Chain Reactions

 May 9

We got a late start on Thursday. Our internal clocks are way off, so it was about noon when we set off to the Apple store.

I always forget something, and this time it was the adaptor plug for Euro sockets. I had the damned thing in my hand, and have no idea where I put it. It’s probably lying on the bed, right next to where the suitcase was. That is, if the cat hasn’t run off with it by now.

Anyway, we passed Sta. Maria Maggiore and proceeded down Via Merulana, a name that sounds very close to one of my favorite substances, to the Apple store. We walk through the open double door and they tell us the store is closed. They will reopen at 3:30. They close a store for a full three hours in the middle of the day for lunch. 

It’s not a problem, of course, because there’s plenty to see everywhere.

 High on our wanna-see list is the church of St. Peter in Chains. The central relics are chains said to be those that held Peter when he was arrested in Rome. Later, the chains mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, when the angel came and sprung Peter from jail in Jerusalem, were brought to Rome and united with the Roman chains. According to my guide book, Rick Steeves’s Rome 2014, when the chain lengths were brought together, they miraculously linked.

After a long hot walk down Via della Sette Sale, a walled lane with no sidewalks,   you come to the Piazza San Pietro in Vincolo.

 If you arrive around two, the church is also closed for lunch. 

So we take the hint. It’s time to eat. We walk to a small street where there’s a sign pointing the way to somebody’s bar, but we didn’t to go there. Right at the corner is the Caffe San Pietro in Vincolo. They were out of the squid salad, so we settled on the caprese—tomato, mozzarella, and basil. Also pizza Margherita. I had a glass of the local red, acidy but not too harsh, and it got better when the food came. 

This all was pretty good, just like being in New Jersey.

We were sitting at a table outside. Across the street there was a palm tree looming over a stuccoed apartment house. Just confirming—Yes, I’m somewhere else. Cactus also grows outside here. It’s almost a full degree of latitude north of New York City.

There were three bikes lined up, and I often take notice of information of this level of importance. The large letters on each of the plates were the same as the postal abbreviation for places in North America: from left, ON, AK, DE. Wow, Ontario, Arkansas? No, Alaska. And Delaware. While we were eating, a fourth bike joined the line. The letters on the plate were BC, so now we had two Canadian provinces and two states.

The site of St. Peter in Chains, if not the current church building, dates back to the 440s.

 Besides the chains of St. Peter, the church has another distinction. One wall, to the right as you face the altar, has statuary created by Michelangelo for the tomb of Pope Julius II. He never finished the tomb, and Julius is somewhere else. Maybe somewhere near a palm tree.

The monumental Moses with horns is the focal point of this group. He looks kind of pissed, as if he sees people cavorting around a golden calf. The group also includes a reclining pope, who may represent Julius.

We found the Apple store open. I bought the world travel adaptor kit (I now own two of them) and we went back to the Contilia for a rest.

We decided to take up Rick Steeves’s Heart of Rome walk, which he says is particularly charming at night. It was. We started at a city square called Campo de’ Fiori. It is ringed with restaurants. 

But the first thing we saw when we got out of the cab was a fakir levitating next to a short pole. I don’t know how he did it, but the illusion was wonderful.

Behind him was the statue of Giordano Bruno, a heretic who was burned on this spot. 

We decided to try a restaurant called Baccanale, because it served tripe. 

Tripe was recommended (by Larry of course) as a must-try in Rome. This was trippa alla Romana, made with tomato and doused with pecorino. We also had buccatini with mussels and pecorino. Gotta love that pecorino.

They had Barolo by the glass, and that was sharp but good, especially with the food, and we followed that with a Brunello, which was milder. Joanna had Nero d’Avola, a smooth Sicilian wine.

The clown showed up during dinner. He had a Harpo Marx Klaxon to make his way through the crowd. I was sitting with my back to the square so I didn’t see everything. He chased a few girls. Later he came to our table and dusted me with a feather duster. 

From Campo de’ Fiori, the next stop on the walk is Piazza Navona, about half a kilometer away.

This is an even bigger square. It has two fountains. One represents the principal rivers of the four continents known in the 17th century. The Nile represents Africa; the Rio la Plata, represents the Americas; the Ganges stands for Asia, and the Danube for Europe. The Nile has his head covered because the source of the river was unknown at the time.

The clown had moved to Piazza Navona. In a suit and leaning on a cane, I must have looked pretty stuffy, because he came up next to Joanna and marched very ceremoniously with us.

