An ancient city, trying to maintain her dignity. Crowded, noisy, dirty, yet still able to impress you with her nobility. Monuments, arches, and magnificent churches interspersed with ruins thousands of years old.
We departed for the European Cetacean Society’s annual meeting in Rome, with only a slight delay on our initial leg to Atlanta. As our westbound itinerary was our upgraded portion, we enjoyed the Business Elite service, and especially, the wonderful seats with their automatic reclining and full leg support, private tv/movie screens, and video games.
We took off about 5 o’clock. By 8:30, dinner service was through. There wasn’t a single movie on the program that interested me, which was fine, because I really wanted to get some sleep on the flight. We’d be landing around 10:00 am, which meant we’d have a full day in Rome. I managed to sleep for about five hours. I think I really would have done six, but the crew started waking everyone up 2 hours out for breakfast service. I guess they need that much time to get through the entire plane, but I would have preferred another hour of sleep.
Landing in Rome, we followed the signs to baggage claim. There was a person glancing at passports as we entered the baggage claim area, but other than that, it doesn’t seem that the Romans care a whole lot about who comes calling. Dan hit the ATM, and we went out to find a cab. All the signs said to take either a white or yellow cab from the pool, not to go with a driver who approaches you. Also that the cab should be metered. The first cab in line was yellow, and there was a meter on the dash, so we gave him the name of the hotel and climbed in.
The driver did a detour in and out of a parking area; seemed to be a checkpoint that showed he was in and out of the airport, but we don’t really know for sure. Then, Dan asked what the fare would be to the hotel, and according to the best of our understanding of the driver’s limited English, it would be quite high but we’d get a narration of the sights. At this point, it was too much trouble to change cabs, so we sat back and let him point out all the landmarks and give us their history. I decided that looking at the sights was definitely more rewarding than watching the road. They do have double lines painted down the middle of the streets, but they don’t seem to have much to do with where the cars drive. On a Saturday morning, there wasn’t much traffic, and he could really fly down the expressway.
At the hotel, Dan discovered the importance of checking what comes out of the ATM. He had asked for 200,000 lira and looked at his two 50,000 bills and a 100,000 one. Only the 100,000 was really a 10,000 note; somehow someone loading the machine must have put the wrong denomination in. Dan just saw a 1 with lots of zeros and assumed it was correct. Luckily, I had a few lira left over from our trip to Genoa, and we paid the driver. He offered a substantial discount if we used his company for the return trip. Not likely.
Our room wasn’t ready, so we left our luggage in storage and set out to get the lay of the land. Our hotel was two blocks from the Termini train station, and the Frentani Congress Centre, where Dan’s meetings were being held, was supposed to be about a 5-minute walk from the station. We discovered there are quite a few different ‘city maps’ available for tourists, and they’re all equally impossible to use. Streets that run in a straight line for more than 4 blocks are very rare, and a street that keeps the same name for that long is miraculous. If you walk on one side of the street one day, you could very well be somewhere different than you were the day before when you walked on the other side, even though you’d swear you hadn’t veered from your course. But, Dan’s a Boy Scout Hiking Master, and he navigated us to the Centre, stopping every block or two to make sure we were still where we were supposed to be, and we even found a couple of mushrooms growing on a tree. It was about fifteen minutes from the station, not five. There was a large government building, which you had to walk around, plus some ruins of what appeared to be a wall of the city, so perhaps if you could have walked ‘as the crow flies’ it would have been a 5-minute walk. I really didn’t care all that much, as I had only two reasons to be there, and I’d be with Dan both times.
This might be a good time to discuss traffic in Rome. My philosophy on staying alive while walking around in new cities is to follow the signals at intersections with lights, or cross in large groups of natives. In Rome, I learned fairly quickly that if you want to cross a street, you just cross it. It helps to be inside a group, so that if the cars don’t stop, you’re not the first one hurt. It’s also good if one of the people in the group is a nun (and there are plenty around Rome, so it’s not hard to use one as a shield). If you have a green light, so much the better, but there were only a few intersections where the lights seemed to make a difference. Parking didn’t seem to be a major problem for the Romans, either. They just stopped and fit their cars in anywhere they could – sidewalks, next to other parked cars but technically in the street, anywhere there was room for their car. It seemed that once they had a parking space, nothing could make them give it up; we saw one car that had been in position before the lines had been painted on the street.
