Menton
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Summer 1998 Bicycle Trip: Two wheels, nine weeks, 4500 km Brian Lucas |
Part I: Winnipeg to Toronto Part II: Nice to Rome Part III: Berlin to Amsterdam |
Part II: Nice to Rome (France and Italy)
THE CÔTE D'AZUR
July 17: Nice - Menton
I reassembled my bike behind the car-rental booth at the airport and proudly rode across town. The youth hostel is well-signed. That was a pattern in Europe: HI hostels all seem to have direction signs posted around town, or at least from the train station where hostellers are most likely to see them. Definitely not the case in Canada. The Nice hostel (where I had tried to reserve in advance without any luck) was full, so they said go on to Menton, 30 km farther. I tried to get there before 12:00 (they close for the middle of the day) but didn't make it. The Menton hostel sits on the top of a high steep hill, and you can either take the road or a long staircase, the Escalier des Oranges. I started to walk up the staircase -- big mistake! I carried my loaded bike all the way up. All this on only an airline breakfast and almost no sleep.
Menton
Also at the top of the hill is the town campground. I talked for an hour with a guy who had been sleeping in his van in the parking lot, and emerged just as I was looking around. I waffled for a long time and then decided to stay in the campground. I left all my worldly possessions in my tent at "Camping St. Michel" and dropped back down into town for groceries. Stopped at a few fruit markets and other food stores, and strolled the pedestrian mall.
The road runs along the shore, with beach on one side and buildings on the other. Rows of restaurant tables on the beach, and waiters dashed across the street carrying plates of food.
The drivers here are quite nice, they give me lots of room on the road and even wait politely to pass me. There were other cyclists, but they were mostly jersey-clad precision teams, looking as if they might have aspirations for the Tour de France.
The scenery is totally beautiful and spectacular, the mountains dropping into the sea. I fear for my brakes, though.
July 18
Up late, left the campground and took the D-road into Monaco. There I got stuck for a while, because I had a hard time finding my way through to the west side. Obviously a rich place, everything screams money. Finally I arrived at Cap d'Ail to find that the lunchtime closing that the guidebooks talk about is real. The tourist office was closed until 14:30. So I had lunch at the top of a long staircase leading down to a ravine. There is a beach of some kind down there. A conservative one, I guess: the sign at the top of the stairs reads "nudisme interdit".
Returned to the Cap d'Ail tourist office. An American woman was there tending scrapes on her knees, she's headed east on a rented bike. I got directions to the hostel, and went down to it and waited for it to open.
The Cap d'Ail hostel, the "Relais International de la Jeunesse" is very nice. There's a large school group (Polish, I think) staying there, and I sort of got the impression that the hostel manager was tired of the tour group. It's not the best-organized hostel in the world, but the location is fabulous, right on the seashore, with a rocky beach. Cap d'Ail is a small town and food seemed fairly cheap. I'm living on bread, tomatoes, emmental cheese, and fruit.
Cap d'Ail hostel
I had trouble mixing with people at the hostel at first, but was adopted by Sarah from New Zealand, who was very nice. On Sunday, Sarah and Rebecca (from the USA) and I walked along the beach to Monaco. It was a beautiful 45-minute walk.
Monaco is, as I said before, rich. We walked around the port and saw enormous sailboats and motor yachts. We went up to the casino but didn't go inside. Up to the palace square; the girls left to return to the hostel, and I visited the Napoleonic museum and palace archives. 20F. I wasn't too impressed, actually. There were some neat things about Napoleon. I got interested in a collection of documents that he signed. In the beginning, he signed his declarations "en nom des peuple francais" (in the name of the French people), and gradually he accumulated more and more titles: "Emporer of France, King of Italy, Moderator of the Swiss Confederacy, etc, etc." His signature changes over the years, starting fairly simple, becoming increasingly grandiose, and then at Elba he returned to a simpler, readable writing. Mostly the museum is a collection of documents he signed, old medals, socks he wore, that sort of thing. The Monaco history part was disappointing, too. Actually, my best explanation of Monagasque history came from a pamphlet handed out at a tourist information booth. I asked a girl in a tourist info booth at the docks, and she gave me what she had handy. Then I walked away, and she came running out of her booth and chased after me to give me another pamphlet.
