was early because we had to le
ave by 8:30 am to get to Hausen by 12:00. Hausen, below Stuttgart, is the home of our relatives and friends, Karin and Heinrich Schewe. So after breakfast and gifts, we ran out the door and headed to Hausen...About halfway through the trip, we were overjoyed to see the sun which has been noticeably absent of late in Munich. Munich lies at the base of the alps and weather tends to settle in and stay. Well, we were welcomed to Hausen with a wonderful multi-course lunch with Heinrich and Karin followed by all the Stutz relatives coming to the house. What a party! We got to enjoy a traditional Christmas day with singing, coffee and cake, playing card games AND a late meal! It was a wonderful day although we missed Audrey a lot! After hearing Karin sing in church the next day, we had lunch at a traditional German restaurant with Heinrich's family followed by a snowball fight! It was really a nice trip and great to spend time with family and friends.Following lunch, we raced home, packed our bags and headed out the next day for Rome...How about that...Stuttgart, Munich and Rome all in a day! We arrived in Rome after only 1.5 hours on the plane including
a flight over the Alps. After a train and metro ride, we arrived at the hotel to be greeted by Josh and Lauren Combs...how great to arrive in a new city in another country and have family there! And we were off on our Roman adventure! Rome is all about its past. I mean, we got off the metro stepped onto the sidewalk and looked up to see the Coliseum. So Romans live every day with thousands of years of history all around them! Our goal was to walk the city and see as much as we could...We visited the Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps, the Borghese Palace and ended up in Piazza del Popolo...a large Piazza at the edge of the old city only to discover it housed the church and a chapel with Bernini sculptures discussed in "Angels and Demons" which I was reading at the time. This was very fun but also brought home the fact that as you are walking through Rome, you are surrounded by art from some of the most revered European artists such as Bernini and there is so little fanfare about it that you can miss it! We continued to walk just taking in the sights before settling down to a dinner on a side street...Matt is a firm believer in only choosing restaurants off the beaten path...and had a nice meal of pasta and pizza....the kids went to bed and the parents went to an Irish bar around the corner from the hotel to play darts (even Rome has a bit o' the green in them). Tomorrow, THE VATICAN.OK, you get up early for the Vatican so you can beat the lines...you arrive at the Vatican Museum and find the LONGEST line you have every seen. It literally wraps around 3/4 of Vatican City....Maybe 3-4 hours
long...NIX to that one. After being advised by a very nice woman that there is no line at 2:00 pm, we headed over to St. Peter's Basilica where we climbed the 500+ steps to the cupola to enjoy views of Vatican City, Rome and St. Peter's itself. We wandered through the church whose amazing mosaics looked like paintings, saw many sculptures by great masters including Bernini and admired the amazing architecture. We also got to see Michelangelo's Pieta which literally GLOWS . It is absolutely beautiful. We also got to see the tombs of the popes...not really much to say here except there are lots of them! And we accomplished all this before lunch! Lunch itself was an amusing experience. We stopped in a cafe advertised as The American Cafe (OK the promise of burgers lured us in...you can only eat so much pasta and pizza) to find that a) the burgers were out and b) the food was the "finest frozen food" in Rome. When the food came for Amanda and I, it was in a microwave container. We had to laugh and ate it anyway. It was at this restaurant that we noted a phenomenon which
held true for our entire trip. Every restaurant we went in was empty when we got there and then completely filled. So we were either trendsetters (the most likely answer, of course) or we got hungry just a little early (all you cynics out there will buy into this one, I'm sure). Anyway, after our "American lunch" of frozen food, we heading to the museum which was now lineless (is that a word?) and marched right in. We had prioritized the Sistine Chapel and Raphael Rooms and wanted to speed to those (you can only do so much sightseeing in a day). Well, we soon learned that the Vatican museum resembles Disney World as much as anywhere else (my Catholic friends and family are probably wincing right now). Not only do you get herded to the route that THEY want you to go on but you must pass through several gifts shops on the way. SO, we walked the entire 4 km route which actually had some amazing art including the hall of maps (below right) which was a little like living in my mother's house...every square inch is covered in something, a map, painting, frame whatever. We also got to witness the effect of the "Great Castration"...apparently one of the Popes decided that all those male genitalia on all those sculptures was obscene and had the privates removed to be
replaced by fig leaves which because they don't match the sculpture actually make you look...you know..."there " first! By the time we got to the Raphael Rooms I was beginning to feel a little bit like "so what". However, they were beautiful! Of course, then you finally get to the Sistine Chapel...My first impression, iconoclast that I am, was "This is it?". The famous images were smaller than I expected as was the Chapel....but then, I tilted my head back and really started to look (along with every other head craner in the room) and guess what, I didn't want to stop looking. Though it was crowded and not very comfortable, the paintings really do pull you in. I just wanted to keep looking and as you looked more of the beauty, detail and virtuosity revealed itself. But all good things must come to an end! At this point, we were a tired bedraggled lot. The kids were DONE and frankly, so were the adults...so we finished the tour through the last few gift shops and headed home by metro. Our walk back to the hotel from the metro station included some shopping (leather is very cheap in Italy). After a wonderful dinner, we all slept soundly....Tomorrow the Coliseum.We learned from our experience at the Vatican, to jump the line sign up for a tour. Our tour guide, Aldo, was
