Friday the thirteenth -- could this day be any more unlucky than our Thursday? In fact, it turned out to be serendipitously pleasant. We started out by crossing the Ponte Mazzini, but instead of hiking into the centre of the city, we went to a bus stop along the Lungotevere (the riverside highway) and quickly caught a 280 headed northwest. The tabacchi next door to us, run by a grumpy old man, had sold us "new" smart tickets, but the new validation machine was out of service. We only had a short way to ride in any case, up to near the Castel Sant'Angelo. We got off, walked around the corner, and boarded the 40 express, a nice new articulated bus. The ticket machines worked here, but processing the "smart" tickets took about three times as long as printing the time and date on the old "dumb" tickets (which were still for sale, and both machines were present in all buses). This, I suppose, is progress.
The bus may have made fewer stops, but it had the same traffic to contend with, and we didn't get to its terminus at Termini until about 9:30. (I hadn'[t realized, until this trip, that Termini was not named that because it was the terminus of any rail line, but because of the Baths, or Terme, of Diocletian.)
The Baths had been used for exhibiting classical sculpture until it was deemed unsafe and the museum was closed for several years, and then Palazzo Massimo was opened. But "Baths of Diocletian" showed up on our combined ticket, and we had no idea what we would see. It turned out to be quite the experience: an ultra-modern museum, with copious texts in both Italian and English, and a more integrated sense of history.
The first section was "Epigraphy", dealing with inscriptions. Among the many talents N brought to our marriage, I thought, was a knowledge of classical Latin. But she often couldn't remember enough, or decided that the inscriptions were boring. Here numerous inscriptions were displayed, with translations that were not literal but provided context. Many of them were boring, at least in detail, but the explanations were interesting. Some were fascinating -- drinking cups inscribed with the names of Catiline and Cato, presumably political advertisements. At one point we found an inscription dedicated to Septimius Severus, Caracalla, and Geta, with a much more obvious instance of the "damnatio memoriae" than on the Arch in the Forum: a line and a half referring to Geta had just been chiselled off. Other inscriptions were from funerary monuments, or described the activities of various guilds.
The displays were laid out on several levels, with hypermodern lighting and walkways; it was all quite unexpected and impressive. There was a whole section on the "Protohistory of the Latium People" that was less interesting to us, though no less well done. From there we gained access to the cloister of the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, built out of the largest parts of the ruins of the Baths of Diocletian; the cloister was thought to be built according to drawings by Michelangelo. It was lined with sculptures and fragments, mostly unlabelled.
The "great halls" that were previously used for museum purposes were still under renovation, so we could only see their outsides; but we walked into the church, which was covered with Baroque marble on the inside, and then up to the Aula Octagona, an eight-sided room which formed one small corner of the original bath complex, and which housed a few interesting sculptures, notably that of a boxer, exhausted and scarred.
From there we walked around the outside of the remnants of the Baths, in a clockwise direction, and then towards the train station to take the Metro. I bought more tickets from a machine, and we boarded the train. I remember the Rome Metro in 82 as being dark, smelly, hot, and slow. Now it is properly lit, and no more unpleasant than the older parts of the Paris Metro. The cars, however, are covered in graffiti, and the kids hadn't seen that in New York (thanks to Giuliani) so I had to explain it to them.
We took the Metro three stops down to the Circus Maximus stop, got out, found some shade to the east, and put on our hats and sunscreen. We were headed for the Baths of Caracalla, also on our combined ticket. I had seen the ballet "Romeo and Juliet" here in 82, and remembered only squinting at the stage from the cheap seats, seeing tiny figures cavorting against hulking forms.
It was fairly hot by this time. "Are these baths like the other ones?" Z asked, remembering the hot, dry walk around the Palatine hill. I told her that they were somewhat more complete but still hot and dry. "Do Romans now take three baths or just one like us?" she asked, referring to the frigidarium, tepidarium, and caldarium. "Just one," I reassured her.
The Baths of Caracalla being more complete, there was enough shade to make the parts in full sun bearable, and the Oxford guide helped with the structure. Some of the pavements were still in place, and fragments of mosaics were propped up against the walls. We tried to describe to the kids what it would have been like in its prime.
Our transit tickets were valid for a total of 75 minutes, so we had time to walk back to the Circus Maximus stop and catch the number 3 tram heading south. Both the rickety old orange cars and larger, newer, sleek blue cars shared the same tracks, and we got one of the latter, though not before another lengthy wait during which we watched a pair of local drunks slowly make their way across the busy Viale Aventino.