We roamed around for a while, saw some little restaurants and thought about lunch. Or dinner. Or breakfast, for that matter. Body clocks and wristwatches were not in agreement over what the next meal should be. We went back to the hotel to see if we could get into our room first, so we could shower and feel a little less like we’d been traveling for over a day. Our ‘real’ room isn’t ready, but the clerk at the desk tells us we can have another one if we don’t mind two beds. Given that the European hotels use double beds, not kings or even queens, two beds is just fine. So, we go upstairs, the bellman shows us that the air conditioner really does work. Not sure that the trickle of air, albeit nice cold air will really cool the room, we decided to leave most of our bags packed in case we want to move. I showered; Dan checked out the TV. What else is new? Then he showered, and we went down to see if we could find the restaurant that we had seen on the way back to the hotel. Dan’s method was to go most of the way back to the Frentani Centre and then retrace our steps. Of course, we had no idea if we were on the same streets. A man urged us to come in and eat at his trattoria; the menu looked reasonable, two English-speaking diners told us the food was good, so we went inside.
I’m really glad I spent all that time watching Mario on the Food Network; I was very comfortable with the way meals are served, and recognized the sections of the menu. Quick lesson in Italian menus: First, there’s the antipasto (appetizer). Sometimes a soup section, too. Next, you have your primo, which is usually pasta or rice. Then, your ‘secondo’, which would be the meat course. These are usually divided into meat and fish sections on the menu – sometimes egg dishes, too. Then, your sides and salads, or ‘contorno.’ Then cheese, and dessert. Never made it through all the courses.
Our first meal in Rome was delicious, and very cheap, too. The area around our hotel was full of little trattorias, pizza bars, and small restaurants -- we shouldn’t have far to go for meals. It started to drizzle while we were eating, and we had our first glimpse of the amazing spontaneous eruption of umbrella salespeople. They spring up from nowhere with umbrellas dangling from their hands at the first sign of precipitation. Being used to Florida rain, the Roman raindrops were hardly noticeable, so we got back to the hotel barely damp.
I checked out the tour brochures we had been given when we checked into the hotel, and found an interesting one that would get me out of the city one afternoon. There was also a ‘hop off hop on’ shuttle tour that we agreed would be a good way to get an overview of the city; we’d do that one tomorrow morning. It was raining harder now, so we didn’t want to go out. I dozed for my usual twenty-minute nap; Dan went to sleep. I walked over to Termini (making sure to have my umbrella visible for all the street vendors) and looked at the shops inside. I found some more floating candles for the guest bathroom. I also looked into the gourmet shop and decided I’d probably end up with something from that store as well before going home.
Dan was still asleep when I got back (no surprise there), so I took a book and went down to the hotel bar to have a glass of wine. The hotel has a heavy tour group clientele; the lobby was almost always filled with luggage on its way on or off the big coaches out front. Japanese, British, American, German traveled in groups – the Italians seemed to be on their own. Dan came down about half an hour later, and we went off to look for dinner. Right across the street are two likely candidates. We chose the one on the corner, and had a fine dinner. We started with an ‘antipasto misto’, skipped the primo course since we’d had pasta for lunch, and went straight to the ‘secondo’. I also added the contorno – an artichoke. I was once again up to speed on presentation, as I knew that in Italy, they leave the stems on the artichokes. They serve the heart and the stem, which is the same ‘meat’. This was a cold marinated dish. Very good.
I couldn’t resist some sort of gelato for dessert; it was a ‘pre-packaged’ chocolate mousse, but we were too tired to go out looking for a gelateria. Not bad, but not the same as the freshly scooped stuff. We went back to the hotel and to bed. The hotel windows faced the side street with the streetcar tracks, but there weren’t too many running at night. Instead of closing the curtains, the windows had solid wooden shutters. This was a good thing, since the curtains would have blocked any air from the air conditioner.