It was getting late. Time for another drink. We stopped at one of the cafes for some chocolate mousse, a glass of local wine, plus some espresso with Sambuca.

The walk continues to the Trevi Fountain, but we had been there the day before, and we were starting to wear out. Well, at least, I was starting to wear out.

There is a cab stand right outside the plaza. When we got back to the hotel, I wasn’t quite ready to call it quits, but everybody else was. Everything in sight was shutting down. And it wasn’t even midnight yet. 

All the bars were closed. Harry too.

Good night.

Savoring the Roma

May 8

A quick consultation with the guidebook told me something I didn’t mention yesterday. There has been a church on the site of Santa Maria Maggiore since about 420 A.D. But since this is the Old World, it was easy to do that one better. 

We went back out to see the Bernini sculpture, St. Teresa in Ecstasy, which is in a church not far from the hotel. But on the way we came to Piazza de Repubblica and Saint Mary of the Angels and the Martyrs.

This one was really old school. The building was once the baths of Diocletian, built around the year 310. Diocletian was the last big-time persecutor of the Christians, so I guess they figured it was fair enough after they were put in charge to take over Diocletian’s legacy.

The idea was first put forward by a priest and floated for a while. Apparently, access to the site was difficult, or at least inconvenient, maybe sort of like Kennedy airport. But eventually a road or two came through and everbody got behind the idea. They hired Michelangelo, who was in his 80s at the time, to repurpose the building.

It is baroque today, but the facade is stunning. It looks like a castle that has been hit by artillery. Fragments remain of great arches, no longer needed. They may have been dismantled. Or maybe they had collapsed by the time the church was put in.

The facade is curved because that is where the steam room was.

You enter the church to stand in what was the cooling off room. The nave of the church is the old central hall. Its soaring arches are appropriately majestic.

A very curious feature of the nave is a timepiece laid into the floor. We were there in the afternoon, so I have no idea how it works. It’s a long metal line laid into the marble floor. It is a scale marked with numbers. there are astrological signs next to it. (This is all blocked off by velvet ropes so no tourists or errant children will walk on it.)

According to a sign, it was installed sometime in the early 1700s and was used for a century or two to set the timepieces in Rome.

According to Wikipedia, it is a meridian line and one of its uses was to check the accuracy of the Gregorian calendar.

One corner of the nave had a small exhibit of Renaissance-age technology as an appreciation of Galileo. There was a pendulum, weighted by a globe attached to the finger of a bronze hand, swaying ever so slightly. A poster gave us a brief discussion of the pendulum's importance in keeping track of time, and Galileo's contribution to that discovery. I'm not sure, but he may have been the first to experiment and write about pendulum movement. 

If I remember right, you can set the ratio of the weight to the length so that each swing will take exactly one second, so there you have the foundation for a clock. the weight always swings in the same plane, but because the Earth rotates under it, the pendulum appears to be turning its swing. There may be other information you can infer from that, but truth to tell, this part is so abstract it makes my head hurt.

The exhibition may have been the church’s way of making up a little for bullying the guy when he was alive.

The old church has some modern pieces, including a carved head of John the Baptist.

We went from there to a small Carmelite church, Santa Maria Della Vittoria, a few blocks away. There, high above a side altar, is St. Teresa being stuck by a rather amused angel as she reels back in orgasm. 

This is possibly one of the wildest pieces of religious art ever. I never met Bernini, so I haven’t had the chance to ask him about this installation, but one question I don’t need to ask is “What were you thinking?”  It’s written all over her face. 

On the opposite side of the church is an altar that houses the body of St. Victoria, a virgin martyr. A life-size effigy, which may actually contain a body, is displayed behind glass inside the altar. The throat has been cut.

We headed toward the Trevi Fountain and stopped for a glass of wine (Montepulciano de Abruzzo) at a restaurant across from the Triton Fountain. This, we discovered from reading signs, is the neighborhood of the Barberini family, heavy hitters from the baroque era.

The Trevi Fountain is maybe half a mile from there. It is apparently always packed with people. It was fun. The water is loud, the statuary is indeed monumental. I even made a 360 degree video. Who knows? Maybe they can cut that in as file film if they remake “Three Coins in a Fountain.”

The photo of the day may be Oceanus, the principal figure of the fountain. The inscription over its head mentions Clement VIII, Pontifex Maximus (i.e. Pope).  I kind of like the idea of the pope out skinny dipping.

