The ornithologists tour Rome

Before I instruct you on the whole of Roman history, you should probably know that, in the picture above, the creature in the foreground was identified by Jim as a penguin. Rightfully dismayed, I pointed out that it was actually a pigeon. It was only Kris, with her PhD in human psychology, who was able to discern that it was a seagull, and she shared her superior information with us in the most tactful and sensitive way, without an ounce of derision. I aim to match that standard in my teachings to you.

We started our day in the Jewish Ghetto with a guide named Micaela and finished our day at the Vatican with a guide named Sonia. The end result of this poor planning was that we spent 9 hours walking, listening, and trying to sound intelligent. In the vast Vatican, we lost Jim for about an hour, and then, once we made it back to the hotel, poor Ron simply collapsed on the bed.

I did see – and correctly identify – a pigeon today. However, I was not truly aware I was standing in the Sistine Chapel until after we left and I checked with Kris to make sure. Lest you deem me the only philistine of the group, just know that after the Vatican, we got to go to St. Peter’s Basilica – biggest Christian church in the world – and no matter how many times we discuss it, Kris feels that a better name is St. Petersburg Basilica. I would have tried harder to correct her, but we were busy looking for Jim.

I’m getting ahead of myself here, though. Back to this morning. It was exactly a 16 minute walk from our hotel to the Jewish Ghetto and the four of us, all following a dual-phone GPS system we are using (Kris with one and me with the other, Ron and Jim discussing and solving world crises), managed to cover the distance in about 35 minutes. At no time did the two phones offer the same walking directions or distance to destination.

Here is a picture of Ron and Jim in better days – before we lost Jim and before Ron had to take to his bed.

We did finally find Micaela of Jewish Roma Walking Tours. We had booked a 2 hour private tour with her for $350, which is really expensive but she had great reviews. It was concerning, though, because a family of 4 from Australia was waiting around – also having booked a 2 hour private tour with Micaela. And sure enough, Micaela arrived, and never addressed the issue of our private tour at all, even when I showed her their confirmation email. She’s a very slick business woman and I’m not really sure what to make of the way she operates. She did knock $30 off her fee and then, later, when the tour was over, said she couldn’t cut her fee because she knew she was going to go over the 2 hour planned tour – which was true as the tour was 3 hours.

But Micaela is a feisty fireball of a tour guide and we certainly learned a lot of her personal family history – from her Grandmother, who was rounded up in Rome near the end of the war and died in Auschwitz, to her Ghetto friend, Emanuele di Porto. He’s 91 years old and survived a 1943 roundup by being sheltered on a series of trams for 48 hours. As a 12-year-old boy that October day, he saw his mother being arrested from their apartment window and went outside screaming. He was promptly thrown onto a truck with his mother, who managed to throw him back off and told him to run.

Here is Emanuele, with Micaela showing pictures from a graphic novel he just published:

He ran to a square with a lot of streetcars, boarded one, and told the conductor what had happened. That conductor – and then a continuing series of conductors – fed him and looked after him for 2 days, until a family friend got on the tram, saw him, and reunited him with his father. His mother was immediately deported that day and killed in Auschwitz.

The import and awe of standing there with Emanuele is hard to convey…it was amazing that he took the time to stand with us for a bit and share his story.

The plan was to take a leisurely walk from the Jewish Ghetto to the Vatican, as we had two hours between tours. I pictured stopping for a nice lunch, a little gelato etc. What we did instead, of course, was a sweat-filled march across Rome, panicked at the idea of being late for our meeting with Sonia since Micaela’s tour left us with less than an hour.

Although I had clearly over-scheduled our tour day with the Ghetto tour and the Vatican tour, it was an interesting contrast to spend 3 hours with Micaela and then 3 hours with Sonia. For every moment you spend with Micaela, you are getting her unrestrained and vociferous opinion, all delivered in a mostly-charming and never dull conversation.

By contrast, Sonia is the consummate and textbook tour guide: reserved but friendly, knowledgeable without agenda, and a great interpreter. The Vatican was so crowded and confusing that I doubt I could have even figured out how to enter the building without Sonia. I know this is a bad picture but look at this crowd of people in front of us as we try to walk around:

There’s so much art in the Vatican that it’s one of those places that I just shut down and wander. There’s the Sistine Chapel, super famous etc. and the place where we lost Jim, but there’s apparently 70,000 pieces of art, with 20,000 pieces on display. When confronted with this type of art situation, I try to find something I can connect with and I found these floor tiles attractive:

Here’s a Vatican hallway full of statues that are 2000 years old. It’s also the hallway where an American tourist destroyed two busts last week:

Here are the missing busts and there is so much security in the Vatican galleries that the scene here last week must have been crazy:

I’ll leave you with these pictures of St. Peter’s (or St. Petersburg, for you, Kris) Basilica. Look at that interior pic – you can fit 60,000 people in there!