Went to check my email at "Stars 'n' Bars", which is just what it sounds like, an American bar on the docks. 40F for half an hour. Returned to the hostel, ate supper on the beach, and then went for a walk into town with Sarah and Rebecca. We ended with a beer at a beachside bar in a perfectly lovely setting. I guess the Australians trying to pick up girls at the bar were part of the classic stereotype too, although they were a little bit annoying.
Oh, by the way, my tan from biker-shorts and t-shirt is dreadful-looking.
I'm settling in and feeling really happy and comfortable. I've done a day in Nice, a day in Monaco, am now I'm quite comfortable in Cap d'Ail. Perhaps its time to move on.
Walked in Old Nice for a while. Interesting. The best thing about it is that the streets are very narrow and the buildings rather tall, so there is plenty of shade. A good thing to do on a hot day. Plenty of cafes. There are lots of cities in North America which claim to have "the most restaurants per capita in North America" but they all must come in a distant comparison to any French city. Lots of clothing stores, and souvenir shops. It's also worthwhile to take a turn or two off the main tourist alleys and walk down a real street or two. It's like going backstage. You can look back and see the crowds passing on the tourist street while the side street you're on is empty.
Also looked through the giant rummage sale and junk collectors' meet (the "Marché à la brocante / Antique and Flea Market") in the Cours Saleya, off Quai des Etats Unis. Worth it if you're a junk collector, I suppose but not for a backpacker, because you have to carry what you find.
It was impossible during the middle of the day to find exchange bureaus downtown, they were all closed. So I ended up going out to the airport -- actually not very far -- and got a bad rate (3.68F for C$1) but I did make an interesting discovery: automatic bill-changing machines that accept bills from any of a dozen different countries and give you back local currency.
Cap d'Ail is a village, one of many along the coast. There are two ways to get to Nice: the N98 Basse Corniche, or the N7 Moyenne Corniche, which as the name implies runs slightly higher up. There is also the A8, but that's a major highway where cyclists are not permitted. The N7 is straighter, but you have to climb higher to get onto it. The N98 winds along close to the shore; I recommend it as the better cycling road. Close to Menton, the two roads join. The entire area is quite compact, perhaps 20 km from Nice to Monaco and another 10 km to Menton.
Like Niagara Falls, I think you can overdo this area unless your goal is really just to lie on the beach, in which case you're in heaven. But a day for each of Monaco, Menton, and Nice, while based in Cap d'Ail, seems perfect.
A recurring theme in our conversations at the hostel is how much the local residents must hate the tourists. The locals (who actually are probably only part-time inhabitants, the houses are all probably rich peoples' holiday villas) live in their villas behind high prickly walls and gates, allowing no sign of themselves to show.
Interestingly, evening is a popular time for departures from the hostel -- people taking night trains, I suppose.
Rebecca recommended to me the Cinque Terre, Budapest, and Salzburg.
On the morning of my (and her) last day, I gave Rebecca my copy of Neither Here nor There on the condition that she pass it on to another traveler. I wonder how far that book will get.
So I'm off to Italy.
FINALE LIGURE: THE ITALIAN RIVIERA
Entered Italy at 10:20 am, just outside Menton. There is an old border crossing station there, but it's boarded up and there are no border controls at all. For that, if nothing else, the EU is in my opinion a good thing.
The ride from Menton through my first piece of Italy was pretty bad. The road is solid city for a long time, very busy and crowded. It did get nicer as I went farther along, and the views were continuously spectacular of course.
Finale Ligure
About 5 km south of Finale Ligure, an Italian guy drafted behind me for a while. When I pulled over to check my map, he stopped, came back, and asked where I was going. We settled on communicating in French. He led me to the hostel in Finale -- he knew the place and was friends with the fellow at the desk -- bought me a beer, and we chatted for a while. He lives in Savona. He invited me to come on a ride with him tomorrow into the mountains and the area around Savona. I said, great!
I think I like Italians. I had the most wonderful experience buying food today. I went to a little shop and tried out my few phrases of Italian, and chatted with the shopkeeper as best I could, told him where I was from and what I was doing. He was very friendly and really seemed to enjoy talking. Groceries cost L19,000, which is nicely under budget.
The hostel (also L19,000) is in a very interesting building, a castle-like structure (actually a fairly modern building, constructed in a style so as to look old) on a hill. My room is in a tower.
