Southern Ramblings Part I: Rome

The story of three students travelling through Italy.

          The greatest skill a man can have is the ability to pull himself up by his bootstraps. The morning of March 25th, I took that about as literally as one can. The night before, I stayed up past sunrise (watching my Baylor Bears in March Madness), but planned on hitting the hay at about 17:00 to get a full night's sleep before our 3:00 (or 2:00 since the clocks jumped forward that night) shuttle to the airport. I won't say that worked out for me, so when I did wake up and got my boots on, those straps are what dragged me out of bed: a small price to pay for all the goodness to follow.

          Touching down at around 10:00 local time, we heard a bugle blast that my freshly woken self thought signalled the beginning of our imminent demise following a short bout of prayer. Apparently that's actually Ryanair's cue for having arrived on time or early. That means not only did one person think it was a good idea to have a bugle call on a plane, but several high paid people thought it was a good idea to have a bugle call on a plane. I was awestruck. Then we got off the plane, and I realized what awestruck really meant (a common motif throughout this trip). It was 70* and beautifully sunny outside. Let me emphasize this: the highest temperature I'd seen in Scotland was 57* (on one or two rare occasions). One more for emphasis: SCOTLAND! The place where it is so wet, cold, and dreary that they have a word just to describe how uniquely miserable the weather is (that would be dreich)

To get things rolling, here is a crude map of what we saw.

Day 1

          Moving on to the splendours of Rome, we caught a bust to Termini, which is a few blocks from our hostel, which is hidden in an alley way and located on the 5th floor, 116 steps up, in an apartment complex (Ares Rooms is the name, and I would recommend it to anyone without a second thought). Seeing as how we were not the most well rested, we lugged our stuff there, checked in, and hauled our hind quarters to the Capitoline Museum: with a little getting lost, and a healthy amount of wandering and wondering. There's something about looking both ways to cross a street, and being confronted with the Colosseum that just takes one aback for a moment. Turn the other direction, and you could be staring down the face of Trajan's Column/Forum. After a sufficient amount of navigation we made it to the museum, which would be spectacular on a normal day. This day however, was one of those falling in the Lux in Arcana, a special release of Vatican Archive documents including correspondence of Henry VIII, the Papal Bull canonizing St. Francis, and two of my favorites: the Diet of Werms, and the Papal Bull excommunicating Martin Luther. Unfortunately there were no pictures allowed. After a few hours there and with deteriorating weather, we decided to make a quick trip to the Trevi Fountain, then take a few hours to nap back at Ares: at 17:00. It took some motivation to get up and go eat dinner (which is sadly, the only artichoke I ate all week).

 Above: La Vittoria

Left & Right: Trevi Fountain

Day 2

After our one rainy afternoon, the warm, sunny weather came back to stay. Our second morning entailed waking up early (so early our extremely accommodating landlord/manager/receptionist/chef made us promise that he would only have to get our breakfast ready that early the one time) and grabbing the metro to just North of Vatican City. Naturally, it follows that we would go to the Vatican (and for once, things happened as one would think). I'm not going to pretend that I can describe the Vatican or St. Peter's Basilica. I'm also not going to pretend any pictures would suffice. That being said, I'll give you both anyway. Getting in to the Vatican looked like it would take a year or so when in fact, once they opened the doors, it took 15 minutes, and that was without the overpriced tour salesmen. Walking through those drab, ancient walls is like walking through C.S. Lewis's wardrobe. The imagination cannot spell the wonders of the thousands of years of history stowed in this place. Every culture humanity has witnessed is represented: especially Greco-Roman sculpture. The Laocoon is just there. Under a portico in one of the courtyards, only barred from millions of eyes by a small rope, three feet away from its base. That was just the beginning. Of course, at the end is the Sistine Chapel which occupied around 30 minutes of our time. Between those two lay the School at Athens, Creation, and the list just goes on.
           For lunch, we settled on Old Bridge Gelateria, which reputidly stays open late because Blessed John Paul II would go there for night time gelato. If it's good enough for that man, it's more than good enough for me (but I will say he had good taste in gelato).
         St. Peter's was beyond words. John Paul II lies entombed to the right, where people pray before him (myself included), and just before that is Michaelangelo's Pieta, sheer catharsis and unbridled emotion freed from the marble that held it.

