Leaving Egypt, we flew from Cairo to Athens and then Athens to Rome. Wandering through the airport in Athens was a bit of a jarring experience after Egypt. Things were calm and eerily quiet compared with the hustle-and-bustle of the places we visited in Egypt.
While a bit tired from the travel, arriving in Rome was exciting, since my last visit was in 1999. Coral and I grabbed a couple train tickets and a local calling card and then hopped the train from the airport in Fiumicino into Rome. After arriving at Roma Termini, we phoned to let the B&B know we were on our way via the metro.
A short time later, we arrived at Vacanze Romane B&B (found via Cross-Pollinate) just off of Piazza Vittorio Emanuele and met our host Anselmo, a pretty cool older gentleman. Anselmo showed us around the B&B, which is decorated with interesting vintage posters and toys, and got us acquainted with our keys, timed light switches, and our vouchers for breakfasts at the Piccolo Bar across the street. There was a catch though: Anselmo only speaks Italian and French. On the plus side, those are the two non-English languages that I have some basic knowledge of, so by using both of them, we were able to figure things out. It had been a few years since I had been in Italy, so it took a few days for me to really get my ear back and start being able to form responses quickly enough in Italian. What sucked was that by the time I was really getting in the groove, it was time for us to leave Italy.
Our first day exploring Rome was pretty much a whirlwind. Up at a reasonably early hour, we started our day with a pastry and juice at the aptly named Piccolo Bar - a sliver of a cafe run by a nice, young Chinese couple. Then, it was off see the sites. We hopped on the metro and took the A line up to Termini and the B line down to Colosseo where started off by walking over to Trajan's Column, which depicts his victory over those pesky Dacians, and the Imperial Forum. Next, we walked across the street and up the back path to the Capitoline to grab our Roma Passes and back down to the Roman Forum where we used one of Rick Steves' audio tours to learn about the site. From there, we moved up to the beautiful Palentine Hill and over to the Colosseum.
After lunch, we caught a bus (it's ridiculously easy to get around Rome on the buses and metro) over to St Peter's Basilica, went through the security cordon, and got in a long line to go up to the top of the dome. It is well worth the cramped and slanted trek up the several hundred steps to get to the top as the view of Rome from up there is incredible. I debated whether to take Coral there on our first day or on a later day after we'd seen more, since it's fun to pick out all the places you've been, but it's also just a stunning introduction to the city. Once we'd had our fill of being packed together with a bunch of other people all competing to see, we descended back down to the interior of St Peter's to take in all the amazing art and architecture. By the time we were done, we were almost completely exhausted from our very long day of walking, but not quite exhausted enough that we couldn't make a slight detour on our way to homebase to get Coral her first taste of the best gelato ever at Giolitti's.
With our first day being so exhausting, we decided to mellow out a bit for our second day. After catching breakfast at Piccolo Bar, we made our way down to Piramide station, so we could take the train out to Ostia Antica. The weather was beautiful and Ostia was really nice. Once again, we used an audio tour by Rick Steves as our initial guide to the history of the place. When we finished with the audio tour and had some lunch, we spent most of the day just wandering around and exploring the nooks and crannies, which are full of interesting mosaics and other signs of ancient life, that you find when you leave the main path behind.
After a leisurely day in the parklike setting of Ostia, it was time for us to head back to the city. If you're ever in Rome, I suggest you make time for an evening stroll across the Centro Storico. Jumping off the metro at either Barberini or Spagna station, we started by the Spanish Steps and walked over to the Trevi Fountain. Coral and I spent some time people-watching, since I wanted to wait until the sun set and get some evening pictures of the fountain. On our way from the Trevi over to the Pantheon area, we encountered Bartolucci: a really nifty shop selling a variety of whimsical items made from wood as well as some incredibly intricate larger works of wood craftmanship like a full-size cruiser motorcycle. We also found a great little supermarket just off the Piazza Rontunda by the Pantheon which we used whenever we needed supplies. Our energy reserves were getting a little low, so we took a break and hung out at Piazza Navona, which used to be a circus (the chariot race kind, not the elephant kind), while we decided what to do for dinner.
After looking through some of the information we had on restaurants in the area, we settled on Trattoria Der Pallaro over by Campo de Fiori, since it sounded like a more "local" place than a lot of the other stuff around. The part of the description that really caught our eye was that it was a place that doesn't have a menu, you get whatever the lady that runs the place has decided to make that day. Talk about a great decision. This is where we relearned how to eat the European way and love it. It was a complete five course meal filled with amazing delights: fantastic jug wine, yummy appetizers, one of the best garlic lentil dishes we've ever had, pasta course, meat course, desert, the whole shebang. At first, we were idiots and were eating like we would in the US, wolfing down whatever was set in front of us. That was a mistake and we quickly found ourselves nearly full before we'd even made it through the appetizer course which was huge. This led to a hushed discussion about how in the heck we were going to make it through the rest of the meal without exploding. Then it dawned on us, we were in Rome, in Europe, where you're expected to hang out and take your time and not only enjoy your meal, but also enjoy the people you are with because they aren't going to rush you out of the place in order to reuse the table. Once we figured that out, the rest of the meal was something to enjoy rather than a mission to be conquered. We were perfectly happy to continue to sitting there even after desert, but it was getting late and we needed to catch a bus to get us to the metro in time for the last run of the night that would get us back to homebase.
Day three was filled with the Sistine Chapel, where our disgust for tourists grew when the idiots packing the place refused to respect the simple "no talking, no photography" rule, and the massive Vatican Museums which have one of the most amazing collections of statuary you'll find. The most amusing part of the day was the look of horrified disappointment on Coral's face when we stopped on the way back to homebase and she got some of what most shops in Rome try to pass off as gelato. I had tried to warn her. She grudgingly finished her cone and then demanded that we go back to Giolitti's at least once more before leaving Rome. That evening, we had some fantastic pizza at a tiny trattoria between the Pantheon and Bartalucci's and to my dismay, Coral had enough room left for us to fulfill the Giolitti's requirement.
Our last half-day in Rome, we stopped in to visit the Bocca della Verita, were stunned by how gigantic the Baths of Caracalla are, and then bid farewell to Anselmo as we headed off to board the train for Florence.
After checking into a great little place (Hotel il Bargellino) owned and operated by a Bostonian expat (Carmel) and her Italian husband (Pino), it was time for a quick bite and then some pictures of the Duomo and it's gorgeous pink, green, and white marble exterior. There was a groovy outdoor sculpture exhibit between the Palazzo Vecchio and the Uffizi Gallery that we checked out before crossing the Ponte Vecchio where it was time for some gelato and a stop at a little shop that sold porcelin masks.
Day two in Florence was marked by one of the stupidest things we ran into on our tour: some genius decided that during the Festival of Science was a good time to remodel the Museum of Science. It was pretty disappointing that so much of the collection was unavailable during the construction, but we made the best of it. Next up, a look at the tombs of notable dead people at Santa Croce and some confusion as we tried to figure out what else we were going to be able to see, since it turned out to be a day when many of the awesome museums were closed for the day or for some other temporary reason. We made the best of it and went to the botanical gardens and then spent some time just sitting on the veranda back at the hotel while waiting for our night train which would take us to Prague via Vienna.
... next episode, the Czech Republic and Volcano fun.
4 comments:
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It sounds like you're having an amazing time! Thanks for all the details it feels like I was out of London while I was reading it :D
I have always wanted to go to Rome. Lucky you.
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