Finale Ligure hostel
The beach was interesting. Things get started late: at 9:00 pm, the vendors were just starting to put out their wares. A jazz concert was about to begin. But I left -- I was really afraid that I wouldn't be able to find the hostel in the dark (I hadn't had much time to pay attention to where it was when Rosario took me up there) and I did have a hard time finding it.
Food discovery: Nutella. Evil stuff, as addictive as ever.
22 July
A fabulous day! Breakfast was at 7:30. The hostel provided only two buns and a cup of hot chocolate, not enough to ride a bicycle, so I went up the hill behind th But I left -- I was really afraid that I wouldn't be able to find the hostel in the dark (I hadn't had much time to pay attention to where it was when Rosario took me up there) and I did have a hard time finding it.
Food discovery: Nutella. Evil stuff, as addictive as ever.
22 July
A fabulous day! Breakfast was at 7:30. The hostel provided only two buns and a cup of hot chocolate, not enough to ride a bicycle, so I went up the hill behind the hostel and had a picnic breakfast from my groceries. I met Rosario at 9:00 and we rode around the area. We went first to Borgio, then uphill to a tiny little village that seemed to be huddled together almost as one structure. Stone passageways and narrow paths which appeared not to have changed in a thousand years, except that now the bar has a neon sign out front. (Later, at Ostia Antica near Rome, I found out that things truly hadn't changed, in almost two thousand years.)
Rosario was a high school teacher and certainly seemed to have my "course" well-planned this day. We did a lot of climbing, and visited several small hill towns which were well back from the seashore and thus were less touristy and less crowded generally than the beachfront. We ate pizza and focaccia in a village piazza somewhere. We tried to drop in on a friend of his who wasn't home, and snagged two peaches from the bushes in his friend's yard. I can't say enough about the views.
We then went down to the beach, changed into swimsuits Italian-style (lay a towel over your lap as you change), and swam in the beautiful clear water, so clear that you can see for great distances underwater and it's hard to judge the depth of the water although you can see right to the bottom.
Rosario really knew the area well, he knew just where the water fountains were. There are public water fountains all over, but they're not always obvious or marked. I generally waited to watch someone else drink from the fountain first before I did, just to make sure that at least somebody considered it drinkable.
It's hot here, it really is very hot. In the early afternoon, it bakes, the sand on the beach becomes nearly too hot to walk on, the stones too hot to touch. The heat saps your energy, until all I wanted to do was sit under a tree and sleep. I understand now why the first lesson on my "Italian for tourists" cassette tapes introduced the words "ombrelloni", "olio solare", and "scottatura". (Beach umbrella or shade umbrella, suntan lotion, and sunburn.)
Multigrain bread is hard to come by in Italy. The word for it is apparently "pano con ceriali" or "con molto ceriali" but I don't think I ever actually got any the whole time I was in Italy. The fruit, however, is marvelous.
My memory of Liguria is mountain roads, hot sun, castles, old churches, grapes, and peaches.
Memorable line: two Germans who had driven here commented that the advantage of driving was that they didn't have to worry about climbing the huge staircase to get to the hostel. Yes, I said, but you have to worry about parking. "Does it look like the Italians worry about that?" he laughed. "They just leave their cars wherever they want and walk away!" Which is quite true. They also fold their side-view mirrors in, presumably to avoid having them ripped off by the cars driving past their at they were not very sympathique. He'd been trying to communicate in English, they'd had a misunderstanding, and the hostel woman had gotten angry. I figure running a hostel is hard work and the people who do it become tired and burnt out. Some hostels rely on hiring young people, travelers themselves, as short-term workers, which seems to work out better from a customer-service point of view but must be complicated in its own way.
GENOVA
July 23
The ride to Genova was faster than I expected. The part of the route that went through the city was yucky and polluted. I'm sure the scooters and mopeds, which belch blue smoke from their small engines, are responsible for a lot of that. The final approach to Genova was terrible. You enter town through a long industrial section which is not a pleasant drive at all.
I had a very hard time finding my way around Genova. It's a big city, a working city, and not particularly friendly to tourists, it seemed to me. The piazza next to their main tourist attraction -- the aquarium, which is supposed to be the largest in Europe and the second-largest in the world -- has a unkempt, dirty, disorganized feel to it. Almost as if to point out that the port is a working port, and a big one. I had difficulty finding the tourist information office, and then tremendous difficulty finding the hostel. I did get quite a tour of the city, and climbed to the top of one of the hills surrounding the city. Finally, though, I saw the hostel sign and was quickly in the hostel. Once you are on the right track, it's pretty well signed, but you have to spot that first sign. Maybe I'm giving them too hard a time; I guess if I'd arrived by train, I would have seen the trail right away. But I conclude that the most useless maps in the world are those in the directory of hostels which claim to show you the location of the hostels.
