Palestrina

The town of Palestrina (called Praeneste in ancient times) is known for its Archaeological Museum...

... which is housed in a palazzo built atop the ancient Etruscan Sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia:

The sanctuary was covered up for centuries, but exposed again due to bombs during World War II. The museum contains many items found at the site, including an incredibly detailed mosaic depicting the flooding of the Nile River. Numerous African animals, such as giraffes and hippos, are depicted. Apparently some people think one of the animals resembles a dinosaur, and they actually cite the mosaic as proof that man and dinosaurs coexisted. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take photos of it, so we'll have to share pictures of the town with you instead.

Palestrina is a hill town, hence plenty of steps! The residents probably have strong quadriceps.

Cerveteri Etruscan Necropolis

Last month, we visited the Banditaccia necropolis, created by the Etruscans in a place now known as Cerveteri.

It's a cemetery laid out like a city, with streets. The tombs are like houses. They have doors and sometimes windows. Most of them are round, like this:



but some were connected in a long, rectangular building:



Here's a shot looking from the inside out:



This tomb belonged to a wealthy family and was much more ornate than the others:



One tomb had a pool of stagnant water inside. What's the yellow slime floating on top?



It was really bright, flourescent even, but seemed to disappear when we looked at it from inside the tomb. Phosphorescence, maybe?

Opera al fresco

What does one do on a Thursday evening in Rome? Well, one could go to the opera as we did the other night. It was Tosca by Giacomo Puccini, performed not in an opera house, but at the Terme di Caracalla (ruins of ancient Roman baths)! What an amazing setting.

We were seated kind of far from the stage, but it was still fantastic. The scenery (and I don't mean the stage set) added to the drama of the story.

Apparently operas are staged at the Terme di Caracalla every summer. I met a woman who saw Aida here a few years back, and she said there were live elephants on stage!

They know how to put on a show here.

On another note, we have home internet access now! That only took, oh, two months or so. You see, in order to get home internet, you have to have an Italian bank account. In order to get an Italian bank account, you have to have a codice fiscale (an Italian I.D. number). It takes a while for two people to get their numbers. And another while to find a time when they can both go to the bank during business hours, during a week that's not the week of the G8 summit. Then, after setting up the account (a multi-day process because the bank manager has meetings to attend), you have to go to the ISP office and sign up for internet. From that moment, it takes 4 weeks for a technician to come to the apartment to check your phone line. Then a second technician comes on another day (during work hours, of course) to actually install stuff. Our internet package also includes phone and tv, but the tv technician hasn't come over yet. (It's August, the month when all Italians take vacation.)

Sorry for going on like that. Anyway, the important thing is that now we can post photos! Here's another of the Terme di Caracalla.

Adventures in Italian dentistry

Ever had a toothache in a foreign country?

I've been feeling some tooth pain lately, so I went to a dentist. He's Italian, but speaks fluent English and graduated from a reputable dental school in the US. I told him what was wrong. He sprayed some cold air on my teeth, took a couple of x-rays, and declared that I need root canal, core build-up and a cubic zirconia crown on tooth 16. He gave me a printed price estimate that took my breath away. (His office is on a ritzy street, and I suspect there is an inflated price to help pay for the ritzy rent.)

I was not prepared to take action immediately. Instead, I emailed my DC dentist and asked his opinion. (I had just seen him in April, at which time he did x-rays.) He replied that he'd be surprised if I needed such extensive work on that tooth. He referred to the tooth as if it were in the very back of my mouth, which it isn't.

So I looked up tooth numbering systems on the internet. Turns out the US uses a different numbering system than many other countries. In the US, tooth 16 is the 3rd molar, the wisdom tooth, on the upper left. In the FDI numbering system, tooth 16 is the 1st molar on the upper right.

The strange thing is that the tooth in question, the one that hurts, is the first molar on the upper left. I emailed the DC guy again to let him know it's a different tooth, and I'm awaiting his reply.

Meanwhile, I'm seeking an opinion from another dentist in Rome. I've called several, and it appears that dentists, along with people from all other professions in Italy, take the entire month of August off for vacation. I'll just keep trying.

