Friday, September 24^th, 1999

Rebecca complained about how messy our room had become in only two days.

"The strange thing is," she said, picking up her bathrobe and some make-up "It’s all my stuff!"

I admitted that this was very mysterious.

This was a free morning on the tour which was drawing to the end. Our trip to the Sistine Chapel that afternoon would be the final tour of the trip. They had canceled two optional tours due to lack of interest. This made the people that wanted to go on those optional tours angry. One of the tours had been to the catacombs. I suggested that they could get a catacomb-like experience in town by visiting the tombs of the Capuchins.

The Capuchins were a order of monks famous today for their invention of the trendy coffee drink, cappuccino. Actually, I don’t know if they invented the drink or if it was invented in the part of town where their monastery was located.

In any case, their tomb was the only place I wanted to take Michele and Rebecca to in Rome. I’d visited it on my first trip to Rome and never forgotten it. It was also near the Spanish Steps and Treve Fountain, both of which weren’t on the tour, but which Michele should see, if for not other reason, because they are so famous. The tomb of the Capuchins, on the other hand, is not well-known, at least today. It was once one of the top three sites of the city, but it is a bit too macabre for today’s tastes. This tells you something about the difference between our time and earlier eras.

The tomb is known for its artwork, but this artwork is a little different that everything else we’d seen. I told Rebecca and Michele that they might want to be scarred with this memory as I have been. Of course, I said this just to get them interested.

To get to the tomb, we had to ride the Roman subway, the Metro. Fortunately, there was a stop very close to the Hotel Vinci. Unfortunately, I took us away from it when we started walking. For some reason, I’d thought our hotel was facing north but it was really facing south. I’d asked Giovanni before got to town to show me where our hotel was on my map of Rome. He marketed it on my map with an "X" which, accidentally, had been a little on the south side of the street. I’d thought this was intentional. For two days, I’d assumed that the Vinci was on the south side of the street facing north. This wasn’t until we went walking that I realized my error.

After getting us lost for awhile, I gave the map to Michele. My assumptions about direction were so ingrained that I couldn’t shake them. Once I gave up, we quickly go headed in the right direction. Of course, it might have been quicker to walk to the tombs. At one point, Rebecca actually thought that’s what we were doing.

Down in the subway, we figured out how to get tickets and find the train going in the right direction. My credibility in this area was somewhat damaged but we got situated correctly.

The Roman subway works differently than those in other major European cities. In London and Paris, you buy a ticket and use it to open the gates in and out. In Rome, you buy a ticket and just punch it with the time when you go in. You have over an hour that you can legally ride. The gates are always open. We heard that there were stiff fines if you were caught with an expired ticket, but this looked more or less like the honor system to me. Given Italian attitudes about government, I was surprised to see anyone paying, but it seemed like many were.

Graffiti covered the subway trains in big, bright fat letters. Unlike the graffiti on the buildings above, this graffiti wasn’t political. It was mostly people’s names. It was so vibrant, that it was almost pretty. It came up to the level of the windows and a little above. We could see the tops of the letters when we were standing the inside the cars.

The subway stations were cool, a refreshing change from the heat outside. You would expect them to be cool because they are so far underground. Yet, surprisingly, it was extremely hot inside the cars. All the windows were open, letting cool air in, but it was still hot. Was it just the body heat of all the travelers? If so, we are all drinking to much wine.

We got off in only two stops. After we climbed out of the subway, we looked around to get our bearings. We were already on the street of the tombs. We knew that were very close to the church they were in. We were going to walk up the sidewalk a little bit when Michele looked up. The church was right above us, towering over the sidewalk.. A group of tourists were leaning over the landing above.

We walked up the stairs to the landing. It struck me as strange that we were going up to the tombs. I’d always remembered them as underground. I had clearly remembered incorrectly. Following the signs, we walked to an entrance on the side of the church. We found ourselves in a small antechamber with gift shop and ticket counter. We were talking as we walked in. The Capuchin behind the counter indicated that we should be quiet. We quieted down and bought our tickets.