The Genova hostel is an industrial apartment hostel, no charm whatsoever. For L22,000 a night I am in a room with eight beds. It's clean, but not interesting.
Food of the day: peaches. Back home, I never understood peaches. They just didn't seem like a very appealing fruit to me -- tasteless, bland, boring. But here, peaches are soft, juicy, sweet, wonderful. I finally understand why people eat peaches.
After dinner, I went down to the Porto Antico (old port) to find a Spanish guitar concert which the tourist office had told me about. I went down one alley, a block off the port, and found the concert, on the steps of a church in a tiny piazza. It was really nice.
Genova, though, doesn't feel safe to me. I didn't feel secure coming home after the concert, even through the hostel's neighborhood. Not that there was anything that justified this fear, but I just didn't feel comfortable. In the area around the Acquario, it's poorly lit and dirty. Maybe I was just sensing the contrast between the beach resorts I had been in the previous few days, and a real city. I think the police presence made me uncomfortable, though. You have to figure that where there is a large police presence, it's probably because there's a need -- and there was a large presence. They tend to walk four or more abreast, and between the three types of police that were there (municipal, state, and carabinieri), there seemed to be a lot of them.
At the hostel, I chatted with a fellow from Minnesota who complained that he couldn't find any grocery stores. I suspected that the solution for him was to stop looking for American-style supermarkets and be content with small European shops.
July 24
In the morning, I went to see the Padiglione del mare e della navigazione, a museum about sailing. Not open until 10:30 so I took a short walk in the old town and bought bread and pizza for lunch. The old town here has smaller streets than I've seen before, more like hallways than streets, and is more crowded than I've seen so far, too.
The Padiglione del mare is very interesting. Admission L9,000. Exhibits on mapmaking, the Italian Istiuto Idrografico, navigational instruments, shipbuilding, and so on. Lots of maps and models of ships. I spent about two hours. Most of the labels were in Italian but there was some English as well. I was surprised to find that I was pretty much the only visitor! The museum has been here for 1½ years (much of the rest of the building is still under construction or renovation, and appears to be waiting for other tenants to move in) and the lady at the reception says all of the marketing efforts center around the Acquario, with no promotion of the Padiglione.
So I went to the Acquario. Expensive - L19,000. Good, I suppose. I was turned off by the entrance - a guy in a penguin suit grabbed me to have my photo taken, you can buy the photo on the way out if you want to. I was annoyed, it felt like I was getting mugged by a giant penguin.
Went to Internet Village in the northeast part of town (directed there by the tourist office) to do some Internetting on a very slow connection at L8,000 per half hour.
Returned to the hostel and ate dinner for L13,000. Instant spaghetti and bread, beer, yogurt, and white chocolate. I've eaten more white bread in the past week than I have in the past year, I think.
July 25
Left Genova early. I've lost my Liguria map so I'm going on roadside signs and the assurance of the tourist office that Levanto and La Spezia are on the same road. I think I'm not on the most efficient route. I climbed way, way, way up out of Siestra Levante through what I think was some sort of wilderness preserve. It was incredibly hot and a long, hard climb. Eventually, I found a turnoff to Levanto and began a long descent, more than six kilometers of pure downhill.
The midday siesta is a very good idea here, the heat makes exertion difficult. I hate to stop when I don't know how much father I will have to go, but I've adopted the practice.
Bicycles here seem to be mostly fitness toys, workout machines. Occasionally I'll see an older person doing errands in town, but most cyclists are fitness freaks, or at least want to look that way. There are mopeds and scooters everywhere. In Italy, at a red light the cars all stop and the mopeds and scooters weave their way up past the stopped cars to the front of the line. Ten or more may gather at the front. Then, just before the light changes, the motos are off like the start of a race.
Car drivers seem very accommodating to me, and wait for me in circumstances where Canadian or American drivers never would. Maybe they've been conditioned by the scooters and mopeds.
