Day 24

FRIDAY 20 AUGUST 2010

Today was busy! Morning time began with an outing to a strange and curious crypt. As (Amy's) legend has it, soil from Jerusalem was brought to Rome in the 18th century in which the Romans buried Franciscan monks. The dead kept coming while the soil mass remained relatively constant. So Rome decided to dig up the fully decomposed lower layer in order to reuse it for more grave soil, separating out the remaining skeletons. Eventually there became quite a stock of bone matter, so someone decided to decorate with the over 400 human bodies. There is even a feature of the Barberini princess's child skeleton, suspended from the ceiling with scales in one hand and a scythe in the other, both also constructed of human bone. The decorations were beautiful and fascinating, but it was when the whole skeletons in their original monk's robes were presented that a creepy feeling crept under my skin. Especially so when a few of the monks, posed, rosaried, and name tagged, were set out not fully decomposed, preserved. One had more face than not, and it was quite uncomfortable in a fascinating sort of way. This excursion was made with a couple of guys Amy and I met last night on our hostel stoop who are staying here as well - John of Glasgow and Fletch the ex-English now Aussie. We all split after the crypt, but later found each other again at the hostel's nightly Pasta Party and migrated, once more, to the stoop.

At one point in the day, Amy and I wandered by the Cat Pit, as she endearingly calls it, where Caesar is thought to be assassinated. Normally you can count kitties into the double digits. I saw three. Pix posted.

Capping off my tales of excitement for today, Amy led us to a glass shop she had found when she lived in Rome. The small store in a dim alleyway flanked by graffiti is filled with beads and thick rings. At the very back of the store, if you look very closely and have been told before, you will find, obscured by bangles and strung glass, a small opening in the wall about the size of human shoulders. Behind this hole opens a flight of equally narrow stairs surrounded by, on every side, hand blown glass - goblets, vases, caffé cups, lanterns - the walls and ceilings of this subterranean cellar are hung, littered, and stacked with crates of glass. Down there the silence is palpable, the only noise being that your own ear makes.