The tombs themselves are a series of chambers on the right-hand side of a long hallway. For several centuries, the monks decorated these chambers with the bones of their deceased brothers. When I say decorated, I mean just that. The bones were used to make flowers, coats of arms, various tableaus, lamps and the ornate borders that cover every available surface of the chambers, the walls and curved ceilings. The dull white of the bones contrast with the brown walls of the tombs that form the background.

The effect defines the word macabre. You find yourself noticing what a nice lotus flower someone had made with clavicles or how well human ribs bones shape into a filigree border. Jaw bones work in a number of interesting geometric designs. Small bones in general worked extremely well in the delicate and complex decorations. Skulls and long bones of the legs and arms were less useful. Some found a plane in making chandeliers, but most were used to make bowers on the sides of the walls. These bowers had niches in them. Complete skeletons, dressed in monk’s robes, sat, stood or lay in these niches. One small skeleton hung from the ceiling

The floors of the chamber were dirt. The dirt probably made me remember it as underground. There are graves in the dirt. I found myself wondering if these were the graves of recent Capuchins. I suspect that the order, like most Italians, still bury their dead and exhume their bones after ten years. However, they couldn’t use these bones to add to the decoration. There is simply no space left on the walls of the tombs.

As we walked by the chambers, looking in at the decoration, we found ourselves making jokes. It was easy to imagine the tombs as some sort of bizarre competition where they awarded their best decorators with the best niches in the wall. We found ourselves wondering if the monks could put in special requests:

"Can I be a candle holder when I die?"

We had to control ourselves from making too much noise. There is a hushed reverence among the visitors, but I suspect we weren’t the only one that the sight of so many bones made giddy. There is something both profound and absurd in the bone décor.

In the last chamber of the tombs—no less decorated than the rest—they wrote a short, two line message in Latin on a stone on the floor. Next to it is its translation in many different languages, including English. It says:

"What you are now, we once were.

What we are now, you will be."

It was a sobering thought, especially effective because the tombs are so disorienting. It makes you remember all the generations of people who thought so seriously about their death and afterlife. Today such thoughts have become so thoroughly unfashionable. We must all still consider our eventual demise, but we have television to distract us.

As we came out of the tombs, it was as if we were coming from underground. It was still bright day outside. The traffic bustled by. The tourists filled the streets. Life goes on.

Our plan was to walk to the Spanish Steps, passing the Treve fountain on the way. As we headed in the right direction, we passed the Triton fountain on the way. Rome is famous for its fountains. This one is a giant sculpture of a Triton or merman, a man with the tail of a fish. He stands looking very fierce in the center of a small plaza surrounded by some of the busiest traffic in Rome.

We worked our way around the plaza. As we got to the street leading to Treve, we began passing a number of gift shops. Some were regular tourist shops, but a number were nicer stores.

At this point, Rebecca once more proved me wrong. She’s done it all our lives together, so I shouldn’t have been surprised. I’d thought that I had learned something on our trip about women. It had become an object of faith that if any shopping was going to take place, it was going to take place after a meal. Apparently, this wasn’t true.

We found a gift shop that had a number of nicer quality items. Rebecca found a ladies watch, decorated with Venetian glass. She fell in love with it. She proceeded to buy four of them. Since each watch was unique, she took forever picking out the ones she wanted. Most amazingly, she did it on an empty stomach. It was an impressive display of shopping stamina.

Fortunately, since we were buying so many, we were able to get the price down. They also filled out the paperwork that would allow us to get our money back from the tax authority. If we’d had the cash, we probably could have gotten another twenty percent off just by avoiding the tax all together.

Next, we walked to the famous Treve Fountain. This is the fountain made famous by the song and movie, "Three Coin in the Fountain." The tradition is that you throw in a coin. As you do, you wish to return to Rome. I apparently worked the last time Rebecca and I were here. Here we were again.