as Italian as they come. Every adjective was a superlative and as he told us about the gladiators, the wild animals, the people of Rome, Rome's demise at the hands of the Barbarians, he would close his eyes and speak as if he had been there. Soon our whole group was there with him, watching the elevators rise from the floor of the Coliseum (OK this is the mind's eye talking here), seeing the blood of the gladiators, watching the crocodiles in the flooded floor eat those who fell from the boats they floated (yes, they did that). We saw all this while standing in a rather drab ruins. Most of the coliseum was used as a quarry for later building (including the building of St. Peters) so while the impressive superstructure exists, much of the detail is
forever lost to later monuments. Our early afternoon was spent on the Palatine Hill which is the ancient center of Rome. Romulus and Remus were purportedly raised by their wolf-mother here and it is the birthplace of Rome. It is also the site of the ruins of some early Etruscan villages, one heck of a large palace (Palatine is reported to be the source of the word palace) and a home of Mussolini who felt he should live on the hill that the early Emporers of Rome lived on (too much self-esteem can be a BAD thing). After leaving Palatine hill and a quick jaunt through the Roman Forum (so much history...so little time), we headed to the train station and Naples.AHHH Naples, a city of chaos, where people are everywhere, talking, kissing, fighting. Where crossing the
street is a game of chicken. Where mopeds/vespa speed along the street and straight onto the sidewalk. Where laundry is strung from apartment to apartment so that when you look up on many streets all you can see is clothing. This is the land of La Cosa Nostra, Limoncello, Pizza and Mount Vesuvius. I had read you either love Naples or hate it. WE LOVED IT! It is so alive, the people are friendly and warm and everyone's life takes place on the street. It is the opposite of polite, restrained Munich where people still speak in the formal "you" and most things private are kept that way. The private is public in Naples, from laundry to loving to pooping (you have to ask William to describe what he saw). So of course, we started our adventure in Naples in the most public way. All 7 of us chose to drag our luggage through the crazy crowded streets of Naples rather
than take a taxi...well, the hotel was farther than the guidebook suggested AND there was no mention that the last portion of the walk was straight uphill. So like true Neopolitans, we squabbled, cursed and pushed our way through the streets of Naples to reach our hotel....only to find that the fourth floor hotel had nine sets of steps (don't do the math...its Naples). The single elevator, 10 cents a ride, held little more than one person and some luggage. William volunteered to accompany the luggage which he may have regretted when the elevator started to shake and stopped temporarily between floors 3 and 4 (apparently there is a weight limit...ooops). After checking into simple but clean rooms, we headed into the heart of the old city, where our love of Naples was sealed. We ate the best pizza in the world, visited a Limoncello factory where we purchase this local firewater and walked down a street of shops totally devoted to creches. We then crawled into bed for tomorrow was Pompeii.Every American school student hears about Pompeii. Somehow, the tragedy of this city resonates with our
American lack of history. To know, that 2000 years ago, an entire city was destroyed, its people entombed in ash and mud, and left forgotten for 1,500 years appeals to the imagination of a people whose oldest house is a little more that 400 or 500 years old. To visit this site is to truly see the life of these people who lived, loved and laughed so long ago. The fact that the bodies have been preserved with bones intact via plaster casts (during the excavation, an archeologist figured out that if you poured plaster into the empty spaces in the ash and rock, you can actually "cast" the bodies including the positions of the people as they tried to escape) brings this home even more. They have discovered the bodies of families and animals throughout Pompeii and some of these are on display at the site. It is both fascinating and sad at the same time. The level of preservation of the site is also amazing. Most of the streets are still intact including the well-worn grooves in the stone dug by the donkey carts as they maneuvered the foot-high stepping stones used by people as they walked the city. You can also see stores and restaurants with counters and pots for storing food still intact. You can visit the ornate bath houses where the frescoes still exist on the walls, the baths are there to see and the floor mosaics are still intact. Several houses still have complete rooms and amazing frescoes. There are two theatres, multiple public spaces and houses of ill repute. There is even writing on the walls of the city, advertising the stores and restaurants that line the streets. It was really more than we expected and although many asked before we left "why do you want to see this"....We were all glad we went! A train ride back to Naples, another walk through the city, another pizza dinner (hey, when in Rome or Naples or whatever) and we tumbled exhausted into bed (after a few baba cakes soaked in Limoncello...don't try this at home!).Our last day in Naples was spent exploring the city. Seeing castles, the waterfront and the elegant parts of town. We ate some of the best oranges I have ever eaten, saw many sites and truly enjoyed ourselves. That afternoon, to the airport in Rome for New Years Eve. Although we debated a trip into town, there comes a time when you say DONE. So the kids enjoyed a swim, Andy, Amanda, Matt and I sipped Limoncello and we all watched 2007 turn to 2008. We then got to call back home to the US from one year to the prior year....2008 calling 2007. Then off to bed and an early morning flight back to Munich...the sad part, saying good-bye to the Combs as they headed back to the States. Munich looked good when we got back, the dogs came home and best of all, the next day we got to pick up Audrey who looked happy and relaxed (except for the jet lag part) after her week with her friends back home! Maybe she will blog about her trip?!? We have now settled back into our Munich life but are still missing our friends back home!