Above: The Academy

Right: Laocoon

 Above: Creation

Left: Pieta

 Below: Tomb of John Paul II

Left: St Peter's Square
Right: Castel Sant'Angelo








Dinner that night involved trekking out to the West of the Tiber to hunt down dinner at a place called Dai Due Cicchioni, the single greatest meal anyone could eat. The chef, Gianni, founded the small kitchen decades ago, and to this day, he has no menu and speaks no English. What he cooks is what you eat (lavishly). We had a bottle of unlabelled red wine and a four course meal of brochette, three types of pasta, chicken cutlets, and a dessert of cookies and chocolates with limoncello and an Italian eu-de-vie. Unfortunately (or fortunately), only two of the three of us were willing to consume anything alcoholic. Naturally, we didn't want to waste anything. The laughter and good cheer that night was the only thing that could rival the taste of Gianni's masterpiece.

Day 3

          Here was our long day: the day with five miles on the itinerary. We got started a little later than we wanted, but the rest was welcome. We headed out to San Pietro in Vincoli, which houses a Michaelangelo of Moses and the chains that held St. Peter. From there we got to the two hour line at the Coloseum after a brief glimpse around the Baths of Trajan. As we began waiting in the line, we noticed another set of empty ropes: one for Roma Pass holders (like ourselves). The wait was the approximate amount of time it took to walk through said ropes. I'm not going to go into great detail about the hundreds of monuments to the majesty of Rome and (eventually, though in a skewed way, from the beginning) God. There are just too many. So from the Colosseum (which specifically had a sign prohibiting climbing and dashing my buildering hopes), we went through the Forum Romano before walking past the starkly contrasting architecture of the Theatre of Marcellus on our way to Tiber Island, which now houses a hospital on top of the ruins of a temple to Asclepius (Roman god of healing). We decided to picnic on Tiber Island, beside the river. After much gesticulation and overuse of the words "piccolo" (which means small) and "prego" (which means whatever you want it to mean), we managed to get some salami and cheese at a friendly butcher who went out of his way to help us (undoubtedly after seeing two pretty girls walk through his doors). A quick trip to a local produce market later, and we were lounging by the river with the first of what would be a tradition of picnics. From there we went into the Pantheon, grabbed gelato with an old friend of one of our group members, then swung by the Column of Marcus Aurelius on our way to the lack-luster Mausoleum of Augustus (lack-luster mostly because it is off limits to the public). By this point our feet were a-hurtin' for sure, and I swear I had lost a layer of leather from my soles. Luckily we were a short walk from Piazza del Popolo, so we passed through there on our way up to the Villa Borghese (a massive and beautiful park at the NE of Rome) where we sat by a fountain/pond long enough to start nodding off into a peaceful nap. Unfortunately, the light was beginning to fade, so we headed down to Piazza di Spagna and its Spanish Steps just in time to encounter the first of many random bouts of mass cheering. We stumbled our way to Santa Maria della Vittoria to view St. Teresa in Ecstasy before stopping by a pizza/kebab for dinner since apparently I was the only one hungry: until we spent about an hour in the room. The following might be slightly boastful, but I'd like to do my part to keep chivalry (or common courtesy, where I come from) alive, so I got redressed, threw my boots on without socks, and made the trip around the back alleyway back to the pizza/kebab to get dinner for one of my hungry companions.