The tram may have been new, but it smelled like a less-reputable Chinese grocery. Z held her nose. It went down the tracks to the Ostiense gate; we caught a glimpse of the back of the Pyramid of Caius Cestius, and then it went up the Via Marmorata.
We got off at the second stop on that street and walked back to the trattoria Perilli a Testaccio. It was almost deserted, there being a couple of other parties in the place, one a set of three businessmen and another an older pair of men. The kids had cannelloni, N had tagiolini ai funghi porcini, and I had to have rigatoni con pajata, with a tomato-based sauce containing coils of the small intestine of unweaned calves. This was not as weird as it sounds; they had been cooked long enough to give their flavour to the sauce (much as the sauces with hearts and gizzards I had made at home) and didn't taste that different on their own. I put one loop into A's mouth and she didn't object, though she wasn't clamouring for more.
The waiter, an older man, flirted with the kids in English, and the whole place gave me the sense of belonging to a time fifty years ago. I would have found it quaint in 82. At any rate, the food was decent.
After lunch, we went next door to the legendary gastronomia Volpetti, about which Fred Plotkin raves in "Italy for the Gourmet Traveller". It was 1:53 and they closed at 2, so we just barely got in the door, but we could see quite a spread of cheeses, meats, savouries, wines, and other edibles, all crammed into a fairly small space, but with decent labelling. The counterpeople offered us generous samples -- a trifle too pushy, perhaps, but the quality was undeniable. I bought some pecorino stagionato, a Sardinian sheep's milk cheese, some caciocavallo affumicato, and some prosciutto di San Danielle. They had closed the shutter most of the way and were letting customers out of the shop individually.
Outside, we pledged to find the kids some dessert, and then I noticed a pasticceria just next door, which was still open. The kids selected eclairs and cream puffs topped with fruit slices, and ate them amazingly well as we walked up the street. We could have caught the 280 bus from there almost to our door, but the stops going north were in full sun, and I was sure that if we went and stood at one, it would be half an hour before the bus arrived.
So instead we walked: up Via Marmorata in the shade, over the Tiber on the Ponte Sublicio (the Testaccio covered market was closed by this time, or we definitely would have toured it), past the Porta Portese, with the motley stalls of the flea market visible just beyond (though I don't know if anyone else noticed, since the gate is now just a very difficult intersection to get across for a pedestrian) and then up Via San Francesco di Ripa into familiar Trastevere territory.
More rest and music practice, and then we left the apartment to head for an early pizza dinner. We went back to Panattoni / Ai Marmi, which we knew would be open this time; the Rough Guide said 6:30, though when we walked by about 6:45, the place was deserted, and a waiter waggled his hand when N asked if they were open.
So we walked down to the church of San Francesco di Ripa, to see what its hours were. It was open; a mass was being celebrated, so we had to be circumspect, but we got to go up and see Bernini's sculpture Ecstacy of Beata Ludovica Albertoni, as consolation for having not made it to Santa Maria della Vittoria, near Termini, to see his Ecstacy of Saint Theresa.
The pizza place had a few more customers in the sidewalk seats, on the wide sidewalks of Viale Trastevere, when we went back, so we were seated. The kids split a calzone (less mushy, though they still had to arrange their plates with care to let the liquid drain away); N had a pizza bianca with zucchini flowers, and I had the same with added sausage. There were interesting bean dishes offered as secondi, but we didn't try them that time.
One of our sources had mentioned the gelati at La Fonte delle Salute, just south, so we tried it; it wasn't bad, but not particularly memorable. Having outdoor seats that were largely deserted at that hour (though we had seen people sitting down at Panattoni still clutching their cones, presumably aperitifs) helped.
Back home for some reading and planning. We discovered that the apartment had had its (presumably weekly) cleaning while we were gone; the beds were made with fresh linen, the floors were swept, and the garbage was gone (we had not been told what to do with it, but it seemed clear that it was supposed to be tossed into the dumpsters which stood on the street at periodic intervals). After the kids went to bed and laundry was done, I got dressed in the next day's clothes and wandered down into Trastevere. The trattorie on side streets were filled with customers, some tourists but a lot of people speaking Italian; musicians played cheesy pieces to the crowds; the large display of books on the cinema in the square in front of Santa Maria in Trastevere was augmented with a screen showing some old B/W film, and people actually sitting in folding chairs and attempting to watch it. It was certainly a lively scene, but not my scene. The streets leading up to the Porta Settimana were clogged with traffic; instead of having small cars and scooters zip by me, I walked past them, back to the apartment.