The area for a block or two in every direction is lined with souvenir stalls and small restaurants. They were packed with people eating pizza and pasta. The food looked and smelled pretty good. But for my first meal in Rome, I was going to be a food snob and look for something that might be a little more authentic.

We had passed a place called Trattoria la Stampa on Via de Maroniti, a small alley a short walk away from the Trevi plaza. So we went there for spaghetti carbonara and tripe. Larry had told me they were outstanding dishes in Rome. 

They were out of tripe, so we had rabbit cacciatora instead.

The carbonara was good enough to be called exciting: pasta al dente and covered in (I believe) pecorino Romana. The pancetta bits had been fried crisp. The result was enough to bring tears to the eyes.

The rabbit was in a slightly sweet clear sauce, and while it was good, was not nearly as much fun as the spaghetti.

We split—actually, Joanna sampled and I drank—a half liter of the house red. It was OK, and lost some of its acidity when we had it with the food.

It was also good when I dipped the coarse bread into it.

We went back to the fountain to see it lighted in the dark, and there were still crowds of people there. 

We walked back to the neighborhood of the hotel without getting lost. I don’t get lost as often these days as I used to. I sort of miss that. Maybe I’m not traveling hard enough.

We stopped at the bar on the corner—where we had gone for coffee earlier—and I ordered two glasses of red. I asked Joanna if she wanted me to order wine for her too, but she said no. She sipped a little of mine, but she had polished off a glass with dinner and that was it for her.

It must have been midnight—about 6 p.m. back home—when we shut down for the night. I woke this morning to a siren in the street. it was 9:30.

I’ve pretty much made up for a restless night on a plane.

So far, so good. And it doesn’t get better than that.

May8

This is a fascinating essay—as your travelogues always are.

Two words of caution. Be careful of your use of “Roma,” which in addition to referring to a great city, is the PC synonym for Gypsies, who constitute a real problem in some areas.

More importantly: beware if raw Mediterranean shellfish. Or, if you indulge and are stricken, take the medicine prescribed—all of it. (My continuing grief could have been avoided even after I’d become violently ill had I taken all the medicine—but the pills were so big they scratched my throat so I stopped. The medicine can’t be had in the US. It was a case of a parasite, unknown here.)

Diocletian is fascinating. Everybody knows about his constitution but doesn’t know it no longer exists—all copies destroyed by Justinian so as to avoid confusion with his constitution. Spent weeks trying to find Diocletian’s and even my professor didn’t know about its non-existence.

Alan is now reading your article and making observations about history—and Diocletian, whom he rather admires.

Best to Joanna.

Beatrice

May 8

It's nice to know that you're having a good time in Rome. That was one of the stops on my honeymoon many years ago. One never has enough time there.

Peter

May 8

Just wanted to say we are all enjoying the history and art from Rome.    Keep them coming!

Ciao,

Jeanie 

Tuesday in Newark, Wednesday in Rome

May 7

Just a quick note because we're just getting started.

I'm in the Contilia, a small hotel on Via Principe Amedeo in Rome. There are orange trees across the street.

The plane was more than an hour late getting off the ground in Newark, but aside from that the trip was OK. No sleep, but we expected that.

We've had our passports stamped and found our luggage. We couldn't find our bags at first because passport control took as long here as it does in Newark. Very chaotic, not lines just a mob of people shuffling toward gates. Even the cattle pen part toward the end was several people across. Lots of milling about.

The bags had been removed from the carousel and set next to it, but no one told us that. I found them by accident when I went to report them lost.

So far, we've had time for pastry and coffee and a short walk for orientation. We are two blocks from a baroque church called Santa Maria Maggiore, which has a shrine under the altar that houses fragments that tradition says come from the manger where Jesus was born. 

It was strange to stand that close to something that for centuries has been linked to the Gospel of Luke.

There was a lady kneeling on the stones in prayer.

It is a basilica, which means large empty nave (no pews) and two side aisles defined by rows of columns. This is the plan of the original basilicas, which were ancient Roman public buildings.

Although the church is baroque, the mosaics on the floor may date back 1,200 years.

We also went into another chapel with frescoes and a golden window above the altar. The motif was the All-Seeing Eye of God. It is the same eye that is at the top of the pyramid on the back of a dollar bill, but this one was on a golden ground surrounded by a gang of cherubs.

I managed to take a photo before an usher came in and threw everybody out of the chapel. So the photo of the day is "Joanna meets the All-Seeing Eye."

You may have to blow the photo up to see the detail in the golden oval near the top of the frame, but don't worry.

