Rome Part 2

Saturday, May 16

One of the more fascinating places on our itinerary was the catacombs, a literal city of the dead deep beneath the city. I didn't realize the extent of the underground tunnels until I navigated a portion of them. Romans, Jews, and early Christians buried their dead here, and it's spooky to stand in narrow alcoves looking at shelves where shrouded corpses were stashed over 1500 years ago. Little inscriptions and frescoes on the wall seem like they were just painted. The remains are mostly gone, consecrated to new graves, but bricked up portions of the underground corridors hide remnants that were left behind during restoration.

The food in Italy was amazing. There really is almost no such thing as a bad meal in Rome. Even the most humble dive serves delicious fresh vegetables lightly prepared with fragrant olive oil and perfectly turned out fish that they show you in advance for approval. Even the MacDonalds, which beckoned with the identical addictive fragrance of burger and fries of 25,000 other franchises world-wide, served its cheeseburger with fresh Romano cheese!

Ever hear of a disease called Favism (no, it's not a style of Impressionistic painting)?

It flipped me out to see it, but in Italy, wherever Fava beans are sold, the government requires strict warnings that persons diagnosed with a condition called G-6 PD deficiency are at risk for destruction of their blood cells if they eat Fava beans (but not regular beans). I routinely test for this genetic condition in people who are about to get intravenous vitamin C in my office, because it can be dangerous to infuse the C too fast if it's present.

Rome poses a dilemma for the gluten-intolerant--little sandwiches are the ubiquitous snack, and the bread is to DIE for--baguettes, rolls, foccaccio, crispy-crusted peasant bread--I must admit to sneaking a few samples since I'm merely wheat- allergic, not a bona fide celiac sufferer. But, interestingly, pasta stores in Italy now stock gluten-free noodles, as the awareness of this condition emerges. Didn't have any pasta (at one restaurant I counted 20 varieties!), but next time I'm over there I might consider bringing my own gluten-free pasta and asking them to cook it in lieu of semolina.

With food so good, you'd think the Italians would be uniformly obese, but I found this not to be the case. There was a marked contrast as we moved away from tourist places where corn-fed Americans congregated--Italians are generally thin to slightly chunky, but massive overweight seems to be less common.

The Xlear people arranged a day-trip to Pompeii, which was one of the highlights of the trip. In 79 AD, the nearby volcano of Vesuvius exploded in a massive eruption, showering the city of 30,000 with hot ash and super-heated stones. Those not killed outright by the barrage were asphyxiated by poisonous gases.

The buried city was forgotten for centuries, then "re-discovered" when Italians sought to recapture their historical identity in modern times. Painstaking archaeology has uncovered streets, homes, temples, public buildings, theaters, stadiums, shops, even bordellos. One of the true marvels of Pompeii is a reconstructed public bath house where the citizens of the ancient town bathed and socialized.

Everywhere in Pompeii, there's a great fusion of the decorative and the utilitarian. Standing in the well laid out streets, it's not hard to imagine the bustle of daily life of a sophisticated and civilized people with passions and foibles not too remote from our own.

Another highlight of the trip was our visit to the Borghese Gallery, where the famous Borghia family practically single-handledly defined art collection and patronage. The splendor of the collection is overwhelming, with works by Caravaggio, Raphael, Bernini, Rubens, Cranach, et al interspersed with ancient Roman artifacts. On the floors, original mosaics depict gladiators in combat.

Of course, there was the Coliseum and Roman Forum. Totally made we want to see The Gladiator with Russell Crowe for about the 4th time! But more impressive, even, was the Pantheon, a huge domed building with an original 30 foot perfectly circular hole in the center--it's as if the Astrodome were built 2000 years ago with giant marble columns imported from Egypt to front it, and only slaves with winches, enormous scaffolds and pulleys to construct it. Look at any classic U.S. monument from the Lincoln Memorial to the Federal Reserve building on Wall Street, and you've got echoes of ancient Rome, they defined architecture for all time.

Then, there was the Vatican, with untold riches of art. St. Peter's is the world's largest church, and there are markers inside to show how it easily comprises all the world's other great cathedrals. The golden Bernini altar at its center alone is worth the entire trip.

Then this week, I saw it all again at the premiere of Angels and Demons with Tom Hanks!

If you want to see photos of my Italian trip, I posted some on my Facebook photo album page at

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2016962&id=1082766135&saved#/album.php?aid=2016962&id=1082766135&ref=nf.

More to come in subsequent blogs about the Rome trip, and medical dental benefits of xylitol--stay tuned!