Italia Day One

When I was fourteen, I read a book called The Flames of Rome, which captured my imagination and had me thinking about nothing else besides Nero and the Coliseum for days. Even before then, I read a book about some Roman school kids solving a murder mystery, and I envisioned myself trudging down the Appian Way and the Via Sacra. I never believed for a single minute that I would ever see Rome, let alone walk down the very streets I had read about as a child. I guess that is why this trip meant so much to me. I think that in some way I am probably not even fully aware of, I will always view history in a different light because of our group trip to Italy.
We left on Saturday the third and took a night train to Rome. I had never been on a train before, let alone spent the night on one, and my first trip was quite an experience. I really felt like I was on the Polar Express or Harry Potter (so many literary correlations to be made). The couchettes really are tiny, just like in the movies, and we slept in bunks. On later trips we will not be taking couchettes, simply because they cost an extra forty-five Euro, but I am glad we got to experience them for one night. We sat up for a while talking with our professor and our travel guide, and then we went to bed pretty early.
For me, the craziest part of the train experience was waking up in an entirely different country than the one I went to bed in. As soon as we stepped out of the station, Roberta was waiting to greet us. She was less than five feet tall and probably old enough to be my great-grandmother, but she had more energy than any of us. Roberta’s job was to help us discover the city of Rome, and with waving flag in hand (we couldn’t actually see her from behind when walking in a crowd, so the flag was a definite necessity), she marched us first to the Baths of Caracalla.
The Baths of Caracalla are some of the most extensive ruins in Rome. I think public baths are one of the main points teachers emphasize when talking about ancient Rome, so I had some preconceived and very wrong ideas about what the baths would and wouldn’t look like. I knew there were three main pools of water: the frigidarium (cold water), the tepidarium (tepid water), and the calidarium (hot water). In my mind, I was picturing three Olympic-sized swimming pools. However, though the actual building itself is huge, with spaces for a gymnasium and a library, the pools themselves are pretty small. There was one bigger swimming pool, but it definitely could not accommodate the hundreds of people I had originally envisioned.
Then we went to the Coliseum. I almost wet my pants when I saw it. I had never thought about the Coliseum being a beautiful structure before- I had only thought of it as ancient. It really is breath-taking though. And big. VERY big. The fact that two thousand years ago the Romans had built basically the equivalent of any of our modern stadiums, only without electricity, resonated with me for the first time. It just goes to show that there is nothing new under the sun. We post-modern Americans really aren’t so smart after all.
There is a wooden cross standing on one end of the Coliseum, near the bottom floor. I think you understand without me babbling further.
After the Coliseum, we went to the Roman forum. Once the cultural and religious hub of the city, the forum is now only broken temple columns and large building stones. It might sound retarded, but my favorite part of the forum was standing on the Via Sacra (because I had read about it) and drinking water from a spigot there which came straight from the ancient aqueducts. For some reason, standing there drinking that water, I really understood where I was for the first time.
Then we went to the Pantheon, by far my favorite building of all time. Ok maybe that is an exaggeration, but not a big one. The Pantheon was once a temple dedicated to multiple gods, but now it is a church. I loved its massive domed top, so tall that rain drops evaporate before they hit the floor. The interior is lovely without being tacky or overly decorated. Raphael is buried there. I could have sat in the Pantheon for hours on end, but I didn’t. Instead I went and got some pizza and the best gelato of my life (which is saying something, because gelato in Austria is not exactly a bad thing).
We rested in the hotel for a little while, and then we ate a three course Italian dinner, which I loved. Italian food is absolutely fantastic, about twenty times better than Austrian food. Italians serve pasta as a sort of appetizer, and then they bring the meal. We had bread and outstanding pasta, followed by roast chicken and potatos. Then they brought us a terrible salad adorned with a salt, vinegar, and olive oil dressing. I have learned that Italian dressing is apparently a myth concocted by either Kraft foods or the Olive Garden, because in Italy the only dressing they use is the formula described above. We ended our meal with gelato. I am ashamed to say this, but I ate gelato twice almost every day I was in Italy. There. I have confessed, so please don’t judge.
End of day one, only seven more to go. If you read this far, congratulations!