The fountain is huge. It is more like a small waterfall filled with giant sculpture of Neptune pulled in a seashell coach by giant seahorses. We came in at side by the top of the sculpture. There were stairs leading down to the main plaza facing the fountain, but it was a mob scene below. Dozens of tour buses must have disgorged their contents nearby.

We decided to throw our coins from the top where we were. We had to throw it over a walkway below, but we were high enough that we all made the shot. We took turns throwing so we could get photographic proof of the toss. If e there was any dispute about wish fulfillment, we have evidence.

As we were taking pictures of our coin tosses, a street vendor approached us. Back at the coliseum, they had described gypsy pickpockets as wearing a bandana, carry an item to sell in one hand and a board or newspaper in the other. Apparently there were required to wear this uniform by their union or a state agency in charge of pickpockets. This was exactly how this vendor was dressed. He had a bandana on his head. In one hand he had something to sell, but I couldn’t even tell what it was. Perhaps it was a toy. In the other, he had a kind of case.

"Go away! Go away!" I shouted as he approached us. He looked back as though I’d hurt his feeling. He held out his little toy, hoping that it would interest he. "No, get away!" I said, waving my hands.

He drifted away back into the crowd.

We continued on our way to the Spanish Steps. As we approached it, I was surprised by how nice it looked. Twenty years before, it has been a popular area, but I don’t remember it as posh. Now, the Steps are surrounded by nothing be the most expensive shops. All the Italian designers have shops there—Gucci, Valentino—but so are all Cartier and Tiffany’s. Fortunately, we’d already satisfied the shopping gods, so we passed in safety on our way to the subway station.

Our final tour of the trip was to the Vatican Museum. The bus picked us up after lunch. On board, we met our Vatican guide, Valentina. She was a young, lively, and dressed in the latest fashionable clothes. She had a large, Roman nose, but on her it was almost a designer look. She was the opposite of the professor of the rumpled jacket that we’d had the day before.

She immediately got into a battle with our bus driver of the day. She wanted him to go one way. He went another. Our hotel was very close to the Vatican, so it wasn’t that much of a drive. They kept up the argument the whole way. When the bus left us off, she was still complaining. She wanted us to be closer to the museum. He seemed to think the place that he’d dropped us was the best place. I found myself hoping that the bus would be there when we returned.

We had to cross a couple of busy streets to get the museum. Valentina charged out in front of the cars and stopped them for us. She was fearless. She led us on with a red bandana tied to the end of a car antenna.

We all gathered inside the Vatican Museum. As Valentina gave us descriptions about what we would be doing in the museum, I noticed that the redhead’s boyfriend was still with our group. However, he didn’t seem to be with the redhead any longer. They were at opposite ends of the group. It seemed as though they had had a falling out. Good timing since the tour was catching its plane the next day. However, he apparently still wanted to join in the tour.

There are literally thousands of rooms in the Vatican Museum. Well, they aren’t really rooms. They are more like long hallways that lead to other long hallways. We would only be seeing a few of them. We were making our way to the Sistine chapel and back out again. On the way, we would see those rooms or hallways that were along the way.

We started in the marble statue department. So many statues surrounded us that they all blended. I’ve noticed this problem before in this particular museum. It has so much that you can’t really focus on anything. It is more a crowd of art than a gallery. We did learn how to tell originals marble sculptures from marble copies of ancient bronze sculptures. The copies of ancient bronzes have supports on the arms. Their marble arms can’t assume the same poses as bronze ones without breaking off.

As we walked, Valentina got a call on her cell phone. She told whoever it was that she was busy. She said that it was her boyfriend when she got off.

Next, we went into the tapestry section. Giant tapestries cover both walls along a long hallway. They depict scenes from the Bible and the life of Christ. The most interesting tapestry was a central one of Christ rising from the tomb. As you moved down the hallway, the eyes of Jesus seemed to follow you. Stranger still, the door of the tomb, lying fallen on the ground, seemed to keep pointing at you as you moved from one side to the other.