The eye can see you.

May 7

I had no idea about Santa Maria Maggiore’s association with Luke. Interesting. I like the photo. Is that Joanna wearing a straw hat? And which hat did you wind up bringing?

Alan

May 8

Straw hat. I see a lot of them here. Apparently Memorial Day comes earlier in Italy.

Or else, only tourists are wearing them.

The manger is mentioned only in St. Luke. That's why I mentioned him.

And yes, that's Joanna in her own straw hat.

Harry

May 7

Enjoy Italia!

Decades ago my first wife and I took the train from Rome to Florence and back. We shared 2nd class seats with an Italian family who were truly into living life well. We had a wonderful time getting soused, a high point in my life even that long ago.

Their only English was "okay" and ours was limited to "pronto." Communication is both overrated and misunderstood.

A life well lived is a life well laughed, yes?

JackT

May 8

Yes, and yes again.

Harry

May 7

Hi, Harry and Joanna!

I have always admired you, Harry, and your ability to wear your hats as well as you do... that said.... Joanna, you look stunning!

Xo

A, A, and a

Fire and Snow

Jan. 5

I had been walking after breakfast on Temple or Pagoda Street on New Year’s Day, when I suddenly realized: Hey, today is January first. That means tomorrow is the second, and I have an interview lined up somewhere.

The interview was with Dr. Low Teck Seng, head of a Singaporean government agency called the National Research Foundation. It is based in a sprawling structure on the campus of the National University of Singapore that houses the agency and a new endeavor known as CREATE, Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise. It’s a collaboration of Singapore’s universities working with, so far, 10 others from around the world, including MIT, Technical University of Munich, and Cambridge University. Much of the space in the CREATE buildings is devoted to laboratories.

It’s part of a bigger picture in which Singapore is working to establish itself as the technological research hub in Southeast Asia. The country is looking at R&D as an industry in itself. I find the idea fascinating.

I cabbed over and back and met Joanna at the Dragon Court. All I had eaten at the kopitiam Thursday morning was toast. They didn’t have any eggs. It’s a good thing for me that the NRF staff provided tea during the interview. Each time my stomach started to growl, I took a sip to keep it quiet.

When I got back to the hotel, Joanna had already had lunch with the monks at the vegetarian restaurant in the Buddha Tooth temple.

I was famished and headed for the closest place, one of the Szechuan clones on the block. The restaurant had fried frog in chili sauce, but for some reason, I couldn’t order it for one. So I had minced pork with noodles instead. It was very tasty, but also very hot. I had to keep wiping my lips to keep them from burning. It made the Tiger taste great.

We strolled around the neighborhood and then checked out of the Dragon Court to consolidate everything in the cubby hole at the Porcelain. The room at the Porcelain is in the middle of the building with no direct communication to the outside. When we left there was a strange smell in the corridor as we came near the elevator.

It wasn’t until we were outside that we discovered the fire engine and the smoke coming out of the roof across the street. The fire was apparently in a restaurant across the way. We had heard nothing, not even sirens, from inside the room.

We went to hear more opera, but the teahouse was closed. There are no posted hours outside. We were just lucky to have dropped in when we did.

The group had a special performance with dinner planned for Friday night, but Friday was a rough one for us. I had a 4:30 interview with representatives of Rolls-Royce and Nanyang Technological University. After that, we had to move to the hotel at the airport because our flight leaves at 5:45 Saturday morning.

We were in the touristy section of Chinatown, and it seems most of the eateries are Szechuan or serve bar food. Joanna was craving some rice and green vegetables. That combination was surprisingly hard to find.

We eventually came across a Cantonese place where we had some of the toughest squid I ever tried the chew and a leafy green vegetable that Joanna says is gai lan. It was in a mild tasty sauce that was much better tan the squid.

It was after dark but I wasn’t ready to quit because walking had gotten a lot easier, so this was the first day that I wasn‘t worn out by seven or eight. We sat at a table outside a new restaurant, Fatty Weng’s, on a corner in the street market where I ordered a couple of Tigers on draft. Joanna had a Thai baby cocoanut.

This was comparable to having a beer on the Wildwood boardwalk. All ages, appearances, sizes, shapes, and personalities of people walk by. Some are decked out as if they are headed for clubs. Most are tourists. Some look like locals. Hawkers try to get everyone’s attention.

