Roman Holiday

Slowly the money has been dripping away, seeming into those famous Roman canals themselves... a euro here and a euro there... on buses... on Gelati... on this live journal post....

Is it the history all around me or does time really seem to flow differently here?

Yesterday, the first full day in Rome and I saw more than one person could beg to see in a lifetime. We saw the prison where Peter was held and the chains that bound him. Bit's of Jesus's manger, the tomb of Raphael, the colluseum, the pantheon, the church were Carravagio's Peter and Paul are on the walls, the trevi fountain and a million years of nearly untouchable, nearly unimaginable history at our feet.

Within a split second of laying my eyes on Michaelangelo's Moses I was crying inconsolably. My whole life I've ignored that statue is Moses and instead seen him as some sort of mighty and tempermental sea god, thinking about the fates of the world and wringing his beard in his powerful hands. The temptation to risk being arrested and traverse the ten short--but roped off-- feet between me and the statue, just to touch his beautiful smooth face was nearly too much. In every picture my nose is red from crying.

At the Trevi fountain we made our wishes; I can't tell you what they were, but I can tell you the first was for Trina, the second for Tim and, following tradition, the last was for a return to Rome.

Everywhere the master works are peering at you from corners, unexpected. History which stands still while the bustling millions (nearly all speaking English) press and pass their way around them. A fuller Valentine's day has never been.

Let's not forget the food.

Today was Villa Adriana in the outskirts of a Roman suburb called Tivoli. The town itself is Italy at it's quaintest and most loveably picturesque... Villa Adriana is something else entirely.

What used to be the "Villa" of Hadrain, the complex, larger than my home town, was built around 70 A.D. The red brick ruins are larger, farther and more completely complex than even the Roman forum. The forum in Rome proper, a veritable pillar graveyard, is like everything else, fenced off from the people but not the smog. It is beautiful but not nearly as touching to the imagination as Villa Adraina, where the mosaics still exist on the floors and one can easily see where hundreds of people decadently lived, fought and played out their days.

Rome, after two days is tiring but ever awe-inspiring.

Five more days to go and a million stories to tell already... how, if only I could stop the money hemorage and just breath.

Phrase du jour: Parle Inglese?