The next room was the map hallway. On both walls, it had giant maps. On one wall, they were maps of Italy in exact detail. On the other, were maps of different parts of the world as seen in the sixteenth century.

In the map room, they had set up little discussion areas for the tour guides. We were getting close to the Sistine Chapel. Guides couldn’t talk in the chapel. They had photographs of the chapel here so that the guides could explain what we would be seeing. Valentina explained the chapel and Michelangelo’s pictures from these photographs. . She also described how we would go in and get together when we came out. We would have only fifteen minutes in it and then we would have to leave.

All the way through the museum, Valentina talked and flirted with the guards we passed. She seemed to know them all. They all seemed to know her. She also called out and said hello to the guides leading other tour groups. As we were lead through the painting galleries that act as a line, holding area for the Sistine Chapel, she seemed to arrange it with one of her friends so that we could cut ahead in the long line of tour groups.

You enter the Sistine Chapel up on a raised dais. Below you, you see a throng of people looking up at the walls and ceiling. You join them by waling down some stairs in front of you.

Behind you is Michelangelo’s wall-size painting of the Last Judgement. It is so big, the you have to move toward the center of the room to see it. Michelangelo paint it later in his life, years after the ceiling. Apparently, the ceiling was such a hit that the Pope wanted more. In painting it, Michelangelo covered earlier paintings that showed the birth of Moses and the birth of Christ. These were the start of the stories of Moses and Christ lives. A number of different painters had painted these stories along the walls over the years. They were finished before Michelangelo painted the ceiling.

The overall effect of the chapel is that it is too much to take in. The ceiling alone is made of dozens of different painting from the Bible. It starts with God creating the universe and progresses to the creation of man in the middle and ends with the Noah and the flood. Holding them all, Michelangelo painted a whole false architecture of pillars and stone frames. Paintings of gigantic figures from history sit in the triangular buttresses that support the curved ceiling. Below Michelangelo are the huge scenes showing the lives Moses and Christ. In each scene, several different stores are illustrated. It is too much to take in.

It is also very high up. Some people bought binoculars so that they could look closer at the paintings. Others brought mirrors so that they could look at the ceiling without craning their necks. Most just tried to take it all in. The best way to see it would have been to lay on the floor, but there was no room on the floor. The crows wasn’t pressed together, but it was crowded.

Fortunately, no one could take pictures. A Japanese company paid for the cleaning and restoration of the painting in the chapel. In return, they got the exclusive copyright to the pictures for twenty years. If you want pictures, you have to buy them. This is a great deal. The paintings look great since they’ve been restored, much better than I remembered.

The crowd made roar as everyone talked to their companions at once. The room must have very good acoustics because no comment was lost. The general murmur built in the room. Every five minutes, a loud speaker would ask them to keep quiet. They made the announcement in Italian, English, French, Spanish and Italian. After the announcement, the noise would drop a little, but in two minutes, the roar was back to full volume.

After about fifteen minutes, we saw Valentina’s handkerchief bobbing up and down on top of the crowd on its antenna. We worked our way toward it. She led us out of the room and away from the crowds.

We walked out through the Vatican library. You don’t see any books in the Library except for a few in glass cases. They’ve locked most of them within large wooden cabinets that line the walls of the hallways. They’ve painted the cabinets with the coats of arms of the various popes and scenes from various Italian cities. We did see two books: the largest book and the smallest in the library. The largest book is a big, thick illuminated Bibles that stands about two feet thick. The smallest lies on top of it, a tiny book of prayer.

Valentina lead us out of the museum, explaining the decorative items along the way. We also began to pass gift stands. We bought a few books of the Vatican and Sistine chapters. I have since discovered that the chapel is much easier to look at in a book than in the actual room. I don’t begrudge the Japanese what the book cost.

As we were getting close to the entrance, we passed the guards room. Since it was almost closing time, the guards were streaming out to start moving people out of the miles of corridors. As they passed, they all said hello to Valentina as they filed out. She smiled and flirted with as they went by.