Siamo qui*

*We're here. In Rome, that is. We arrived on June 1. We haven't posted on the blog till now because we don't have home internet access. We signed up for it, but apparently it takes a while, quite a long while, for them to set it up. Till someone comes over to install it, I'm afraid we won't be able to post pictures. In the meantime, we'll just post a few words.

Pasta, pizza, gelato -- how about those words? We've eaten so much of those items lately that they're practically coming out of our ears, but are we tired of them yet? No! Is it even possible to get tired of gelato? I daresay it's not. We'll post more about the many delightful gelaterie of Rome in the future.

We've been checking out some sights. Hard to avoid it when you live in an ancient capital like this one! Every corner you turn, there's some archaeological sight, monument, renaissance church, or festival.

Meanwhile our Italian has actually worsened. Three months ago we gave presentations on newspaper articles in Italian, using the subjunctive and hypothetical phrases. These days, without the 4 hours of daily Italian class we had in DC, we speak mostly English. (Everyone at work speaks English.) Gotta get some more practice. Ciao for now.

Cleveland and The Henry Ford

Devotees of the Drew Carey Show will recognize this edifice:



If you didn't know, it's the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. There's lots of cool stuff there, like Jimi Hendrix's guitar, Elvis's purple Cadillac, John Lennon's doodles, and Hank Williams's boots. There are also plenty of multi-media shows about the history of rock music. However, you get museum fatigue after a while and can't properly appreciate the outfit Roger Daltrey wore in the film version of "Tommy."

Next stop: Dearborn, Michigan, home of The Henry Ford. (It seems like the word "museum" should be included there, but it's actually called just The Henry Ford.) It's a complex of attractions including an indoor history museum and a place called Greenfield Village. You can tour Greenfield Village on foot, or take a steam train, a 1920s bus, or a model T Ford!



The village is a bizarre but actually captivating assemblage of historical buildings collected by Henry Ford and physically moved to this location from different parts of the US and even from other countries. For example, we saw Robert Frost's house...



...and Thomas Edison's laboratory.



We also toured Ford's Rouge plant, where they make F-150 trucks. Ford is trying to make it a (relatively) environmentally sound plant. Notice the "living roof" with greenery growing on it.



Back at The Henry Ford, we saw lots and lots of cars, motorcycles and trains...



...as well as the Dymaxion house, a circular house designed by Buckminster Fuller.



The museum is not just about cars, but includes a lot of artifacts from American history, such as the chair Lincoln sat in when he was assassinated and the bus in which Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back. But really, the cars exhibited were pretty great. Most were in pristine condition. The way this one is displayed, one can almost understand how it is assembled:

Oh Beautiful, for Spacious Skies...

America! We're back. Man, is it a beautiful country. We recently returned from approximately one month of travels via car around the U S of A. Coming from Ghana, some of our most prominent impressions are:
1) It's so CLEAN here -- little to no rubbish lying about, no public urination, and the air smells great (no burning trash!)
2) Abundance -- there's tons of STUFF, no shortage of anything, whatever you want is available at all times.
3) Pace -- everything moves really fast here! Order your meal, and it's on the table in 15 minutes (in contrast with an hour in a restaurant in Ghana).

This is the first installment in a series of posts about our trip.

First we headed north to visit some family and friends in NY and NJ, then westward through upstate NY. We had never been to the Catskills before and were impressed with its tree-covered hillsides and pretty lakes. We stopped in at the Corning Museum of Glass, where they have all manner of glass bottles...



...and sculpture.



The exhibits include historical objects, artworks, technological uses of glass, and even glass-blowing and -breaking demonstrations.

Next stop: The Chautauqua Institution. This place is a fascinating community that holds 9 weeks of learning sessions every summer. Each week has a theme, and experts on that theme (all people whose names you'd recognize or whose books you've read) hold lectures and workshops. We visited during the off-season, so we weren't able to attend any sessions. Still, we were able to get a room, so that's a plus.



The setting is lovely, as the town borders a pretty lake.



From there we moved further westward to Lake Erie, PA. Presque Isle State Park is right next to the city of Erie. It's a pleasant spot with forests, bike paths, places to fish and swim, and a couple of lighthouses.




It was remarkable how clean the lake is. Remember those stories about the water being on fire in the 70s? Now it looks pretty clear, and we didn't see a single piece of garbage. There are even some houses right on the water.



Stay tuned for the next installment about our cross-country jaunt.