May 2 - Etruscan Museum to the Catacombs

Our first destination on Saturday, May 2nd, was the Etruscan Museum. The Greek roots from the Mycenaean civilization were clear, and perhaps accounted for the most interesting (to us) artifacts: a 7th century BC silver bowl covered with Egyptian figures and hieroglyphs, and a contemporaneous blue glass bowl from Syria.

The nearby baroque church of Trinita dei Monti had a service at 6:30 that evening which we attended. It was vespers in a mixture of Italian and French, with beautiful chanting by the brothers and sisters of the Order of the Monasteries of Jerusalem. We learned at Mass the next morning (with equally beautiful chanting) that the order was founded in Warsaw but is primarily French in language. After Mass on Sunday we travelled by Metro, tram and foot to the neighborhood where our daughter-in-law Karen lived when she was studying in Rome. It was the former athletes’ village for the 1960 Olympics and had magnificent bronze statues commemorating various events such as the relay race. On Monday, May 4, we returned to the Basilica of St. John Lateran for a proper visit.

It was breathtakingly clear that this was the church of the Papacy for centuries, and why St. Peter’s seems so over-the-top in sumptuous decoration.

From there we took a city bus to the Ancient Appian Way and the Catacombs of St. Callixtus.

This is just one of about 60 sites identified as cemeteries for early Christians outside the walls of imperial Rome. By law, all burials had to be outside the walls. Here we found some artifacts of the early Christians: the use of chambers in the catacombs for services, and the symbols used in an outlawed religion: the dove, the image of the good shepherd, the fish, and who was a martyr for the faith. One of these was St. Cecilia, and in her former burial niche (all remains have been disinterred from the catacombs that are open to the public) there is a statue of her which is claimed to recreate her body as it was found in the catacombs, with no decay.

‘Cross Rome the Day Unfolds

‘Cross Rome the Day Unfolds (May 1)

We didn’t begin the day with the intention of walking for about 7 hours, nor to trap ourselves in a crowd of thousands as the swine flu was starting to spread, but by the end of the day that is what we accomplished.

We began by walking along the Villa Borghese Park to the Piazza del Popolo. At that point we realized we might be close to the Etruscan Museum. It was quieter, and shady too as we neared the museum. We stopped briefly outside the soccer playing field of a school, (the sign above the door was “Knights of Columbus”) where roosters and pigeons appeared engaged in a soccer match. (Pigeons won thus proving size isn’t everything, even in Italy).

The museum was closed for the holiday, so we walked east to the Tiber River and then south and west back to the Piazza del Popolo. Next we headed approximately south on the Via del Corso, in the direction of the Forum. About halfway we stopped for refreshment at the Piazza San Lorenzo in Lucina. From there it was back the hotel via the Spanish Steps to lighten our loads because rain gear was clearly not needed. We returned to the Via del Corso by way of the even more daunting Trevi Fountain, where we spent about 20 minutes making our way through the crowd, and maybe 20 seconds looking at the fountain.

A pattern was developing. We broke through the Trevi crowd and made our way at a decent pace to the Forum,

and then on to the Colosseum.

Once we made it to the Colosseum we could have taken the Metro back to our hotel, but we realized we were close to the Basilica of St. John Lateran, near where our daughter-in-law went to university for 2 years.

We made it to within sight of the Basilica, but no closer. A May Day concert was taking place in front of the church and it was not possible to approach it. The crowd was between us and the nearest Metro station, with no easily discernable alternate approach because of the 15th century city wall. With both the confidence and the foolishness of too little information, we actually tried to cut across the crowd of mostly youngsters, who were there to party and maybe nod a time or two to socialism and communism, fueled by the many street vendors selling beer. We made slow and sweaty progress, and then were pushed back en masse when an ambulance made its way in the opposite direction. We couldn’t help but move with the crowd. If anyone had fallen there was a likelihood of being crushed, we realized.