 St Pietro in Vincoli

 
Inside the Colosseum (Above and Right)

Arch of Constantine

Forum Romanum

Remains of Vestal Temple

Arch of Septimius Serverus

Theatre of Marcellus

Tiber Island

Below Left: Pantheon                                     Below Right: Column of Aurelius

Piazza del Popolo

Villa Borghese

Trailblazing Part 3: Taking the Castle

"The only way of catching a train that I have ever discovered is to miss the train before."- G.K. Chesterton

         This trip would take us to Arbroath to see an abbey made of Old Red Stone (yes, that is an abbey with walls of red, or a redwall abbey), have a lunch of smokies, then on to Stonehaven and Dunnottar Castle. Notice the use of "would." Here is a little map of our day, starting at Arbroath.
         Well Chesterton, you said it there. We started out our confusing day by missing our train. We got on the last bus that would safely get us to Leuchars, and after two flexi-stops (pick ups along a route at designated, non-station places), we got there with two minutes to spare. Let me make that a little more accurate; we got there with two minutes to spare according to our knowledge. What we did not know was that our train was actually scheduled to leave two minutes before what we heard. It was a nice hour wait before leaving for Arbroath. We did get there though, just in time to join our professor/group leader (misinformant) and his family for lunch. Arbroath is famous for smoked salmon called smokies. The head, spine, and tail are removed, but the skin and the dozens of covert, hypodermic needle bones lining the meat are left. I have named these bones "the salmon's revenge." Later I'll come up with a better name. But whoever created the skeletol structure of salmon was definitely in a sadistic mood that day. I happened upon the Fife Farmers' Market on my way to the station, so I had a smokie cooked by a father/son tandem (who for all the world looked like Texans) on the oak smoke pit set up next to them (maybe that's why they looked like Texans). We had to get the heck out of dodge pretty quickly, since we arrived an hour late, so we hauled our hindquarters back to the station to catch a train for Stonehaven. To avoid being late, I may or may not have shaved three minutes off our available time to make it to the station. We may or may not have been running through the town (with my compass in my hand). We made it to the station though, with those three hidden minutes to spare, and with no train in sight... As if on cue, the voice from above told us our train would be delayed ten minutes. Not the train we arrived to on the dot of departure: the train that we would make with three minutes to spare was delayed. Irony loves me.
          We made it on board, and headed the next half hour up to Stonehaven (Arbroath is thirty minutes from Leuchars, so it made for a good day to hit two places). We arrived, and headed East. I'm terrible with street directions (as anyone who knows me will attest) but I knew the harbor lay on the East side of town, and our trail was north of it. We were (at least I was) in a bit of a hurry. Dunnottar Castle closes at "5:00pm or sunset: whichever comes first," and we arrived at a little past three. It was just under three miles (again, lateral miles) to the castle, and we are not known for being the speediest when it comes to getting places. After making it to the harbor, using the facilities, and taking a brief and unexpected 5 minute stop in the Tolbooth Museum (an interesting building that has had a varied past, but now commemorates local geology and nautical history), we hit the trail: at what looked like a vertical hill overlooking the harbor. From the harbor we could see the War Memorial, about our 1/3 way mark, which was encouraging (as the walk down from the station had taken about 3/4 of a mile).

Photo Break: There is a lot of writing in this one, so here is a brief intermission.

 The Old Brew House

A ship in Arbroath Harbor

          Really and truly, our trip to the castle was fairly uneventful. It was beautiful, hilly, and much of it was comprised of a two foot stretch of trail between barbed wire fencing and a few seconds of air time above a stone beach. That was neat. Upon arriving at the castle, we celebrated at having made it by 4:30 and with plenty of sun left. As the first of us made it down then up again (the castle is connected to the mainland by a small isthmus of much lower altitude) we were fairly well celebrating. A very welcoming voice greeted us at the door with, "We're closed. Sorry." As I stood there hedging my bets on storming the castle, (they made them near impossible for the small Europeans of the time to scale the walls, but the windows looked quite doable, if unrecommended for one of my length) I decided not to get deported. I may or may not regret having missed an opportunity to claim a castle in the name of Texas. So we explored the cliffs and valleys around the castle, including a cavern under the castle that housed the Scottish Regalia when Cromwell went on his hissy-fit against Charles II. I even brought out my inner goat and went down an incredibly steep hillside to the beach. Along the way, I stumbled upon a small group of ducks (which allowed me to get within a couple of yards to them) in a little creek. After that, we headed back with our dying sunlight. I secretly thought we wouldn't be fortunate enough to have any on the hike back, so I brought a couple flashlights. The group didn't need to know that... We made it back to town with plenty of time for several trains, so naturally, we walked the entire town four times looking for dinner, went back to the harbor, discovered their prices to be ridiculous, then settled on some friend take-out at the Carron: home the the Deep Fried Mars Bar. We ate in the train station, then made our way home from another successful day.
          I should mention that on our way back, it started raining just the town side of the Memorial, so before our final decent, we ducked into some amazingly water proof fir trees, mostly because I wanted an excuse to smell the wonderful aroma of turned loam, wild grasses, and the slightly stronger scent of fresh rain on green firs.