We slept until almost 9 o’clock the next morning. We went downstairs to see what the hotel breakfast buffet had to offer. There was a reasonable and sufficient variety of food: bacon, eggs, cereal, cheeses, bread, pastry, and fresh fruit. Not as extensive as some hotels we’d stayed in, but getting enough to eat wouldn’t be a problem. There were pitchers of yellow stuff and orange stuff on the buffet. We guessed the orange one was supposed to be orange juice, but I have no idea what it really was. The yellow stuff might have been lemonade or grapefruit drink; I couldn’t tell. Either way, they weren’t freshly squeezed from any fruit I’d ever seen. The Roman bread standard seemed to be a round roll that was divided into sections, somewhat like a Kaiser roll. When you pulled off one of the sections, however, there wasn’t much inside but air. If you wanted more than crust, you sliced a piece off the large loaf of bread. Some mornings there would be a wheat bread as well, which was by far the tastiest. There was also this bowl that looked like it was meant for rinsing the spoon from the scrambled eggs, but the liquid was more of a milky white color. We finally dug around in it and discovered little ovals of fresh mozzarella. Delicious! The wait staff couldn’t understand my request for decaf, and since I’d neglected to bring down my phrase book, I opted for tea. When I got back to the room and looked up decaf, I found it was ‘decaffeinato,’ so there was no really good reason why I wasn’t understood. I decided I’d stick with tea, as it seemed that they probably didn’t brew decaf there. The default tea was English Breakfast, which was fine. Listening to the conversations in the breakfast room revealed Japanese, Italian, French and German as well as English.
We went over to the Green Line bus terminal to take the shuttle tour. According to their timetable, buses should have been running every thirty minutes. However, they apparently were short one bus, so they were running on their pre-season forty-five minute intervals. We had almost half and hour to kill, so we walked around a bit. We were very near to one of the major basilicas, Santa Maria Maggiore, so we went to take a look. We heard the bells chime, and watched the pigeons, which had absolutely no fear of mankind. They stood their ground; if you didn’t want to step on a pigeon, you walked around them. There were also the ever-present souvenir and food carts.
In addition to being one bus short, the tour company announced that there was a marathon being run in Rome, and that they couldn’t promise that they could make all of the stops. We stayed on the bus for the entire route, then continued on to the stop near the Trevi Fountain and Spanish Steps. We went to the fountain, and I found that I had one coin in my purse, so I followed tradition and threw it over my left shoulder into the water. We stopped at a sidewalk pizza bar for lunch and each had a slice of mushroom pizza. Then we got out our trusty maps and looked for the best route to the Spanish Steps. I decided that the most efficient way to get around was to look for large groups of people and follow them. That way, you’d usually end up at a major landmark. Also, once you got close enough, there were brown street signs with the names of the places and arrows pointing more or less in the appropriate direction. According to the guidebook, there are 137 steps at the Spanish Steps. I didn’t count as we climbed; I was happy to take the book’s word for it. Dan determined that if we stayed on this long straight street, we’d end up close to our hotel, so we started walking. The map didn’t show that the street went up at quite an angle, though. Along the way, we passed a large building that appeared to be open to the public. Turned out to be the Palazzo Barberini. We walked around the grounds a bit, and then went inside. With some difficulty, the lady at the ticket desk managed to explain that it was 6000 lira for either the art or the archaeology; you needed a separate ticket for each. Dan chose (can you guess?) the archaeology exhibit, and we climbed some more stairs. We were looking at artifacts from the Bronze Age, and enough of the signage was in English so that we had a pretty good idea of what we were seeing. The museum also had the largest non-church ceiling fresco in Italy.