A bicycle rickshaw parade formed up in the middle of the intersection. The rickshaws in Singapore have a complete bicycle where the driver sits next to the car, rather than centered in front of it. Think bike with a sidecar. They used to serve as a regular taxi service, but like the bicycle rickshaws in New York, they are only used for short novelty tours now.

That was it for Thursday.

Friday we checked out of the Porcelain, but they held our bags for us. We went to Buddha Tooth temple because Joanna had learned the day before that monks would be there chanting during the day. We went to hear them.

 Four or five monks knelt near the altar with the image of a bodhisattva, not Buddha. Another sat at a microphone in the middle of the space. There were a couple of dozen people with prayer books following along.

It’s uncanny. As Larry pointed out the other night, you don’t hear them stop for breath.

We came toward the end of one of three periods of chanting for the day. It ended with a very melodic hymn, which many of the people in the congregation joined in singing.

We bought a package of incense as an offering, and bought an oil lamp in a glass vase to set beside others already burning. It comes with a red tag printed with a prayer for blessings. Joanna signed it with our names in Han characters.

We wandered down a couple of new streets after that, and came across a park. That’s where we made the find of the day. Certain old trees in Singapore are designated Heritage Trees.

There were two in this park. The first one we encountered was a Bodhi tree. Legend has it that when Siddhartha Gautama became weary of wandering in search of wisdom, he decided to sit under a tree until enlightenment came to him, After a long time, the Truth came to him, and the tree blossomed. The tree became known as the bodhi tree. “Bodhi” means “truth.”

The only other specimen of a Bodhi tree that we had seen was in the amusement park near the giant Buddha on Lantau Island in Hong Kong. And that one was artificial.

The trunk of the real thing looks like an assembly of smaller trunks and the upper limbs reach out a dozen yards or more. It could provide shade and shelter from a drizzle.

The other heritage tree looked like a banyan, which I have seen in Florida. They have air roots that become like auxiliary trunks.

This one, though, was an Indian rubber tree. They were brought in by colonists for rubber plantations. I don’t know if this one was the last of an orchard, or an escapee. But it had been there a long time.

We found a food court with some fairly good roast duck (served a little too cold for my taste) and char siew (slightly sweet roast pork).

No beer with it. I had an interview at 4:30.

The interview went well, considering there were half a dozen people sitting in. Rolls-Royce has opened a dedicated research facility at Nanyang Technological University. It is partly funded by the company, by the university, and by the government of Singapore through the National Research Federation.

The idea is to develop ideas and carry them as far as a lab demonstration. The most promising would then move to other Rolls-Royce centers for possible commercial development. Rolls-Royce is involved in various lines of business, but is primarily known for advanced jet engines and gas turbines.

The one thing it no longer makes is automobiles. Rolls-Royce cars are made today by BMW.

After my trip out to the university, I met Joanna back at the Porcelain. She had gotten us bottles of the 24-herb and the kwai leng tea. We tried some of that to make me healthier and then headed for the Crowne Plaza at Changi Airport.

On the way to the room, the elevator stopped at the second floor, and a long-haired guy, wobbling a bit and holding onto a glass, got on along with his significant other. The light won’t light for his floor. The bellman tells him, he has to tap his room card against a sensor before he can select his floor. “I don’t have it on me,” the guy mutters.

The bellman did it for him. How they will get into their room doesn’t seem to occur to anybody. Maybe there’s somebody waiting there. The woman, who was standing in the back of the elevator, was looking enigmatic. I don’t know if she was pissed like him or pissed at him.

When it was our turn to land on the second floor, we tried some Southern Hemisphere wines with dinner. Joanna had a Chilean merlot, and I had an Australian mix of shiraz and cabernet sauvignon.

Joanna had chicken rice, which she said was better than the version served at the hawker center. I was dying for some comfort food. I had a burger. I told them to hold the bacon, egg, and cheese. There were other things that had egg on them, too. A pizza, maybe, and also the beef tenderloin.

I like egg, but enough cholesterol is enough.

We went to the bar where the best I could get was more Tiger on draft. I had a shot of Jameson to beef it up.

We had a two a.m. wake-up call, so we packed it in around 9. Nothing like a good night’s cat nap.

We left Singapore a little earlier than expected. I don’t think they left anyone behind. We made the transfer without incident at Hong Kong and landed in Newark about on time.  Depressing snow everywhere, and I was dreading the lugging of my bags over six inches of white stuff. But when the cab passed my house, I saw the walks were shoveled by some Good Samaritan. We pulled up in front of Joanna’s house and the way there was clear too.

So far, so good. Damn good.