Ostia Antica

While in Morocco last March, we visited the extensive ruins of Volubilis, the far southwestern frontier of Rome's over-extended empire. It is stunningly located at the base of a mountain overlooking a fertile plain, but now grass and wildflowers crowd the gray stones, and storks build giant nests on top of the remaining columns. Alone among the ruins, one feels very far from Rome in both space and time. The site is a poetic reminder of greatness and its inevitable demise.

Storks on columns

Two weeks later, we were at the heart of the Roman Empire, surrounded by the grandest Roman monuments: the Coliseum, the Pantheon, the Forum and Palantine Hill. More greatness, more demise, but less poetic.

But then we day-tripped from Rome to Rome's very first colony, Ostia Antica. Back in the day, this was where the Tiber River widened out into the sea, making Ostia both Rome's de facto port and its first line of defense. I thought Volubilus was impressive in size and state of general intactness. But Ostia is bigger (we only saw a fraction of it) and even better preserved (from the temples down to the tenements).

The amphitheater is still there, unsurprisingly, but so are the public latrines (next to the public baths), mosaics advertising shops, mill stones, a tavern with a honest-to-goodness bar, a small synagogue, and multi-story apartment buildings. Perhaps it was all the reminders of the normalcy of life, a theme echoed even in the surrounding countryside's pleasant but undifferentiated scenery - but Ostia was the closest I've come yet to imagining what it was like to live in a Roman city.

This was not a feeling I felt while touring Rome's Forum or Coliseum, with cars and buildings all around and crowds of tourists in the hot afternoon sun. Or in Volubilus, where Rome felt so distant and nature had a stronger narrative than the stones. But out in the Roman countryside, with the wind in the trees of neighboring orchards and the walls of everyday houses still standing, timelessness set in, and the ancient felt that much closer.

On the Roman Basilica

I have to admit: I was under-impressed by the Coliseum. After a couple hours, most of the ruins of the Forum and Palantine Hill were indistinguishable to me. An imaginative person, I nevertheless am unable to imagine what a Roman city would have looked like in its heyday.

But the Basilica of Constantine - that stopped me in my tracks. Perhaps it's because I had never heard of it, and thus did not know what to expect. And it would be pretty hard to describe it in any way that would make anyone want to go see it (unlike, say, the Coliseum).

A Top 5 List of Roman Food Moments

What I love: Food, lists, Rome.  Hence, a Top 5 list of the little food moments that made our Rome weekend so perfect:

As the World Turns

You should just see the list of blog entries I meant to write over the last month. But the world has been turning too quickly for me to keep up.

After our Morocco vacation, I made an emergency trip home to Portland for another week (thank god for the 10-hour nonstop flight between Amsterdam and PDX: it's like magic!). Then, two days later, we were off to Rome for a long weekend. And there, on the steps of Trevi fountain, Jeff and I got engaged.

The engagement came, more or less, on our six-month anniversary in Europe. So I deem it a suitable time to catch everyone up on our other major "accomplishments" while here:

• After five months of bureaucratic mazes, never-ending paperwork and much anxiety, Jeff got his Dutch residency permit. I am very proud of Jeff, and very grateful to the cosmos. Seriously, just try googling "Dutch-American Friendship Treaty" and you'll see how little we had to go on.
• Jeff has also launched his first Android app. This is particularly impressive when you consider that Jeff taught himself the Android programming language from scratch this winter.
• Somehow, without much effort on my part, I turned 30. That makes me officially an adult.
• I learned to ride a bike again.
• And as for traveling, I have made it to 14 new World Heritage Sites. That just leaves some 865 or so to go.

But back to that list of nascent blog posts: I would still very much like to share them all, but spring in Holland is ever so distracting. So they might be a little out of chronological order, and come in fits and starts, but I will do the best I can - and I hope you enjoy them.