h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

That'll do! Here's my camera!



Anyone know why, if I look at this thread on the collective page for my journals, I don't see the A-numbers in the first post as links. That only works when I'm looking at it as a conversation?

Off tomorrow. Haven't packed a thing yet.

In Rome you can come as you are:
They know they'll outmode you by far.
So wear what you like,
But don't go by bike.
It's safer by train or by car.

For four days I don't think a bike
Would get there as quick as I'd like
We hope we're all right
With our cheap Irish flight
Maybe next time we should hike

Have a lovely time!

Well you should be getting a nice clear space round you by day 4. Possibly a good day to visit The Trevi.

Hi. I'm back.

Wasn't really taken with Rome much. The pavements are narrow and very potholey. You can't walk next to each other, you have to walk in little trippy steps in front of each other. Even in flat shoes, I was tripping and stumbling all the time. Most walkways seem to be cobblestone and are hell to walk on, especially when wet.

It poured with rain nearly all the time. Had to dry clothes and shoes on the radiator every night.

There is a lot of art. I have tried and tried, but I can't get into art at all. And there didn't seem to be much variation in style either. To me, the interesting thing about the pictures was usually just the content - be it pre-Christian or "Lives of the Great Saints" or depictions of bible stories. OK - the Roman paintings were of course in a different style to Michaelangelo and co.

St Peter's seemed much smaller than any description I have ever read of it or seen in films or even TV. Most underwhelming.

The Roman ruins are all *very* ruined and hardly recognisable. Even the temple of the vestal virgins which seemed to be a great tourist attraction on the Forum is really just a patch of grass.

The food was OK, though, and on a further positive note, we didn't get pickpocketed (except for a pedometer which was attached very firmly to my husband's belt) and the whole stay wasn't too expensive. The public transport was surprisingly good.

We both speak Italian, but no one seemed interested - they all speak to you in English, regardless of what language you just used.

To top it all, I broke a tooth when eating seafood (the squid hadn't wiped its feet properly).

I've probably got everything wrong, and of course, everything was coloured by the weather being so awful, and everyone will now tell me it's the most fantastic place, but I'm not going back to find out.

Ooh, that's disappointing.

I have happy memories of Rome from when I was 21, but the sun was shining.

That's a version of the Volvo effect.

You can't persuade a person of the truth that Volvos are the most dependable and superbly engineered of cars if the person you are trying to convince lives next door to a knocked-up old Volvo that coughs into life with difficulty every morning.

Your experience of Rome was underwhelming. I personally found St Peter's impressive to the degree of 'gross'. The greatest contrast was between the Michelangelo Pieta at the entrance in its understated heartbreaking humanity and the inhuman size of the rest -- both building and statues. Built to impress, in the same way as the gross mausoleum of St Therese of Lisieux, that of St Francis (both of those negating the humility of the persons commemorated) and the Reichstag in Berlin.

Glad you found good food. Can't downplay the importance of that.

Things I remember from Rome:

- The Pantheon
- the Spanish Steps in the sun;
- the outside of the Colosseum (didn't go in)
- the piazza at the top of the Spanish steps with the bronze horse (although the horse was gone when we were there, the pattern on the ground was outstanding)
- St Peter's
- The Arch of Constantine
- Trajan's Column

Interesting what you say about St Peter's. From anyone I've heard speaking of it, the response is usually "I've heard it was enormous, but I wasn't expecting *that* enormous!"

Perhaps this is so often heard now that reality of the place has lost its power to surprise.

I've only visited St Peter's once, and I was overwhelmed by its size. Maybe a second visit would be less surprising.

To Gnomon's fine list, I'll add the Vatican museum (don't miss the Raphaels) and the Roman Forum.

We saw all of those (except the Vatican Museums). My favourite was the little island in the river. There's not much there, (St Bartholomew's church) but it was not crowded and you could walk right round it at water level. It was just across the bridge from the Bocca della Verita.

Also we saw the new Ara Pacis (peace altar) which now has a new home, and found that very instructive and peaceful.

My son has the same problem with art as I do. He said that when he was in Rome a year or two ago, he went to the Sixtine Chapel, but by the time he got there, he was so numbed by all the art on the walls of the passages on the way there, that by the time he got into the Chapel itself, he couldn't care less. I can quite imagine that he gets that attitude from me.

I am obviously of a very artistically unappreciative stock, and have bred like minds.

As for music, there wasn't any going on, anywhere, except in one church where what seemed to be a requiem was being sung. But the head waiter in the restaurant spoke as if he was singing a Mozart opera, which I found fascinating. Mozart obviously just went to Italy and wrote down people's conversations as they were spoken. Brilliant! I could even imagine that the famous horn concerto was born from some Italian nattering (the one that Flanders and Swann set to "I bought a French horn and I started to play it....")

(I wrote a long post this morning but it got lost when our router suddenly lost the connection.)

Spot on about Mozart!

You mean I wasn't the first to notice?

NO, I mean it's a spot on observation! I've recommended it for Quote of the Day ...

I was waiting for the airport bus Sunday night with a couple who'd just flown back from Rome, and they said much the same thing about the city...

They obviously also experienced the rain and the post-Pasqual depression.