The guardrails on highways sometimes make me worry. They're pretty flimsy, although maybe it doesn't take much to hold back a Fiat 500. That's not the problem from my point of view, though. They are very low, and I worry about sideswiping one. They would hit me below the axle, and so tip me right over the edge and toss me over the cliff.
LEVANTO AND THE CINQUE TERRE
At Levanto, I had my first 100% Italian interaction in the tourist office. Nothing profound, mind you, but I managed to ask questions in Italian and understand the answers, with much pointing on maps. I bought food at two stores, including a large container of Nutella. Mm, sugar.
Three campgrounds were full, but the fourth let me in. I was not impressed by what Italians call "camping". A crowded, barren, place, costing L18,000. So much for saving money by camping instead of hostelling.
A typical campground
Later I went into town to see if I could find a schedule for the boat to Riomaggiore, so I could do the Cinque Terre walking trail. And I found out why the campgrounds were so full: it was the night of a big festival. The "Solenne Processione: Confraternite liguri con i loro crocefissi."
The town was packed with people, several downtown streets had booths selling food and various carnival-type things, and there were a few carnival rides set up. Even a beer garden. Then I heard a marching band and went over to see the parade. It was a procession of crucifixes, each easily 12-15 feet high with a Christ figure on it, ornamented with metal leaves. The cross was carried upright by one person using a special harness, and balanced against the person's shoulders. The crosses were evidently very heavy and the person carrying them had to be careful to balance the weight so it wouldn't fall over; they didn't use their hands to steady the cross. Each bearer had a team of colleagues, and from time to time they would pass the cross from one member of the team to another. This was a delicate operation in which the whole team held the cross up with their hands, the bearer got out from under it, and the new bearer quickly dove under it to take up the load. The cross bearers, all men, wore costumes of simple white or colored robes, and small caps. The teams represented local churches or other organizations. There were also occasional marching bands interspersed among the crucifixes, and at the end of the procession -- there were probably 20 or 30 crucifixes -- was a priest speaking through a loudspeaker, walking with a group of uniformed men who appeared to be local police or military officials, and a Christ figure on a litter.
The procession ended up on the beach, and the crucifixes were lined up on one side. As night fell, people cast floating candles into the sea, and a ceremony took place on a boat some distance off the beach, but I didn't understand any of it. When it was over, a really fine fireworks show took place.
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The trail is narrow -- it was rare to be able to walk side-by-side or pass people coming in the other direction. Often sheer drops by the side of the trail. Scads of foreigners, of course.
Apparently the Cinque Terre region was, a few years ago, a quiet little seaside area, fairly inaccessible, and known only to a few. People say that Rick Steves' travel guide books changed all that, and now hordes of tourists descend on the area. Around the train station in Riomaggiore you see signs asking tourists to "do not disturb" after dark, to not throw glass away, and so on.
I took a train back from Riomaggiore to Levanto, L2,000 and change for a 20-minute ride which seemed like a subway train. Trains every half hour or so during the day. My first experience with the Italian railways -- a ticket sales agent who seemed supremely bored and uninterested in doing anything. I thought this might have been a reaction to hordes of tourists and rowdy backpackers from Mama Rossi's hostel, but he turned out to be typical of Italian railway staff.
CINQUE TERRE TO ROMA
July 27
Up early and rolled out of the campground at 9:00. Rode 70 km to Marina di Massa, which has a very nice hostel. There is a kitchen with coin-operated stoves, and interesting grounds with big hedges, all very picturesque. Had an interesting talk with my hostel roommates tonight.
July 28
Rode
the next day to Pisa. I hadn't planned to stop in Pisa, thinking that I was
above that sort of tourist trap, but you can see the leaning tower from the
highway and when I did, I decided, what the heck. The tower is more striking
than I had expected it to be. I ate lunch in the shade of the cathedral, and
took a photo of the people taking photos of each other "holding up the tower".
One was pushing it over instead. I hung around for a few hours in the general
area of the cathedral and tower, found a beautiful corner of the university
campus which is in the old city there, and then moved on to a campground called
"Rada Etrusca" in a town called Vada. Typical campground but larger and cheaper,
L12,000. I sort of regret not stopping in Livorno, which seemed like it may
have been an interesting town but I was in a go-go-go mood today -- I'm now
riding on the flat Etruscan plains -- and I didn't really feel like stopping.
