Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 10:23:28 -0800 (PST)
From: Rich Lynch <rw_lynch at yahoo.com>
Subject: [WSFA] final night in Rome
To: WSFA members <wsfalist at keithlynch.net>
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

It's my last night in Italy; a bit more than 12 hours from
now it's on to the airport for the trip home.  The
conference ended Thursday evening with a reception hosted
by the big boss political appointee who is leading our
delegation.  It was a pleasant event even though not all
that much got accomplished at the conference; many of the
country delegations seemed unprepared to make any progress
("We need more time to study the document being
considered.").  The reception was held in the three-story
penthouse suite at the hotel where I stayed during the
conference.  It was a super-plush place, complete with spa,
mini movie theater, rooftop terrace, and rotunda reception
room (and those are just the things I saw).  Our logistics
guy apparently did some hard bargaining with the hotel to
get an affordable rate for the two hours we had the suite
because its normal daily "rack rate" (we found out) was
22,000 euros!

Yesterday and today were spent sightseeing with some of the
others I work with who came over to help out at the
conference.  Before foul weather cut short the day
yesterday, we were able to see quite a bit of the Vatican,
including the Sistine Chapel, Vatican Museum, and a trip up
to the top of the dome of St. Peter's where the views are
amazing.  We'd meant to see some of the remnants of Ancient
Rome, but the weather soon deteriorated, with rain and snow
(it was the first snowstorm in Rome in more than a decade)
that wore us down.  But today was different -- there were
clear skies and we even had a van and driver available for
our use.  So we took a day trip, south of Rome to the
village of Castel Gandolfo, the summer residence of the
Pope.  It's located just above a small circular lake that\222s
Italy\222s equivalent of Crater Lake -- you can clearly see
that it's the caldera of an extinct volcano.  On the way
there we stopped for a tour of the Catacombs, and we even
had time to visit the places we didn't get to on Friday,
including the Pantheon (which contains the burial site of
the artist Raphael), the Trevi Fountain (I tossed in three
coins and wished for a few placid years at work), the
Colisseum (which has been undergoing a restoration effort
for decades), and the Roman Forum (the downtown of ancient
Rome but now, except for the Roman Senate, a field of ruins
in various stages of preservation).  It was all so much
more than I expected it to be, and by the end of the day it
was sensory overload.  I'm glad my friend George brought
his digital camera along.

Anyway, I hope to come back some day when the weather is a
bit warmer.  But for now, I'm ready to come home.  See you
all at next WSFA meeting!

Rich

(Most of this will be be reposted to my LiveJournal.)

=====
Rich Lynch
==========
MIMOSA web site: http://jophan.org/mimosa/
1960s Fan History Site: http://jophan.org/1960s/
http://www.livejournal.com/~rwl

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