All together it took about 30 minutes to make our way through the crowd and the gate in the wall to the Metro stop. It was closed. On we trudged to the next stop and it too was closed. Finally the next station was opened and we made it back to our hotel after logging an estimated 10 – 14 miles on foot!

Italy: Bari to Matera to Rome (April 29 and 30)

We left Greece on the ferry "Blue Horizon" in a light rain, but awoke to a bright clear day as we approached Bari. This is the city that Tom would fly to when he visited the Pfizer plant in Pisticci, and this segment of the trip was planned to show Patti where Tom spent so much time from 2005 to 2007.

We arrived in Matera early enough to spend the afternoon exploring the Sassi. This UNESCO World Heritage Site is comprised of the Matera Old Town

wich began with dwellings, shops, and churches carved into the limestone cliffs high above the river, at least 2000 years ago.

In this picture, at the top, on the flat part a little lower and to the right of the center is where they filmed the crucifixtion in The Passion.

As the centuries progressed, limestone brick rooms were built out from the caverns, and on top of those below it.

As the guide we engaged explained, roof becomes road in the Sassi. In addition, many of the streets are stairways. At the end of WWII about 20,000 people were living in the Sassi, many in extreme poverty as they had for centuries: with no water, sewers, or power; people and animals together in one or two rooms carved into the rock.

The Italian government required the inhabitants to resettle in more sanitary housing provided in exchange between 1953 and 1968. The redevelopment of the area began in 1986 and the Sassi are undergoing repopulation. Our guide showed us many examples of rock-hewn homes, shops and churches that have yet to be redeveloped. Many of the churches had been converted to wineries following their expropriation by the Bonaparte state in 1807.

We can attest to the improvements brought about by the redevelopment and the UNESCO protection. Tom stayed in a rock-hewn hotel on a couple of his visits, and that evening of April 29 we enjoyed dinner in a rock-hewn restaurant with Nicola and Roberta, (friends from the Pfizer days) and their sons Simone and Mateo.

The next morning (April 30) we retraced Tom’s commute southwest from Matera to the industrial park near Pisticci, where the Pfizer plant is located. Then we headed north to Rome.

Our hotel was a former villa converted to a boutique hotel, and excellently located near the top of the Spanish Steps. We were well positioned to start our excursions in Rome, but they would have to wait for the next day. After a light supper at the top of the Steps, we looked out over Rome toward St. Peter’s Basilica then called it a night.

Greece: The Dogs of Athens (April 26-28)

Each day that we walked around Athens we noticed medium-sized dogs of mixed breeds and mild scruff sleeping in the archaeological sites and other public places. Many had collars but not all, and they looked too well-fed and accustomed to human activity to be feral. They didn’t appear to move around much until about rush hour. It took us nearly the entire week to formulate a hypothesis: deputies. The first evidence was how the dogs dealt with cars at Syntagma Square. During the rush hour we saw the dogs hanging around a major pedestrian crossing. When a car would stop with its front inside the defined walkway, the dogs would bark at it like crazy. We observed this more than once, and even saw some dogs cross the street there several times as if on patrol. As we walked from the Acropolis to the Ancient Agora along a road still within the archaeological site, we observed a (mostly) boarder collie keeping pace with us, about 10 yards back. When we stopped to look at something along the road, it stopped for a bit of a lie-down. It followed us until we left the site. We came to expect see two or three dogs at pretty much any public spot where people gather and where one might expect police or security guards to patrol.

We began Sunday, April 26 with Mass (in Latin) at St. Denis Church and learned some new customs. Many of the faithful, upon entering the church, walked to the front, touched an icon set upon an easel, and crossed themselves. The other custom was the Communion free-for-all. When it was time, the communicants rose almost all at the same time and headed for the front. Because they mostly returned by reversing direction it first looked like we would be stuck in a sacramental traffic jam for the rest of the morning, but somehow it sorted itself out.