July 29
Rode on and took a side trip to Populone, 5 km off the main road. I originally was headed for an archaeological park which sounded interesting, but instead went straight for Populone itself. The last one or two kilometres were a steep climb, but absolutely worth it. The view is incredible. On one side, the sea. On the other, all Tuscany is laid out in a stunning display with the mountains in the background. It's a bit out of the way, and uphill, but I still recommend it. There's a castle at the top of the hill which has a few touristy things but isn't really much.
July 30
Pressed on hard today. Had a siesta at Montalto di Castro / Montalto Marina. When I arrived (at about 2:30 pm), the place was shuttered and deserted. Not a person on the streets, everything quiet and deserted. (In fact, at the last campground, there was a sign proclaiming quiet time in the evening and also from about 12:00-16:00.) I guess the afternoon naps explain why people can stay up late and get up early, too. There are lizards here that seem to be analogous to squirrels back home. There's a kind of pine tree here, called "pinete", that is very tall with a bare trunk and all of the branches and needles in a tuft at the top of the tree. There is virtually no undergrowth in a pinete forest. There are also not many pinete forests, but I presume that at one time they covered much of the plain.
I had planned to get maps and a camping spot earlier, but I just kept on rolling until it was almost dark and I was on the road to Rome. I didn't find any place to stop for a long time and I had almost resigned myself to riding into Rome, when finally, only 35 km from the city, I found a camping ground. It's a seasonal campground, costing me L25,000, and there is a grocery store, video games, a bar, and family-oriented music and dancing. The music is a guy with a fancy electronic keyboard who sings. They were doing some kind of Italian line dance.
ROME
July 31
"Quickly" rode into Rome. Rome is like New York City in atmosphere and in traffic, but NYC has two advantages: (1) the streets are numbered and (2) the streets are straight. In Rome, no street is straight -- or if you do find a straight street, you're guaranteed that it will soon turn into two one-way streets facing each other in opposite directions. Plazas are everywhere, intersections are free-for-alls, horrible to drive in. Rome's cobblestone roads are also terribly jarring to the bicycle. (The advantages that Rome has over NYC are its parks and the water fountains, which are available all over.
I tried to find the Post Office, as I was hoping to receive some poste restante, but it took me a long time of circling around the area. When I did finally find the Post Office, it was closed, although the posted hours said it should be open and several other people joined me in peering in the barred windows.
Hostel check-in was a mess. The process was to take a numbered form, fill it out, wait for your number to be called, and then proceed to the desk. But this was not obvious and the forms are only available from desk #2. The hostel was not pretty, but it was functional. L24k per night.
Rome is going to be expensive. Gelati are 1.5 to twice as expensive as elsewhere in Italy. Supper was a panino and a chocolate bar for L7000, not too bad I guess but it was a small sandwich and I eat a lot when I'm riding. I guess between that and the L6000 pizza for lunch (also not very substantial, frozen pizza from the hostel), I'm under budget but also under-satisfied.
Today I started to feel like I was tired of traveling. It's been four weeks in Canada and the USA, and two weeks in Europe so far. Maybe it's the heat, or the language difficulty. Or maybe I'm getting tired of cycling, of getting up each morning and just spinning the pedals. Traveling can be as monotonous as anything, I guess, if it is all you do. And my loneliness is having something to do with this as well. I wish I could share the experiences with someone. And yet, I find it fairly difficult to meet people, even in hostels. Other people do it, but I'm just not as good at it as they are.
Aug 1
I started the day at the post office, which was easier to find this time, but still tough. At least it was open. I was sent to the next building, where Post Restante was easy to find, but there was no mail for me. Oh, well. Next, I went to the tourist information office and got info on Ostia Antica. Open tomorrow, ok. Went to the "Enjoy Rome" office, which is a place catering to backpackers, where they run tours and book rooms. They're associated with one of the hostels. It seems pretty cool. I booked a walking tour for the evening.
Next stop: Vatican City. It is only open 8:45-12:45, there are no museums open outside that time. But St. Peter's Basilica is open until 6:00 pm every day, and it's free. And it's spectacular. It really made me think about how people must really crave grandeur and spectacle... and it made me think about how many people paid for it. It's amazing, it's imposing, and it is actually beautiful. Hundreds of years of history in many of those objects. But the money, the resources that have gone into it! I really got the message that Catholic Church is a huge worldwide power, a government of sorts, with its capital right here before me. I thought of one of my favourite books, A Canticle for Leibowitz, and the continuity of history. There is a wall with the names of the popes, from St. Peter to John Paul II. The wall bears dates from 64 to 1978; there is space for another 500 years before they will need a new wall. It's huge, impressive, intended to overawe people with the glory and power it represents.