When we got back to the Hotel Vinci, Giovanni met us in the lobby. He had seemed progressively less jolly every day since the trip had begun. Our theory was that he’d heard too many complaints. Several people were unhappy about his canceling the additional tours in Rome. Four people had wanted to go, but that wasn’t enough for the tour group to run a bus.

He was collecting flight information so he could get people to their flights. Mom and Michele gave him theirs. Rebecca and I weren’t leaving on a flight through the tour company so we didn’t have to worry about when the bus was leaving in the morning. He seemed happy not to have to worry about us.

That night, we took a cab to the final Roman restaurant of the Buon Ricordo. We’d made reservations for eight, but we decided to go earlier in case there was any shopping in the area. The location was in the south of one of the oldest parts of Rome called Testaccio. On the map, the area looks like the area might have shopping. There was an old fort in the area and what looked like a large plaza built around a hill.

As we finally arrived in the area, it didn’t look like there was any shopping. Everything was very dark, except for a plaza across the street where it looked like some types of trade show was going on. When we stopped, the restaurant didn’t look open. There weren’t any street lights. The area looked dark and deserted.

The taxi driver was concerned. He got out and checked the times on the door to make sure that the restaurant would be opening at all. I suspected that he thought we got the wrong night. He found that it opened in twenty minutes, but he clearly wasn’t comfortable leaving us alone in the darkened streets.

"Attentione! Attentione! Attentione" he said pointing at the Rebecca’s, Michele’s, and Mom’s purses. It was an ominous warming.

We looked around. It was dark, but we weren’t quite alone. There was a man standing across the street among some cars parked in some dirt. He was looking at us. We huddled together.

"Do you want to walk around?" I asked. "There might be some shops around somewhere."

"I don’t think so," Rebecca said doubtfully . "Let’s just stand with our backs to this wall."

We huddled against the wall. We agreed that coming out early to shop probably without asking about the neighborhood wasn’t the cleverest idea of the week. Would the restaurant really open? If it didn’t how would we get a cap out of here?

We examined more of our surroundings. The man was still standing across the street. He didn’t seem to be doing anything but lurking. However, we noticed that just down the street, a police car was parked with its lights on. Two policemen were inside. They seemed to be watching the action at the plaza across the street. We then noticed the sign hanging over the plaza.

"Democracies of the Left," it said in Italian. My guess was that it was some type of Communist pep rally. This might have been what the taxi driver was worried about. We’d dressed up for dinner. Maybe we looked like rich landlords or industrialists who were just aching for an attack by the noble proletariat.

Through the entry, we could see a big screen television and what looked like a few booths. There were a few shadowy people moving around. If it was a communist trade show, it didn’t look like it had really gotten going yet.

After about ten minutes of standing around, the restaurant still didn’t look like it was opening. However, with the police there, we felt more safe. We decided to walk over to the plaza and see if there was anything interesting.

As we appoached, we could see some tables selling things and a big building with "Bingo" on it. It looked like a harmless fund-raiser for the left. However, as we got closer, the police started getting out of their car. A few more people started drifting in by them. Were we about to get in the middle of something?

We were standing in the entrance to the plaza and the people at the booths were looking at us. We really didn’t fit in. It didn’t look all that interesting. We retreated back across the street toward the restaurant. Fortunately, they had opened the restaurant door and waiters were arranging the tables outside. A few other couples had arrived and were waiting for the restaurant to open.

The mysterious man across the street turned out the be the parking lot attendant. People were driving up and he was showing them were to park. The area was coming to life and suddenly it looked a lot less ominous.

The restaurant inside was small, with just one room. It had a high curved stone roof and about twenty tables with white table clothes. The building looked very old. The sign outside said that they dated from 1885.

They had our reservations and gave us a nice table toward the back. No one seemed to speak much English, but they had English menus. We ordered some wine to refresh ourselves. The world was back to normal.