That afternoon we visited our final museum in Athens, the Byzantine Museum. By then we had become very interested in what we could learn about Christian communities prior to Emperor Constantine’s Edit of Milan in 312 AD, which legalized Christianity as a religion. One description of the museum lead us to believe that we might find artifacts leading to the Byzantine period, but there were none to speak of. On our final day in Athens we headed back to the city center one last time to arrange for transportation from Athens to the port of Patras on the 28th, where we would travel by ferry to Bari, Italy. The ferry office was across the street from another site of subway archaeology, this time a bath house dating from about 500 AD. Nearby was the final site we visited in Greece: Hadrian’s Gate, which marked the entry to the new construction ordered by him. This included the Temple of Zeus, which at the time was the largest in Athens. Only a few of the more than 140 columns remain. One of these was blown down by a storm in the 1700s.

The following day, Tuesday April 28 we headed for Patras, and in the late afternoon boarded the ferry Blue Horizon to settle into our cabin for the 15-hour crossing of the Adriatic Sea to Bari.

Greece: Ancient Corinth to Subway Archaeology (April 24 and 25)

We booked a bus tour to take us to the site of Corinth as St. Paul knew it. Along the way we stopped briefly at the canal which was cut across the 1 mile wide isthmus between the Aegean and Ionian Seas. The clouds moved on and we had a beautiful view of the Acrocorinth, the ancient city’s acropolis. Continuing the analogy, the Acrocorinth was the dominating site for religious use, while in the plain below the agora of Corinth was the center of daily life. It was thrilling to walk along the same road that St. Paul walked upon entering the city and approach the bema, or speaker’s platform, where presumably he spoke to the citizens of Corinth. The remains of temples at the site of course are devoted to the Greek gods. We devoted most of Saturday, April 25 to learning about the history of Greek civilizations at the National Archaeological Museum. We didn’t know that in the Neolithic period (6800 to 3300 BC) specialization in crafts like pottery and even metal working were already being supported by communities of farmers, herders, and fishers. The Mycenean civilization (1600 to 1100 BC) extended around the eastern half of the Mediterranean Sea through their capacity for seafaring. We packed our brains full of the chronological story until we could fit no more in.

But there was more! On our return to the hotel via subway stations Monastiriki and Evangelismos, we found displays and excavations of what was found when the subway system was expanded for the 2004 Olympics. In Monostiriki the layers of building which over the centuries covered the Eridanos River were displayed in cross section, and the river flows again. At Evangelismos, just a yard beneath the surface, a water delivery system from around 500 BC was uncovered. The ceramic pipes were joined with lead seals and had markings stamped on them to ensure proper alignment for connections. 2500 years old and appearing as if they were installed last year! Where else can one learn so much just by riding the subway?

Greece: The Acropolis (April 23)

We should be more up-to-date on this blog, and we apologize for our tardiness. Tom is a slow reader so he types slowly. Truth is after a full day of collecting experiences to write about, we’re both too tired to write about them, not to mention that internet connections have been neither fast nor reliable. We’ll figure something out to make it better.

The pictures show that it was a cloudy day when we visited the Acropolis. Perhaps this was why it didn’t seem crowded. The pictures also show scaffolding on parts of the Parthenon. Another restoration project is underway. None of that diminishes the impressive location and what the Greeks did with it 2500 years ago. (As an aside, we’ve decided that we are not too keen on restoration as a process applied to these artifacts. Preservation, yes, but let experts create pictures of what it looked like in the day, and keep them away from reconstructing the sites.) Anyway, you have all seen pictures of the Acropolis and the Parthenon, so we’re showing you views of modern Athens from these heights. The last of these panoramas shows the remains of Theater of Dionysus, the birthplace of Greek tragedy, and the second site where the Athens citizens’ assembly met to carry out the earliest of democracies, after the first site ran out of room.

We descended the Acropolis and headed for the neighboring Pnyx Hill, the first site of the citizens’ assembly. Along the way we found a Byzantine church called the Agios Dimitrios and learned of the miracle associated with it: in 1656 and on the night before the commander of the invading Turks was planning to blow up the church full of worshippers with his cannon on the Acropolis, lightening killed the commander and his family. The church remains in use today.