I've always had simpler tastes, myself. I never understood, for example, why I should spend my money at a store or a bank with fabulously expensive decorations. Clearly they're spending my money on the decor. Shouldn't I instead commit my resources to the place where things are spent efficiently on the minimum required for performance? Not on frills? But I think I was wrong. People don't respond well to simplicity, they respond instead to ostentatious displays of wealth, and the Vatican exemplifies this.
Tip for travelers: carry trousers in your pack, and change in the free toilets next to the Vatican tourist info and souvenir shop. They do check your clothes as you enter the basilica, and they don't like shorts.
The "Treasures of St. Peter" is a display of gold and jewels and old artifacts. Not worth the price of admission, in my opinion. A walk through the catacombs is free and interesting -- probably a lot more interesting with a guidebook though. It consists of old artifacts, epitaphs, some views into some private prayer rooms, and the tombs of the popes.
I sat on St. Peter's Square for a long time. Then I biked to Lepanto metro station, where I parked my bike and took the metro to Colosseo station to meet the walking tour group. (It's sort of funny to think that long after the Colosseo stopped being a major sports venue, there is now a metro station there, as if ready to transport football fans to and from the grounds.) Bought a panino for L6000, not as good as the one I had in the park.
The tour began. Our guide was Tracy, from Portland, Oregon. She's tired of Rome, and a little tired of guiding too, I think. Or maybe, as she said, she was out drinking all night and still hadn't recovered. She was less than inspiring, but the tour was worthwhile nevertheless. We saw the Colosseo, the Fora, and so on. It was a three hour tour, and it was useful to get an overview of central ancient Rome. I planned to return to the Forum area later. She recommended visiting the Pantheon later, and the museum in Villa Borghese (but you need to go early and make an appointment for later in the day). But she was correct about one thing: at least now I don't feel that all I saw was a bunch of old rocks and buildings.
The Piazza Navona was interesting. The local equivalent of California's 'Robot Boys' here, all dressed in white. These are the guys who stand stock-still on a pedestal until you drop a coin in their bucket. Then they move mechanically. Generally, the more you give, the more motion you get. Singers were serenading the diners at sidewalk restaurants, just the way it ought to be. On my way back to collect my bike, I stopped and listened to an outdoor concert at Castel Sant'Angelo.
Aug 2
I
got up early, paid for another two nights, and was moved to another (smaller,
hotter) room. Then I hit the road for Ostia Antica, with a stop at a supermarket
on the way. The distance was 37 km, but I didn't take the most direct route
and I did backtrack at one point.
Ostia Antica is absolutely worth the trip. It is an entire ruined city, mostly dating to the the 2nd century, but ranging from the 1st to the 4th. Some kind of guidebook is essential; but the pamphlet I got at the tourist office in Rome was adequate, though, to have some orientation and some idea of what you're looking at. It's really quite amazing. You can wander among them freely, touch almost anything, climb on almost anything. A few sensitive areas, or areas where excavation is proceeding, are closed off, but most of the site is open. And it's not crowded! The city is quite large and you don't encounter many tourists. Occasionally you meet others but for the most part you feel like you're exploring on your own. Around the next corner, what will you find? A corner of a floor mosaic is revealed, hinting at what remains covered. A faded fresco or a broken statue. A stack of columns, lying on their side. A fishmonger's table intact and ready for the cleaver. Mosaics proclaiming "bibe" (drink) with cups, or the marking the entrance to the inn of "Alexander Helix". Really, really fascinating. I spent five hours inside, including time for lunch. There's also a museum inside, where some of the more delicate frescoes and so on have been moved, but it wasn't open at the time I was there.
The
ruins have been restored gradually over the years (small tags date the restorations,
some of which are 80 years old). There are still many areas not yet uncovered.
Some areas are partly uncovered, others are still buried and you can see from
the way a wall disappears into a hillside that there is much more hidden below
the gentle slope.
More photos from Ostia Antica...
Aug 3
Today is the day I sit in Rome and think about leaving it. This morning I found a German coin in my locker, and wondered if it was a sign.