On the wall next to us, they displayed two Buon Ricordo plates. One had a lamb on it as we’d seen in the Buon Ricordo catalog. The specialy they listed was for the lamb dish. The other one had a steer and a chef with a clever on it. Did this mean that we could get two different plates? That was pure shopping excitement, especially for Rebecca.

Rebecca dislikes the taste of lamb. She’d much rather order any type of beef. She’d actually been nervous about this getting this plate. She’d eat the lamb if she had to in order to get a dish, but she wouldn’t like it.

We consulted the menu. The menu said that the restaurant specialized in traditional Roman food. It listed the lamb dish as the Buon Ricordo special, but they also had another specialty next to it: disk from ox tails. Looking at the unlisted Buon Ricordo plate, we could see that the chef with the clever was about to use it to cut off the tail of the steer. Yum!

As we studied the menu some more, we noticed something odd about the traditional Roman dishes. They were all odd cuts of meat. They had pig’s feet. They had head cheese. They had an appetizer of pig’s cheeks. The pasta had veal intestines stuffed with a milk cheese. I assumed this was like a cheese sausage. The meats were all liver, kidney, brain, and similar organs. Apparently Romans traditionally ate animal innards and threw out all the regular flesh.

When the waiter came, we asked about the plates. The answer was that we could only get the lamb plate. The ox-tail plate was their original plate but they didn’t offer it any more. Rebecca took it bravely and ordered her lamb.

No one else was brave enough so I order the pig’s cheek appetizer, the pasta with stuffed intestines, and the lamb dish to get the plate. It is my general rule to order anything on the menu I’ve never had. This rule especially applies to the strange and bizarre. According to many, this rule makes me strange and bizarre, but I wasn’t going to let the opportunity pass without trying traditional Roman cuisine, or whatever it was.

Mom order the headcheese, but this wasn’t a stretch for her. She likes headcheese. She’s always liked headcheese. Though she’s Italian by marriage, and has been faithfully Italian for fifty years, she was raised German. Germans eat head cheese and it isn’t even an antiquated habit or anything. Mom was actually excited to see it on the menu.

The traditional Roman cuisine turned out to be very good. Everyone but Rebecca tried the pig’s cheek on toast and agreed that it was very tasty, better than the more typical olive spread on toast we ordered. Mom offer everyone a taste of her headcheese and it tasted like headcheese. Rebecca passed on it.

"Have you ever tasted really good headcheese?" Mom asked Rebecca.

It occurred to me that I wouldn’t know if I ever tasted really good headcheese. Headcheese tastes like bologna in gelatin. The term "really, good headcheese" seemed like a contradiction in terms to me.

When the pasta course came, everyone else had normal pasta. I had pasta with what looked like a curled up sausage in it. I cut into the sausage and it had a white, cheesy filling. I tasted it. It was good. It tasted like I had hoped— a sausage made with cheese. Everyone but Rebecca had a bite and liked it.

Everyone else liked their meals as well. When the lamb came, it was highly seasoned and very fresh, not mutton by young lamb. Rebecca had a hard time getting through it, but she ate enough that she felt that she’d earned her plate. She admitted that it didn’t taste very lammy at all. Still, I finished most of her order.

We found out later that this restaurant is somewhat famous for serving the "fifth quarter" of meat, that is, the insides and other leftovers of the animal. This is truly traditional Roman food and there are about four other restaurants in Rome that also served it. I also found out that the intestines weren’t really stuffed with milk. They were the intestines of milk-fed calf. Despite the menu translation, no one stuffed them with any cheese. This was milk from the mother cow or, as the article we read called it, cheese in its most primitive state. Yum!

Since it was our last night, we order desert. Fortunately, there deserts didn’t have any animal parts in them. Mom, Michele and I all had ice cream dishes. Rebecca went with the traditional Roman desert—gorgonzola with honey served with a sweet Marsala wine. We all shared. The ice creams were delicious. Rebecca’s desert was the best.

They brought us our four souvenir plates with the fluffy lambs on them. Rebecca planned to give hers to her mother.