The Pnyx is a site you have to want to find. The walk there is reasonably well marked, but if you had little idea what you were looking for you would have little idea of what you found. The site wasn’t located in modern times until 1835. The modest platform is pretty much all that remains of the place where democracy was first put into practice, at least on a large scale. The Pnyx dates to the 6th century BC and was outgrown in the 4th century BC after 2 expansions gave it a capacity of 13,500 and the assembly moved to the Theater of Dionysos.

We continued our descent to the base of the Acropolis and returned to the Ancient Agora. In the reconstructed Stoa of Attalos we went enjoyed the excellent displays of artifacts from the site which were used to illustrate the history of habitation there from Neolithic times to those fun-loving Herulians.

That evening we followed a man carrying a bouzuki case into the Ithaki restaurant, not realizing that he was half of the evening’s live entertainment. That was fitting because we were half of the audience. That made it uncomfortable to leave so we stayed around and enjoyed some ouzo and metaxa. Final episode to follow...

Greece Part I: April 21 – 23

It took 30 hours to travel to Athens. We were close to the last of the passengers on a 767 to exit the Athens terminal, and next to the last of hopefuls in the taxi queue. The roads into Athens were empty except for other taxis, which was to our advantage for more than speed. We thought our driver was making use of the extra space by straddling lanes, but it turned out he was dozing while doing 130 kmph. At 4:30 am, we were very happy to check into our hotel, have a shower and a bit of a lie-down before heading out to central Athens.

We made our way to Syntagma Square which proved to be the starting or ending point for most of our excursions. We strolled down a mostly pedestrian street where motorcycles and motor scooters are apparently considered to be pedestrians, if not actually on the hunt for them.

We turned onto another street because we saw what looked like an archaeological site, and were rewarded with our first sighting of the Acropolis. We stayed downhill and visited the site of what once was Hadrian’s Library. This was also our introduction to theme of construction and destruction at many of the archaeological sites in Athens: built or significantly expanded by Roman Emperor Hadrian in the early 2nd century, destroyed by the Herulian mob 100 years later. Three successive Christian churches were built on the site between the 6th and 12th centuries. Now all that remains of them are some faded frescoes and pieces of mosaic flooring.

From the Library we walked the short distance to a large site called the Ancient Agora, or marketplace. The studies of the site show continuous habitation since 3200 BC. The 5th century BC Temple of Hephaistos is the most intact building we saw below the Acropolis from the flourishing of Athens. Classical period, presumably because the Herulians didn’t want to climb the small to sack it. They spent their energy instead on tearing down the Stellae of Athos, a colonnaded market building which was rebuilt in modern times and now houses the Agora Museum. We didn’t have time to see the museum, so we concluded with a visit to the Church of the Holy Apostles, built in the 11th century and restored in the mid-1950’s.
That evening we took a bus tour of the nearby port of Piraeus and some other sights in Athens, and ended the tour with dinner in the Plaka district of the city center. We joined a couple of hundred other tourists, as well as locals, in a taberna for live bouzouki music, folk dancing, and a great lamb dinner. We were initially skeptical about how entertaining it would be, but the evening passed quickly as the audience became more involved in the singing and dancing. Imagine DisneyWorld’s Whoop-dee-doo Review in Greek. Part II to come...

Tokyo and Japan April 17-21

After having been up for over 34 hours due to air travel adventures, we arrived at Narita airport. We checked in then rested a while, enough to walk for several hours in the Ginza shopping district just a couple of blocks from our hotel (the Dai Iichi). We found a small sashimi restaurant and Patti began her acquaintance with authentic Japanese food, and chopsticks.

The next day (Sunday 18 April) we took an all-day sightseeing tour of Tokyo. We began at the Tokyo Tower, the tallest structure In Tokyo built for radio and television broadcasting. When it opened in 1959 it was a symbol of the industrial capacity rebuilt following WWII and 50 years later it is still a popular sightseeing destination for the Japanese. We found it had some striking views of Tokyo from the observation deck. Most of Tokyo was destroyed by Allied bombers in WWII and cemeteries are among the few pre-war structures remaining.