I went to an English bookstore for some travel guidebooks. It was a difficult journey, with one-way streets, must-turn designations, even a street with numbers ascending on one side and descending on the other, but all of Rome's tricks could not stop me, I prevailed and found the place. I bought a Lonely Planet guide for Germany, and one for Prague.
I wandered through the Imperial Forum (not so interesting, not after Ostia Antica) and around the Colosseo. I sat in the gardens behind the Colosseo, saw an exhibit of Tolkienesque art from the local fan club (the "Societa Tolkieniana Italiana"), and spent a few hours reading my books, deciding where to go. In the end, my destination was decided for me by the Italian railway.
On the walking tour, Tracy had told us a story about one emporer who was displeased by the amount of applause the people gave him as he entered the Colosseo. He had the exits barred and had the roof opened completely. People died of heatstroke. (Did you know that the Colosseo had a movable fabric roof? So many centuries later, we still have trouble with movable stadium roofs.) Anyway, I had a flashback to this as I stood in the queue in the train station and watched three idle Ferrostradale employees chatting together and looking out at us through their window.
The ticket agents are monumentally unhelpful. Well, perhaps that's unfair. The agent that I dealt with was monumentally unhelpful, I suppose I can't generalize. His every action showed a complete lack of interest or desire to help. Even when he pushed my ticket and change through the window, he didn't actually push them through; he laid it on the counter on his side of the window so I had to stick my hand through the small hole to get them. I noticed that he also had his "Aperto" (open) sign upside-down. Deliberately, I wonder?
But I screwed up. I bought a ticket to Vienna, and then I mentioned my bicycle. Oops, should have mentioned the bicycle first. After running around to two or three other windows, I determined that the only international train from Rome that carries bicycles is the one to Munich. Can I get my ticket changed? No, I have to buy a new ticket and then apply for a refund of the first one. The form, by the way, says that non-use of a ticket does not necessarily constitute grounds for a refund.
Despite those difficulties, I'm in a very good mood. I started out by actually finding what I was looking for, despite the one-way streets. I succeeded in finding my way around. I had a siesta. I fought with the train station, which should have destroyed my morale, but I ended up feeling ok, I guess. I ran into a family from Canada who boosted my spirits, and I told them to visit Ostia Antica. Rome is difficult, it's annoying... but I am getting the hang of it. I'm starting to figure the city out, and its perversity is becoming vaguely amusing.
August 4
Departure day. I went to the train station early (I had trouble finding it again) to see if I could check my luggage, and found out that I couldn't. Then I went back to the Enjoy Rome office. The girl I had earlier thought was nice turned out to be quite spinny and I got the general idea that the main qualifications for working there were (a) drinking lots of beer with the guy who owns the Faulty Towers hostel, and (b) the ability to show up for work hung over every day.
I went to an Internet cafe, then returned to the train station and found my way into the train. I was so excited that I forgot to cancel my ticket on the platform. I found the conductor and asked him what to do; he spoke no English but managed to tell me to stamp it when we stopped in Florence. Va bene. He didn't even really mind the train station and watched three idle Ferrostradale employees chatting together and looking out at us through their window.
The ticket agents are monumentally unhelpful. Well, perhaps that's unfair. The agent that I dealt with was monumentally unhelpful, I suppose I can't generalize. His every action showed a complete lack of interest or desire to help. Even when he pushed my ticket and change through the window, he didn't actually push them through; he laid it on the counter on his side of the window so I had to stick my hand through the small hole to get them. I noticed that he also had his "Aperto" (open) sign upside-down. Deliberately, I wonder?
But I screwed up. I bought a ticket to Vienna, and then I mentioned my bicycle. Oops, should have mentioned the bicycle first. After running around to two or three other windows, I determined that the only internationther fully loaded for touring. There's a whole bicycle car on this train. It was a scene that appealed to me. I linger in the station and when I ask a conductor if I can get on any car or if there are seat assignments, he says pick any seat, but hurry, we leave in three minutes. This train has six-seat compartments. I suppose that's great if you're traveling with five friends. The train is Deutsche Bahn equipment with an Italian crew.
Night trains are another reason why it might be nice to travel with someone. I was bored, wishing I'd bought postcards to write, or something. I kill time with a sandwich. The advantage of night trains for budget travelers is of course that they save you a night of accommodations. The disadvantage is that I bet this train goes through some pretty spectacular scenery, and I didn't see a thing.