Safe and sound.

Eric, Kevin and I walked down to the Colosseum a few minutes before sunset to see the night view. Here are some pictures.

We got to sleep in a bit this morning, as we met up with today’s tour guide, Julia, at 10am at our hotel. Julia is a Brit who moved to Rome from Kent when she was 19. She chose Rome by throwing a dart at a map (really!). The dart landed on a small town about 150km north of Rome - she figured that wouldn’t be any fun, so she moved the dart to the biggest city around. So she moved to Rome without knowing any Italian and without a job. I guess it worked out okay, because 8 years later she’s fluent in the language, the culture and the history.

We took a cab to the catacombs at St. Sebastian’s (map). These were the original catacombs where the name comes from (”catacomb” means literally “near the hollow”, which is where we were). Though you need to go through the catacombs with a tourguide from St. Sebastian’s, it was great having Julia along with us. Before we went in she gave us a great overview of what we’d see, and she filled in a lot of information during the tour. The local guide was hard to understand, it sounded like he learned english from the Microsoft computer voice - like someone typed in the tour monologue and he memorized the computer-read version of it. Unfortunately you’re not allowed to take pictures down there, so we don’t have anything to put up here. Basically it was a 20 minute walk through hand-dug caves with various areas for putting the bodies (there are five different way’s they’d put the dead in there). The areas we went through were devoid of the dead - all rock, no bones - so if you want to see rows of skeletons like we all imaging catacombs to be like you’re out of luck. Very cool nonetheless.

Afterwards we sat outside with Julia and got a history of Christianity that was fascinating. She was happy and comfortable separating history and faith, and was clearly someone who loves storytelling.

We walked about a mile up the Appian Way to a small cafe where we continued the lessons and eventually called a cab.

We met up with our tour guide, Mohammed, outside the Metro stop by the Colosseum. He has a degree in archeology and made a career of it for 8 years in Rome before adding “tour guide” to his resume, so it was especially interesting listening to him as we walked through the Colosseum and adjoining Forum. At places you could see layers of four different eras of construction on top of each other, ranging from BC through the 1800s. My favorite part of the Colosseum was the elevator system that would rise up through the sand covered floor with the Gladiators or wild animals aboard. Ahh, showmanship.

Kevin’s three years of Latin were put to use as he helped translate carvings on statues and buildings.

Here’s a map of our walking tour (the blue line).

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Afterwards we walked over to the Pantheon, and FINALLY grabbed some lunch. That’s a lot of walking on a European breakfast. Kevin ordered his favorite pizza, which is just cheese and no sauce. The waitress thought that sounded boring, so she had the chef use some exotic cheese to make it more interesting - then they way undercooked it so the center of the crust was still doughy. Not exactly what Kevin had in mind. He was a great sport though.

We appeased all of us with the best gelato of the trip at a place next to the Piazza Navona. Ummm. Then the long walk back to the hotel via Fontana di Travi.
(The yellow line on the map.)

After resting our steaming feet, we grabbed a cab and went back near Piazza Navona to a recommended pizzaria name Bufalo. It paid off for Kevin, great thin crust pizza sitting outside. Then we walked back AGAIN, but this time tried to take a shorter route, which would have worked if we didn’t miss a turn and end up almost next to the Colosseum again. Ouch.

We spent the day touring today. Update to come soon…
My computer crashed this evening, and I’ve just spent the last couple of hours getting it to run again. Not currently in the mood to start writing about the day!

Tomorrow, more walking as we tour the Catacombs and pursue pizza.

Hopefully will update these past days sometime tomorrow…

UPDATE:
I never got my laptop to boot back up reliably, so I packed it away to keep from doing more damage. We wrote notes down which I am now transcribing and post-dating from home on the 18th..

Luckily it wasn’t a hard drive crash, so all our pictures are safe. Whew.

After the Ferrari tour we returned our rental car and grabbed a taxi to the Modena train station. It was about a 4 1/2 hour train ride (we thought it was supposed to be 3 1/2 hours) through beautiful country.

Interesting thing about the trains - the toilets are an open hole to the railroad tracks whizzing by down below (pun intended).

Our hotel in Rome, The Hotel Columbia (Map), was a short walk from the train station. We checked in, then had a great meal at a restaurant nearby that the desk clerk recommended. Then to bed - big day of walking coming up!

One of the main stops planned for our trip is a visit to the town of Maranella, home to Ferrari. (Map) So last night we had dinner at Ristorante Montana, next to the Ferrari test track, a favorite of drivers, racing celebs and fans alike. Nevermind that it took the hotel twenty minutes to figure out directions for us, or that the directions were wrong but we managed to spot it anyway. The walls are covered with signed cloth napkins, racing suits, parts of F1 cars, helmets, and the likes.

We headed back over this morning to see the rest. Not having a VIN number of our own, we couldn’t arrange a tour of the factory, but we did get to see it from the outside and visit the company’s own museum, Galleria Ferrari. Eric was in his own Mecca, and acted as our tour guide. He took about 270 pictures, here are a few:

The Maserati Factory in Modena.