We made our way on upwards, stopping at the fountain in the Piazza del Repubblica, and went back to the hotel until 6 pm, when we walked back to the Frentani Centre for registration and the opening icebreaker. It was obvious that this group needed some help in managing registration – they just had one person checking everyone in, and the lines were long. We waited about half an hour before we could pick up our materials, and the room was unbelievably hot. There were virtually no signs telling anyone where they should be – finding the icebreaker was a matter of wandering ‘that way somewhere’ until we found the room. The group was larger than expected; nevertheless, the layout was not conducive to much mingling. Once you found a place to stand, that’s where you stayed. Fighting your way back to the food table was a real challenge. The irony was that the room was twice as big as the utilized space; had they set up food stations throughout the maze of poster boards, people would have worked their way through the entire room instead of trying to squeeze into the front half. It’s obvious they could use a little consultation – but I’m not soliciting business in Europe. We did manage to find some colleagues, and I even had time to chat with Marcos, my friendly Portuguese companion.
We started back to the hotel, checking out trattorias along the way. We found one full of people from the conference and went inside for dinner. Lesson of the night: when the menu says the pasta will be made with a buttermilk sauce, they’re talking butter + milk = cream! We had pretty much settled into a feeding routine: a half bottle of wine, antipasto misto (different in every restaurant, and all good), a pasta course with one side – sometimes two if we split a salad. I don’t see how the Italians manage a meat or fish course on top of that, not to mention a dessert.
The next morning, Dan had to go to sessions, so I went back to the shuttle terminal and used the rest of my 24-hour ticket. The staff was very nice and extended it for two hours for me, which meant I would be able to take the shuttle back after I got off and did my exploring. I rode to stop number two, which was convenient to the Piazza Navona with its famous Fountain of Four Rivers, and the Pantheon. Two other American women decided to get off there as well, so we walked around together for a while, took each other’s pictures and marveled at the Pantheon’s architecture. They left to catch the bus, and I continued wandering through the streets, looking into shops, buying a marble egg for my curio cabinet in one of them, and having a gelato back at the Piazza Navona. It had started to rain again (more umbrella vendors), so I opted to get on the bus instead of walking back to the hotel or a metro station. It was about 1:30 when I got to the hotel. I relaxed for a while, then went in search of a stamp to mail a postcard to my Aunt. I bought what I hoped was the correct postage – I showed the man at the counter the postcard and told him I wanted it to go by air – and then went to the Termini to mail it. I hope I got it into the correct box, and that she got the card. The lower level of Termini was full of shops, so I roamed there a while. On the way back, I bought a sandwich at the corner shop and took it back to the room. The TV in the hotel had 3 choices of English channels: CNN, Sky and Eurosport. After hitting the headlines, I got out my book.
Dan got back from his meetings, and we had a drink in the hotel bar before going out. This time we went to the restaurant in the middle of the block across the street. I ordered a funghi trifoli (mushrooms with truffles) as my side, and wow, was it good. Wild mushrooms, not the supermarket variety. Dan couldn’t identify them after they’d been cooked, but they were sure tasty. And cheap – 5000 lira (about $2.50). The proprietor brought us some cookies and a lemon liqueur – on the house -- which was unusual, as the restaurants charge for everything, including the bread they automatically put on your table.
