A Margherita is NOT a Margarita!

OK, fess up... how many of you have ordered a Margherita pizza and assumed it was some sort of Mexican pizza?  It has green stuff on it, right?  A Mexican margarita is green, right?  That's where the similarities end; for it was the Queen of Italy, Margherita Maria Teresa Giovanna di Savoia, (or Margaret of Savoy) who inadvertently started this pizza tradition.  What happened was, she was hungry and she wanted a pizza.  Her chef, wanting to impress the almighty Queen, baked a pizza with the colors of the national flag, green, white, and red.  Tradition holds that green represents the country's plains and the hills, white, the snow-capped Alps and red, blood spilt in the Wars of Italian Independence. The good Queen's pizza held Bazil, fresh Mozeralla cheese, and of course, homemade tomato sauce. She loved the pizza, and the Margherita pizza was born.  Had the good Queen enjoyed a Tequilla ridden Margarita at the same time, an entirely new dish would have probably been named, the "Double Margie" or something even cooler!

Prison

Today, we walked another six miles (according to the GPS) and logged another 300 steps for a total change in elevation of 432 feet down and back up.  We saw (and climbed) the Spanish Steps, Trajan's column, the Piazza di Veniza which is home to the Altare della Patria (Alter of the Father) and  resting place of Italy's first King.  We also saw the Pantheon and actually witnessed a Sunday morning Mass service there.  The most humbling thing we saw today was the prison where the disciples Peter and Paul were kept.  The prison is right on the edge of the ruins of ancient rome and by golly, when you walk into the prison and take the spiraling stone steps down, there's no doubt that if you were chained to a marble column down there, you were definately stuck for a long, long time.  There's a hole in the roof through which prisoners were lowered into the cell below.  At the base of the stairs, there is a tiny room (enough space for two people to comfortably stand it) and the walls, ceiling, and floor were all covered with huge stones.  The pillar that Peter was chained to is still standing in place and a crypt with an upside down cross is there to commemorate the fact that the bodies of Paul and Peter were both kept there after their deaths.  The upside cross represents the fact that Peter was crucified upside down at his own request, stating that he was not worthy to be crucified the same way that Jesus was.  If memory serves, there's a passage in the epilogue of the gospel of John where Jesus hints at the end that Peter would suffer.  Jesus said something like, "You will stretch out your hands where someone will help you pass to the place where you don't wish to go."

The Prison was constructed around the time of the first "Sack" of Rome around 3 or 4 hundred years before Christ.  It was originally created as a cistern for a spring in the floor of the second lower level (there were two, the lower of which was where prisoners were kept by lowering them through the floor of the upper room).  This is the likely source of the water Paul used to baptize his fellow prisoners.  Eventually a passage from the cistern drain was constructed, reputedly for flushing out the dead prisoner's bodies.  Typically, only higher profile prisoners were kept in the prison, usually foreign commanders who were defeated and became the centerpiece in a Roman triumphant procession. They usually remained incarcerated until they were paraded and killed in public.

Standing in this prison cell was humbling, indeed.  I took a small pinch of dirt for my Mom, who was unable to come with us on this trip.  I'll send it home to her in a small glass bottle.

Home Tomorrow!

At long last and after walking at least 70 miles in 10 days (I lost count of the stairs), we fly home tomorrow!  To our mutual surprise, there is quite a bit of our trip budget left over.  Also, we were never robbed, pilfered, injured, lost, or hospitalized!  Although, Lisa encountered some pick-pockets who were running a "pregnant woman" scam (she read about the scam in the travel book).  Honestly, it was just like the book said, one woman would dress as a humble, begging, pregnant mother-to-be, and the other older woman (presumable her mother?) would walk alongside with a message written on a HUGE piece of cardboard.  They would approach, flash the big board in your face to distract you, and steal your stuff.  Lisa recognized it right away as a scam and pointed a finger in the old woman's face before barking, "NO!"  Then, she barked at me, "WATCH YOUR POCKETS!"  Both women and I were frightened enough to scatter at that point and Lisa was honestly ready to slam a pregnant woman into the wall, even if she WAS faking... Good times, good times...  I will post the last of the photos, but honestly... we took more than a thousand.  They don't sell film here anymore, they sell memory cards instead.  If your camera is full, you can always buy another 1Gb card to take 100 more.  We're not the type of people to force anyone to watch a slide show of our trip to Italy, but if you ask me to bring my laptop to the next small group or dinner party, I'll be happy to leave the full slide show running so that anyone who wants to can look at ALL of the pics.  There are some that would make nice wallpapers or postcards too, so if you want one, all you need do is ask.

kjw