Every now and then we would see a traditional-style building tucked away among the post-war construction. Our next stop was the Meiji Shrine, the largest Shinto temple in Tokyo and built to revere the Emperor Meiji who took Japan out of its isolation in the 19th century and set the nation on the road to becoming a world power. Before we entered the shrine proper were invited by our guide to conduct the ceremonial washing, which we chose to do out of respect for the Japanese present.

We arrived in the middle of the spring wedding season and were able to observe the procession of the bridal party into the sanctuary. We could only photograph to the sides of the sanctuary court, which held a large ceremonial drum on one side, and an unceremonious group of cub scouts on the other.

Outside of the sanctuary there were displayed offerings of sake from the major producers, and petitions for prayer written on wooden plaques. As we left the central area we persuaded another couple on the tour to take our picture by the main gate.
The gardens on the grounds adjacent to the Imperial Palace was our next destination. We missed the cherry blossoms by about a week, but there were plenty of other blossoms to enjoy in the formal gardens, plus new bamboo shoots which were growing at a rate of about a foot a day. From there we headed for Tokyo Bay and a lunch stop featuring typical bento style lunch of sashimi, yakitori, soup, and green tea ice cream. Next we boarded a river boat for a short trip up the Sudima River to the Asakusa-Kannon Buhddist temple. We disembarked across the river from the headquarters of the Sapporo Brewery and its odd roof-top figure. We were told it was supposed to evoke a healthy head of beer, if set upright as intended. Japanese regulations for earthquake-resistant construction required the gold drop to be laid on its side instead. (Japan rides the boundary of two tectonic plates and averages 1000 earthquakes each year, most too small to be felt. This position also produces the volcanoes from which the islands were built.)

The Asakusa-Kannon complex is mostly a very crowded shopping area for tourists,

but there is also a five-story pagoda and formal temple gateways and sanctuary. We were told that the majority of Japan’s 120 million citizens practice both Shinto and Buddhism.

That evening we walked a few blocks to a shabushabu restaurant. With the help of a very patient waitress we cooked thin slices of beef in boiling water with chopsticks, and vegetables, too. Patti was offered a fork but chose instead to work on her chopstick technique.

We took the long way back to the hotel to see the lights of the Ginza at night, and window displays in anticipation of Boys’ Day (April 25).
We enjoyed the Tokyo tour so much that we signed on with the same company for a trip the next day to Mt. Fuji. For much of the drive in the foothills we were surrounded by fog, but we exited that layer to a beautiful view of the mountain.

In the nearby town we saw many traditional style houses,

which, were told, are described by the number of tatami mats (about 3 feet by 6 feet) that fit in each room. Not too far from Mt. Fuji is a geothermal area in the upper reaches of a caldera formed in an eruption about 3000 years ago. We took a cable car

to Owakedani (Great Boiling Valley) where some of the hot water is used to boil eggs. The iron and sulfur in the water cause the egg shells to turn black, Tom ate a couple warm from the earth, while we enjoyed another stop on our Pacific Ring of Fire Tour 2009.

We returned to Tokyo via the Shin Kan Sen (Bullet Train),

a 30 minute ride—with stops—compared to a 3-hour bus ride. As the train pulled out of the coastal town of Odawara, Tom caught sight of building signed Daiichi-Sankyo. It was work with the Sankyo Company that first brought Tom to Japan in 1991 and 1993. On our way back to our hotel we ducked into a yakitori restaurant for dinner. Little English was spoken, but they understood “Beer and yakitori for two” as a whoop for new customers was shouted and we were shown a table. We ordered by pictures mostly and a basic English menu. By then, Patti had mastered chopsticks and we felt comfortable even though we understood almost nothing in voice and writing surrounding us. Then it was back to hotel to prepare for a 7 am departure for Narita Airport. We had to get to Athens in the worst way, so we went via Heathrow airport. Love to all!