I figured that I’d better be able to answer the one question I was sure everyone would ask when I said I’d been to Rome: “Did you see the Sistine Chapel?” So, Tuesday I learned how to use the Metro system and rode the red line to the Vatican Museum. Crowds, hordes, throngs, masses – you name it, they were on the Metro. People were lined up at least five deep on the platform. The train arrived, the cars were full, and a few more people squeezed in. I learned that if you want to get on the train, you just get on – grab the railing and pull yourself in. You won’t fall out, because at least two more people will have pushed in behind you. I don’t see all the problem with pickpockets – the people were jammed in so tightly, nobody could have moved a hand to reach into a purse. The crowds thinned after about two stops, and by the time I neared the Ciprio station, the cars were only half full. Once I made my way to the surface, I compared the map at the station with the one I had. They didn’t really look too much alike, but I was pretty sure that I should be heading off to the left. I found two groups of young people headed in that direction, and followed my theory that they were probably here for the same reason as I was. After climbing a flight of stairs, I saw the wall of Vatican City, and then the line of people waiting to get into the museum. The line moved constantly, and pretty soon I was inside. Then I went upstairs to the ‘non-group’ ticket booths, paid for my ticket, went through security, and followed the signs for “Capela Sistina”. The museum was fairly crowded with tour groups. I learned how to tell if the people were stopped to listen to a guide or just looking at stuff, and worked my way past the groups. The chapel is at the very end of the route, and there’s an awful lot of good-looking stuff along the way. A word of advice if you plan to go: bring binoculars and a mirror. Those ceilings are really high. And your neck gets tired of looking up, so holding a mirror means you can look down for a while and see the reflection. It’s backwards, but that hardly matters, since you can roam around the room and see things from all directions anyway. The announcements in at least six languages said that you weren’t supposed to talk in the chapel, but that was pretty much ignored, so the guards would go “Shhhh” every couple of minutes. After the chapel, I worked my way back much more slowly, spending a bit more time in the astronomy/astrology room, going outside to take some pictures of the buildings against the bright blue sky (finally some sun!).
I walked out, around, and down to St. Peter’s, which I admired from outside. Rather than retrace my steps up the hill to the same Metro stop I’d used before, I checked the map and set out to find the nearest one. A map, combined with the word “Metro?” was enough to have people point me in the right direction. Once I found the right street, I was fine. It was farther away than it looked on the map – I think the maps leave out a lot of minor streets. Instead of being two blocks away, it was two major intersections away. Also, the tourist maps put pictures of the landmarks on the maps, obscuring the names of the streets where they’re most needed – around the landmarks.
I got back on the train, which wasn’t too full at this end. It filled rapidly, and I learned that you have to work your way to the door about one or two stops before yours. People will move in front of you and say “prossimo”, which if I remember my Latin, means something like ‘next’. I figured out that they meant they wanted to get off at the next stop, or they were asking me if I was getting off. Then, when you do get to your stop, you should be with a group that’s also getting off. Otherwise, you’ll just keep on riding.
I went to the Green Line Tour station to pay for my afternoon tour and avoid the crowds who would be paying at the last minute, and stopped at a pizza bar on the way back to the hotel. At the hotel, the maid was in the process of cleaning the room, and I pointed out that the knob on the air conditioner had been stripped, which meant that we couldn’t adjust the setting. She mimed making a phone call, so I hoped that she meant she would call for a repairman. I wondered if he’d be as cute as the electrician in Portugal. A while later, two electricians appeared, one not quite as good looking as the other. There’s just something about the Italian men, I think. Anyway, they appeared ready to do battle with a recalcitrant air conditioner, and as I showed them it was just a broken knob, they smiled, went out and replaced it in a couple of minutes. I’m sure they were glad to be able to check one more room off their list.
I had signed up for a tour of “Roman Castles: An opportunity to leave the metropolis and immerse yourself in the natural and artistic beauty of the small medieval villages outside Rome.” There were 12 people on the bus, plus a guide and someone who appeared to be in training. Although the tour company advertised English-speaking guides, Giovanni wasn’t truly bilingual. However, once you got used to his accent and vocabulary, it was pretty clear what he was saying. I admit that I didn’t understand the prayers he spoke when traffic incidents were ‘near misses,’ but I certainly got the gist, even though the language was definitely not English. We drove through the city past the baths of Caracalla, ruins of the ancient aqueduct and drove along the Appian Way for a while. We were headed up into the mountains, and it was a sunny day, which made it all the better. We stopped at a lakeside resort at Castelgandolfo where we could see the Pope’s summer residence on the hilltop. We drove through farmlands, over ancient bridges, and listened to the story of Romulus and Remus. The second stop was at the village of Frascati, where we sampled some of their local wine and had some bread and porchetta. The bus dropped everyone off near their hotels.