 The Beach in Stonehaven

 Ghost ship rides again

 The Harbor

 The War Memorial

 My Compatriots 

 Yeah, kinda sweet

 Every angle seemed to look better than the last.

 Dunnottar Castle

Notice the last visible line (left), the time (4:34pm), and the sunlight in all of the pictures of the castle.

 The castle from the other side of a small pass we found

The valley I scrambled into (notice the slope)

Quack.

 The group from the ridge I just had to climb

 The castle from the ridge.

Trailblazing Part 2: Bardon Mill and Beyond

Getting near hopelessly lost: my kind of trip.

          Our next venture took some of us down to Durham. More accurately, it had us dropped of on an uninhabited train station with a train full of passengers fading into the distance with confused looks directed our way. That station is called Bardon Mill. Our destination: Houstead, largest ruins left of Hadrian's Wall, the Northern most border of the Roman Empire. The end of civilization. The frigid border of the most hellish perversion of hyperboreans the good citizens of Rome could imagine. The one wall we could not seem to locate. I'm not even going to attempt a map for this. The level of lost we managed and the amount of back tracking we did borders on madness. But we got there. Three snow storms, untold sheep sightings (literally enough to see at least one flock of each of the colors of the rainbow), over a dozen looks at the compass, and a few limekilns later, we made it. We very well may have doubled our walk, but we made it. Luckily, I brought a compass (and someone was helpful enough to remind me that red is, in fact, North), and we all brought a good sense of humor and a hefty amount of desire and resilience.
           From Housetead, we took the cheapest taxi ever across the most frightening terrain of any taxi ride known to man (what they don't charge you in pounds, they make back in sadistic amusement they get from the look of fright on your face) to Haltwhistle, a pleasant little town that our taxi driver (an amiable individual despite his capable and terrifying driving) assured us was geographically sound. By that I mean, "You'll not get lost in Haltwhistle. This is main street. That is all." He couldn't have said it any better. After being dropped off at the train station, we went up to the closest pub. I wanted a pint, and I wanted it badly (there were others in agreement). Upon walking in, all the middle aged men- and dog- stared at us until we left. As badly as I wanted beer, I also wanted food (which was on the top of everyone's mind), and that pub was a bar. So we went to the tea-shop next door and had a lovely little meal with some friendly people who made me feel like I had stepped into the Mad Hatter's tea party, but without the flying china. We made it back to the train in another small wintry storm, and most of our small band hid under the walk over to the next platform: next to the 5,000volt death trap. Then we found the waiting room.
          From there, we headed to Durham for evening song where we were able to sit in the choir loft (actually, in the Masters' seats) for a lovely service. We managed to see the Venerable Bede's remains (rather, the container housing said remains), then grabbed some Indian food before heading back to Leuchars. It was a long and fulfilling day.

Our first sign. A welcome and rare sight.

 The looping, stalking, winter storm to the right.

 Our desperate moment of hiding in a limekiln

while trying to figure out our lost way.

 "Home stretch" to Housestead.

 Hadrian's Wall! I managed to touch it. That's about all

 The cathedral in Durham. Built in the late 11th century.