Kaleb protested this morning. He was so tired from our long day yesterday that he just wanted to sleep in and be all "cozy" this morning. So we did. I brought breakfast to our room which he ate while watching American cartoons (dubbed in Italian). We didn't have much of an agenda today but because the forecast was for a little rain, we decided to take in some indoor activities for a change. Kaleb's dream day would be just to ride the subway from one place to another and get off at every stop and just see what is there, and we almost accomplished that. We bought a three day pass that works for the buses and subway and we took full advantage.
We finally figured out what the deal is with the buses. It works on an honor system and apparently, not many people here are honorable. The bus driver could care less if anyone swipes their little magnetic paper tickets in the reader, which is located somewhere in the center of the bus, so people just get on and get off without paying. Since it's not required, and the buses are frequently jam packed full, it makes it awkward to try and pay anyway. It's a very strange system indeed, but somehow they must make money to pay for the whole thing as the busses run quite frequently. The subway, however, has turnstiles so it's necessary to run the card through the reader to access that.
So today we took the bus seemingly to the edge of town to the Catacombs of Priscilla. We found out we were all wrong on our assumptions of what the catacombs were used for. Kory thought they were secret hiding places for the early Christians, Kaleb thought they were secret passageways under the city and I didn't know what they were. Turns out they are all just the burial grounds of Roman citizens. The catacombs we visited today had over 40,000 people in them, and it's just one of many in the city. The real estate was too expensive to put the cemetaries above ground, and since Rome is built on a bunch of soft pumice, which makes digging rather easy, they just went below ground and dug out little spots for the bodies. It is like an entire underground city though as there are hallways all over the place with bodies floor to ceiling. I guess they just kept digging down when things got full so in some places seven bodies would be buried all in a column one under the other with about six inches of rock separating them. Each burial spot would be bricked up and a plaque set on the face to show who was there. The tombs went undiscovered for over 700 years but now most of them have been opened and raided , but there were some with the bones still in them and some that haven't been opened. The cool part though was all the art work that was painted around some of the tombs, depicting different scenes from the Old Testament. The oldest known picture of Mary and the baby Jesus is in the catacombs of Priscilla - from the second century. It was all quite fascinating.
We went from there to a church that had a crypt beneath it with the bones of 4,000 monks and someone, at some point, got the idea to use the bones as decorations and to walk through that place was just downright morbid (see photo). It wasn't the kind of thing I would think would be in any way honoring the monks - since all their bones were scattered about in very artsy ways. It seemed more like something that would have been done with the bones of the Jews after the holocaust to just display them for show. Room after room was decorated with skulls and thigh bones and every bone from every body. I'm sure Kaleb won't forget that place -but it sure gave me the creeps.
It started raining just after we exited that church so we sat in a cafe and had cappuccino to wait out the squall. Kaleb read the travel book and discovered there was a Children's Museum here in Rome, so we took the subway and spent the rest of the day there.
We had more good food and wine for dinner tonight. There must be people that come to Italy just for the food and wine, as that's turning out to be my favorite part. And because of all the walking we are doing, I'm sure I'm losing weight - at least that's what I'm telling myself.
We finally figured out what the deal is with the buses. It works on an honor system and apparently, not many people here are honorable. The bus driver could care less if anyone swipes their little magnetic paper tickets in the reader, which is located somewhere in the center of the bus, so people just get on and get off without paying. Since it's not required, and the buses are frequently jam packed full, it makes it awkward to try and pay anyway. It's a very strange system indeed, but somehow they must make money to pay for the whole thing as the busses run quite frequently. The subway, however, has turnstiles so it's necessary to run the card through the reader to access that.
So today we took the bus seemingly to the edge of town to the Catacombs of Priscilla. We found out we were all wrong on our assumptions of what the catacombs were used for. Kory thought they were secret hiding places for the early Christians, Kaleb thought they were secret passageways under the city and I didn't know what they were. Turns out they are all just the burial grounds of Roman citizens. The catacombs we visited today had over 40,000 people in them, and it's just one of many in the city. The real estate was too expensive to put the cemetaries above ground, and since Rome is built on a bunch of soft pumice, which makes digging rather easy, they just went below ground and dug out little spots for the bodies. It is like an entire underground city though as there are hallways all over the place with bodies floor to ceiling. I guess they just kept digging down when things got full so in some places seven bodies would be buried all in a column one under the other with about six inches of rock separating them. Each burial spot would be bricked up and a plaque set on the face to show who was there. The tombs went undiscovered for over 700 years but now most of them have been opened and raided , but there were some with the bones still in them and some that haven't been opened. The cool part though was all the art work that was painted around some of the tombs, depicting different scenes from the Old Testament. The oldest known picture of Mary and the baby Jesus is in the catacombs of Priscilla - from the second century. It was all quite fascinating.
We went from there to a church that had a crypt beneath it with the bones of 4,000 monks and someone, at some point, got the idea to use the bones as decorations and to walk through that place was just downright morbid (see photo). It wasn't the kind of thing I would think would be in any way honoring the monks - since all their bones were scattered about in very artsy ways. It seemed more like something that would have been done with the bones of the Jews after the holocaust to just display them for show. Room after room was decorated with skulls and thigh bones and every bone from every body. I'm sure Kaleb won't forget that place -but it sure gave me the creeps.
It started raining just after we exited that church so we sat in a cafe and had cappuccino to wait out the squall. Kaleb read the travel book and discovered there was a Children's Museum here in Rome, so we took the subway and spent the rest of the day there.
We had more good food and wine for dinner tonight. There must be people that come to Italy just for the food and wine, as that's turning out to be my favorite part. And because of all the walking we are doing, I'm sure I'm losing weight - at least that's what I'm telling myself.