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We waited in the reception room, which housed a GranSport convertible, two Quattroportes, a GT3 racecar, and another Quattroporte under wraps that would be presented to its owner the next day. We began our tour by walking out into one of the two parking lots, the one used exclusively for Fiat-group cars. The other, larger, lot was nearby and had pictures of famous Maserati road and race cars on it. Two Gran Turismos, one left-hand-drive, one right, drove by as we looked at the parking structure.

We continued by walking by the staging facility where they gathered all the components that would be installed in cars the next day. There were mountains of engines, transmissions (both automatic and semi-automatic), dashboards, driveshafts, and everything in between. As I stared drooling at this pile of mechanical goodness, two more Gran Turismos went by.

We then entered into the actual production line, which was probably 95% Quattroportes, with the remaining 5% being pre-production Gran Turismos (there were no Coupes, Spyders, or GranSports to be seen anywhere on the production line). There were two similar production lines that the cars would go down, then they would go down a third. One stop on the second line consists of lifting the entire, pre-built drivetrain into the chassis. During the third line, the cars get their doors installed, but not until about ¾ of the way down the line. The doors start at the beginning of that line as hollow shells, but slowly get built up to their full spec. When they are installed, it is about a 30 second process involving a vacuum-sucker thing that grabs the window of the door, and it is put into place.

The painting process was then explained, most of which is actually done at the Ferrari factory. The guide told two stories, one of a woman who wanted the color of her car to match the color of her lipstick, and one of a man from Dubai who had his car painted gold. 8 pounds of gold were used in the paint, and the interior was red ostrich-hide (unfortunately, they didn’t have either of those cars there).

When the cars leave that facility, they do so under their own power. Every car then goes on a 60-mile shakedown to make sure that everything is working correctly. You probably know that auto companies balance the tires. Maserati balances the gearbox as well. The cars are also put through their paces in a small facility out back, which includes a suspension test. The last place we stopped was the final quality-control room, which housed four more Gran Turismos which were being rigorously checked (our guide told us that four people from Pininfarina had been in the day before). Any small paint imperfections or dents are fixed, and the cars are sent off to wherever they will end up.

We rented a car in Venice for the leg to Modena. After not seeing a car for two days in Venice it was quite frustrating to get stuck in a major traffic jam getting on to the autostrada just across the bridge. Otherwise uneventful except for decoding the toll system.

The directions we had to the Maserati factory from the highway seemed simple - a quick exit and a couple of turns. But without a detailed map of the area, and a series of roundabouts and missing traffic lights, we were hopelessly lost. We stumbled our way into a bar, far from where we were supposed to be, and asked directions. None of the three people there spoke any english, and our meager understanding of italian didn’t work at all. Luckily we had a piece of paper with the Maserati logo on it and the address, but the barkeep gave up trying to explain to us how to get there and volunteered one of the other people to drive there so we could follow. This worked out great, and given the route we had to take I’m not sure we would have understood the directions in clear english.

Sarah pointed out to Eric and Kevin that italian sounds nothing like spanish (we had just been fooling ourselves).

We self-toured today. Our first stop was the island of Murano, where all the glass companies are. We bought a day pass for the bus system, which like the taxis is obviously all water based. Murano is a 20 minute ride, with great sightseeing along the way. Taxies zip by in both directions in the main channel, which is also shared with barges carrying working cement trucks, cranes, supplies and other essentials.

The Schiavon showroom with glass blowers was recommended to us, so that was our first stop. The blowing demonstration was amazing - Kevin and I stood right next to the furnace while Sarah and Eric were in a cooler spot with a better view into the flames. The blowers were creating a huge vase with swirling red and black stripes. After the vase was completed, they put it in an oven where they would cool it down over three days to keep it from cracking.

Upstairs in the showroom, we were tagged as big spenders and given a “no obligation!” tour of the more exclusive showrooms. Sarah got the full hard sell on a 7,500 euro vase. By continuing to say “no” she was doing an excellent job negotiating the price. “We’ll give you this smaller one, too. Free!” “We’ll split it up as two credit card charges so you don’t have to pay import tax! Save $400!” Our favorite line was, “It’s not how much you spend, it’s how much you save.” We ended up saving a lot, because we didn’t buy it.

After lunch (and gelato!) we went in search of more furnaces to watch more glass get blown. Despite all the signs pointing all around town, we couldn’t find any that were actually open and blowing glass. The highlight was a sales person who told us, “They are going to lunch. They will be back tomorrow.”

We took the bus back to San Marco, and then jumped onto another bus going across to the island of St. Giorgio Maggiore, where the belltower of the cathedral offers an incredible view of Venice. (Part of my ‘vacation algorithm’ is to go to the top of things, so the belltower was a required stop.)

We then bussed our way over to Ca’ Rezzonico, a museum with evidently a great display of life in Venice in the 17th and 18th centuries. I say evidently, because it’s closed on Tuesday. A perfect excuse for nap time back in the hotel.

Heading out to dinner, we were amazed at how fast we could get to St. Marks Square now that we knew where we were going. We then wound our way back over to the Grand Canal for dinner and then…
(wait for it…)
gelato.

Tomorrow we will bid farewell to Venice, rent a car and head on down to Modena.