the first island to be settled in the 5th century. Its highest population was 20 000 people, today its population is about 20! As you could imagine it was a very peaceful island. We visited the Basilica di Santa Maria dell’Assunta, the oldest building in Venice dating back to 638. We boarded our boat for the short trip back to Venice. When we hit land again we decided to wander home a different way as it was our last night in Venice.

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