So Tuesday was laundry day. Not for me, I just got here. That would constitute some pretty poor planning on my part if I needed laundry service 3 days into an 8 day trip. No, R&C have been here 10 days and need some things washed. Delicately. So I asked at the hotel here and they said they did not know of a local laundromat, but that the Internet Point around the corner did service laundry. I went around the corner to check, and sure enough, there was a very pleasant, English-speaking man who seemed to understand perfectly what "Wash cold, dry on low" meant. I dropped off the clothes and promised to be back the same afternoon.
Meanwhile, time for another breakfast. Hotels in Italy pretty much all offer breakfast. This one was very like an American breakfast buffet. I wish they had raisin bran instead of All-Bran, but oh well. The last place just had corn flakes. I should note however that they seem clueless as to how to properly cook bacon here. Bacon in a broiler is not hard, but everything here was black on one side and pink on the other. Who knows. Good bread though, and decent coffee. The coffee here is generally good, though you have to know how to order. For me, that's doppio café con latte. Double espresso with hot milk. Perfect. A couple of those in the morning and I'm ready to boogie.
Today was the big tout- 6 1/2 hours on the Forum, Palatine Hill, Colosseum and the Pantheon.
Pantheon was first. It was somewhat diminished for me by the fact that I've been unable to successfully get cash from an ATM since the airport. So eventually I had to go to one of those little exchange places and get an awful exchange rate. I'm not sure what's wrong. As I said, it worked in the airport. Hopefully my reining cash will be sufficient, but I don't really think so. I'm going to try other banks tomorrow. Ugh. It all made me extremely angry and frustrated, standing for 15 minutes on a line while the guide and R&C stood and waited.
On the way, we stopped at an ancient site that also serves as a cat sanctuary. Apparently this is a thing, dumping your spare cats at ancient site, so now there are signs telling you not too. Hard to tell whether this is effective.
Anyway, the Pantheon is incredible. Our guide is an archeologist who is, I'm sure less than thrilled with being guiding tourists as opposed to digging stuff up, or whatever those people do when fully employed. But it's an amazing piece of business, if for nothing else than it's actual existence in its current state. Most everything in Rome has been stripped, first by the barbarians, then by the Popes, then by anyone else who could. But the Pantheon was converted to a church almost immediately after Christianity was legal, so it was spared. And what a wonder it is.
The biggest marvel of the whole thing is the dome. The idea that they were able to build this perfect dome at the beginning of the first millennium is just extraordinary to me. But the Romans were great builders. The thing is a perfect sphere, essentially, with a floor down where you need to stand or sit. It's hard to describe where an location lies on a sphere. " Near the top? On the side? Uh, on the round part?"
As we strolled around, trying to find me an ATM and get to the ancient site, we saw another one of the typical Rome things, ancient buildings surrounding more modern (like 16th century) sites.
We also saw the place where Mussolini like to stand to make speeches, because it was a really small balcony with a low bracket, which made him look really tall.Eventually we made it to the ancient Forum. I had not realized that after the republican forum was no longer big enough that that they built several others.
Unfortunately, the current condition of the Forum is such that it's a little hard to tell what it actually looks like. They buried it an built over it and took a kind of "hey, life goes on!" kind of attitude about it in general, and to be honest, what's left is kind of in ruins, if you know what I mean.
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