Monday, May 25, 2009

General Observations About Rome

David will get the pictures up eventually but here's some things we noticed about or in Rome:

- Scooters are to Rome what bicycles are to Amsterdam (except they're bigger). There also seems to be a helmet law. Given the way traffic moves in Rome, who would want to ride a scooter without one? (especially since David and Mick saw the remnants of a scooter at an accident scene being investigated by the police. Not a good sign.)

- Everything in Rome is built on a HUGE scale; buildings, fountains, and churches are grand and imposing. In fact, St. Peter's is so big it didn't even feel or look like a church. Eventually we found a Mass in progress but otherwise it just looks like a big museum.

- Priests and nuns abound in Rome, which is really no big surprise. Maybe a little surprising is that they seemed to move about the city in their clerical/nunnical garb, unlike here, where most of them blend in rather well. (But I guess in a city with that many religious, you blend in when you dress the part.)

- All those priests and nuns in religious dress have to shop somewhere. And guess what: Rome must be THE place to shop. We saw numerous stores selling chasubles and other priest gear - including some mighty fancy gold chalices and monstrances. I missed this particular window - I got stuck on some of the gold chalices - but there was even one store selling sweaters for nuns.

- And the best part: we didn't see or hear a single Russian! Amazing what a drop in the price of oil will do...

1 comment:

Unknown said...

ohhh rome. loud, busy, huge.