Finally.. Back to Rome!

A beloved relative asks me to finish this story up... so, much later I get to within two days of the end....

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Today was a day of catching up. The B-man intercepted my mother's plan to have us journey by train, bus, and alpaca-sheep pulled jitney to a place on the coast where we could then mount vaguely trained pigs with unstrapped saddles. After a two-hour porcine perambulation we might hit a beach where it was rumoured we could "see" every kind of sand that made up the Italian coast. Oddly, pictures are forbidden at this site - in fact you are required to wear a mask that obscures all sight, in this way you can't describe the beach or its approaches to others. Apparently this keeps the mystery intact although it makes the experience primarily tactile. You are also required to strip down to your underpants as a protection against theft of sand. After, there is a quite invasive security check to make sure that sand is not escaping in any of the odd body crevices that it seems to do after beach visits.

But moms wanted to go.

B-man and I had a short discussion of light-hearted boy type things: What it costs to have a relative declared insane; the likelihood the tide would take out a woman mysteriously rendered unconscious on the beach; the chance there was a strip-bar anywhere near the Vatican. Instead of any of those options, we decided to listen to our hearts, and we stayed downtown to catch up on some things we hadn't quite done. This began with a trip back to the forum, which I loved just as much as I had the first time. It's a cool place, partly because it may be the perfect visual definition of a ruin - there is enough totally cool shit there to allow a visitor to sit back and indulge in their Roman Senator fantasies....

"I want the one with the sultry eyes! The sassy one with the wiggle in her walk. Centurion, bring me THAT one!" Then of course, at the senator's command, the Centurion approaches the unwilling object of desire who is helpless to refuse the demands of the Senator. She struggles anyway. It is to no avail, as we say when imagining books with Fabio on the cover. The Centurion throws her under one of his beefy arms. The senator smirks with sweaty anticipation and derision.

The senator loves him some those bacon strips, and that pig is headed straight to the Senatorial butcher's chamber, only to return as bacon, chops, and unameable piggish delicacies."

Which probably isn't how you thought that little fantasy was going to end, but that's the great thing about being a Roman Senator. It's your own goddamned fantasy and plebes like the reader haven't a damn thing to say about it. In any case, the ruins are sufficient to allow you to glimpse the past, but they are also ruined enough so that you know this particular game of pigs is entirely over. There's a beauty and wistfulness to this combination that can't be overstated.

We went through the Forum rather quickly, since we had been there before, and we headed on to Palatine Hill. We took a short detour over the Emmanuel Due Thingy so that I could reshoot a picture of the POSSLQ in my favorite pose: Eternal Repose.

I knew Palatine Hill from my years taking Latin, although it had primarily stuck in my dope-addled head because of the Palatine Geese. The Palatine Geese saved Rome, you see. The evil Gauls, taking a break from fighting amongst themselves, asses painted blue and wearing hairdos out of a Mel Gibson movie, had attacked Rome. It had something to do with a booze shortage back in the motherland. The Gauls cut off the food of the noble Roman defenders who, with a l'orange sauce in hand occasionally contemplated the geese who resided in the temple of Juno. Thank God(s) the Romans were superstitious gits who were afraid to offend Juno who, up to now, had been doing a splendid job helping them - Gauls about to overrun and kill them all notwithstanding. One evening a valiant soldier, Marco Manlio, who was no doubt out for an evening slash, heard a noise. He also noticed that the geese were all aflutter. Manlio (who had the butch-est name in all of Rome) ran along the defensive wall and shortly found himself nose to nose with a Gaul, who was followed by a few buddies who had bad thoughts in their hearts. Manlio, living up to his name, tossed the first Gaul back down the wall. He hollered like a child, the geese upped their cackling and the Romans woke up and repulsed the Gallic attack.

Which is why it came as a dissapointment to me to figure out, once we got up on the Palatine Hill, that it was actually the Capitoline Geese and that the Capitoline Hill was an entirely different hill. It lends credence to the argument my mother made during my high school years that I might be smoking too much dope.

Anyway, we bought tickets to the Palatine Hill (and Coliseum and Mostro) and it was gorgeous. The ruins were bigger... less columnar than the Forum.. but vast and in many cases better preserved. The hill it is built on has a large, flat top and there were some pretty awesome vistas. That picture below on the right is a poorly stitched panorama or pics showing one view of the top. The bigger picture is available somewhere like here. The picture below it to the right is just one little bit of the larger picture and I leave it to the sober eye of the reader (if there is one) to determine where it fits in the big picture. The hill also had a lovely view of the Circus Maximus which was named after P.T. Barnum in the last years before the birth of Christ. We wandered around for a couple of hours. I kept looking for this one shot that I knew was out there --- I'd seen it -- a shot of the Coliseum from above and to the right of the large wall. I wandered and wandered but that part of the hill was closed off, even though I could easily see where the photos had been taken from when I stood below the Palatine hill near the base of the Coliseum. That was a bit frustrating, so I had a lovely beer from one of the vendors at the place. Perhaps more than one.

That picture over there to the left is... well, it includes several important historical features. Yeah, I think that's pretty safe to say. ;-)

The POSSLQ and Parentals had taken a different path than I, so I squatted in the dirt until they caught up with me. I think that must be a metaphor for something. Anyway we went in search of the Mostro, since I had already seen the Coliseum and we agreed that if the Coliseum were left for the afternooon the others could see it while I snuck off in search of the strip bar.

The good news, as I shared with kith and kin, was that I knew where the Mostro was. I had spotted it the first time we came over to the Forum/Coliseum/Mostro and I got separated from them. While I had waited I had also reconnoitred. As canny native guide I walked them around the Coliseum and proudly pointed the Mostro out. It was just as popular this day as it had been the first day I spotted it. But B-man was staring at me like a Roman Senator might stare at a bit of bad pork.

"That's the subway station," said the B-man.

I looked. Lo and Behold. It was the subway station. I didn't really know what to say.

"Well, look, it is popular," I tried dispiritedly."

B-man just stared and shook his head in resignation.

Unfortunately, while B-man and I had been passing off this Wildean dialogue, the POSSLQ had wandered off and decided she needed a picture with one of the rent-a-centurions who plague any Roman ruin, looking illy-shaven and sucking down cigarettes.

The next 10 minutes alternated between the POSSLQ wandering in random semi-circular patterns crying for a rent-a-centurion and the rest of us trying to figure out what the hell the "Mostro" was and where we could find it.

Wisdom came before expenditure and someone told us the "Mostro" was just the Forum and, no, our informant had no idea why something that was free to the public was listed on a ticket that cost 11.5 Euros.

POSSLQ, sensing that I had squirreled away just enough money for a hooker and some absinthe, actually found three freaking centurions (each a towering 5 foot 5 - I have no idea how Rome ever won any war that required physical exertion - the were cigarette smoking dwarves, and when I saw their soccer team I also discovered they were world class floppers/divers/surrenderers). So this cost me 5 Euros that I could have spent on delicious, delicious, memory-erasing alcohol.

At least everyone mostly forgot my brilliant guess as to where the "Mostro" was.

In the meantime, perhaps before, I scarpered off to take some kind of cliched picture of the Coliseum.

Can't come back from Rome without a picture of the Coliseum.

We buggered off for lunch, after which mom and I started walking home, whereupon the rain fell in biblical proprortions. We hopped the bus while B-man and POSSLQ had headed off towards to Coliseum, which they thoroughly checked out.

I read the rest of the afternoon away, perhaps interrupted by the odd swig of red wine an smidgeon of crackers and cheese. Staying in Rome can be pretty tough.

After that it was the traditional wine-red dinner and the big sleep.