By Bob Van Leer

  (ROME, ITALY, Sept. 21, 1994) - We toured Rome today looking at ancient ruins and ended the day with a dinner in a Roman villa overlooking St. Peter's Cathedral followed by a tour of old Rome in horse-drawn carriages.

  We left Florence this morning by train for the two hour ride to Rome. It was raining most of the morning but cleared up as we got to Rome. The land was rolling, even steep in places. But much was suitable for farming.

  North of Rome we passed the division between north and south Italy.

  Our guide told us that the north is the prosperous part of Italy with the manufacturing centers of Milan and Turin and productive agriculture. The south is not similarly blessed, the climate is harsher and the land and people are poorer.

   We were told that Rome was founded about 800 B.C., 28 centuries ago, and is one of the oldest cities in Europe. The Romans ruled Rome, and most of the known world, for about 700 years. The end came not at one time but over a period ending in the 400s.

  The Tiber River divides the city with old Rome on the east bank and the Vatican on the west. Our guide said there are 25 bridges over the Tiber in the city, including four bridges built by the Romans still in use. Two of the bridges were built in the fourth century B.C. They are 2100 years old and still in daily use.

  The city is about 4 million people and the country about 60 million. We toured the Roman Forum, the gathering place for ancient Rome for centuries. Most of the ruins are below the existing ground level of the city. They were not built underground, but debris from the city over the centuries has raised the level of the city.

  The most impressive building we visited was the Pantheon. It is not a ruin, it is a perfectly functional building started in 27 B.C. and enlarged in 120 A.D. It is a huge building, 143 feet in diameter and equally as high. The dome is cast concrete and our guide said it is the oldest, and still the largest dome in the world. St. Peter's is slightly smaller.

FAREWELL DINNER

  This evening we had a "farewell" dinner. We will still be here tomorrow night but some of our party of 18 will have to get up at 3:00 a.m. to catch planes. The group has been very compatible. There are 18 on the tour plus our guide, Anthony, and the three person television crew making a total of 22 persons. The TV crew is to make a 20 minute video of the tour as a promotion tool for Abercrombie & Kent. They will have shot more than 30 hours of tape and will have to boil it down to those few minutes.

  Dinner was on the verandah of an old Italian villa on a hill overlooking the Tiber with an impressive view of St. Peter's Cathedral which is lit at night. This was a formal dinner with tuxedo clad waiters serving the meal.

  We were taken to the villa by horse-drawn carriages and, after the meal, taken in the same carriages on a night tour of old Rome. We stopped at the Trevi fountain, at the terminus of an aqueduct built in 19 BC. The aqueduct was abandoned for centuries and then reactivated in the 1400s and a basin was added where its waters could be collected. Decorative elements were added in the 18th century.

  Tomorrow, we will tour the Vatican and the Roman Coliseum in the morning and have the afternoon free for a last look at Rome. That will be the end of the tour and we will begin our long trip home. The nine hours we lost coming over will be regained on our trip home.