Dan got back around 8, and we again went to find a trattoria. We were eating at a new place every meal, and never had to go more than two blocks from the hotel. Tonight’s site seemed to have fewer tourists; I heard a lot more Italian being spoken. The couple at the table next to us was very helpful, as they noticed that the waitress was wandering around trying to decide where the food she was carrying belonged, and was headed back to the kitchen. They called out to her and told her she had our food, even though they didn’t speak English. They must have understood Dan when he ordered the risotto, and made sure we got our food.
Dan played hooky from meetings Wednesday morning, and we took the Metro to the Coliseum. This train was not as crowded; the most interesting thing was the breast-feeding gypsy woman, and what appeared to be her mother and two other youngsters. We got off at our stop, worked our way upstairs and outside and were staring right at the Coliseum. After Dan stopped to check out a cat that had caught a lizard, we walked around the structure to the ticket line. Although the sign in the hotel elevator said that the expected high was 73 degrees, it already felt much warmer. We wandered through the Coliseum on our own, looking down into the mazes below, imagining lions being released to battle the gladiators. After we had our fill, we went to the Forum and roamed around those ruins as well. For the first time, the weather and the terrain was suitable for photography, so I had a great time taking pictures of ruins. Most of the city landmarks are just too huge to get decent pictures without major photographic gear. Dan’s sense of direction turned out to be less than perfect as we exited the Forum at the opposite end, and we ended up retracing our steps back to the Coliseum Metro stop, rather than finding the Circus Maximus. We had already been around the Circus twice on our tours, and it’s just a big grassy area. Instead of chariot races, people were throwing Frisbees to their dogs. I wondered if that had anything to do with discus throwing. As we squeezed onto the train, we discovered a man playing a lively tune on some sort of stringed instrument that he played with mallets. We stopped for a slice of pizza on the way back to the hotel, where Dan got ready to go back to his meetings.
I headed out to the Via Veneto, another one of those places on the ‘when in Rome’ list. Quite a different neighborhood from out side of the tracks. My parents were taking an Elderhostel tour of Sicily, but they began their trip with three days in Rome on their own. I thought I might try to navigate to their hotel, and after an initial, not unexpected trek in the opposite direction, found the Savoy. We walked down the Via Veneto for a gelato at a sidewalk café – quite a difference from the single scoop cones I’d been eating. Here we had the large sundae dish and three scoops of ice cream. Although I’d wanted to try lots of flavors, I kept going back to either chocolate or chocolate chip. In truth, I think the gelato I’d had at the little stand by my hotel was better, and about one fourth the price, too.
Tonight was the closing banquet for the meeting, so I went back to the hotel to rest up and get ready. The busses were leaving from the Frentani Centre, so I squeezed my dress shoes into my purse and put on my loafers for the walk. We were taken to a trattoria that had been in one family since 1820. Tables were set up in the gravel-covered patio under the trees for an al fresco dinner. My heels stayed in my purse. They had prepared all sorts of food, including what appeared to be a roast pig, and were generous with the local wine as well. They also offered some of the lemon liqueur. The band started playing around 11, but the dance area was inside and became much too hot very quickly. Given that Dan was supposed to be at a workshop at 8:30 the next morning, we asked when the busses would take us back to the Centre. We were told that it would be one o’clock at the earliest. Several people began calling for cabs, and we were among them. As it was, it was nearly one before we got to bed.
Dan had his workshop Thursday morning, so I had arranged to meet my folks at their hotel sometime after 10, hoping to avoid some of the Metro crush. I was only partially successful, but at least most of the crush happened at the stop after I got on. I stood my ground at my place near the door, since their stop was only two away from Termini. This time I made a direct line to the hotel, and found them waiting. Mom wanted to get a picture of the Trevi fountain in the morning light, so we found a cab and attempted to explain that we wanted him to wait while she took the picture, and then he was to take us to the Jewish Ghetto with its synagogue and museum. I managed to convey the first part well enough, but I read our final destination, ‘Museo Ebaico/Tempio,’ from my Italian tourist map. He nodded with delight and we took off for Trevi. After Mom got the pictures she wanted, we went back to the cab and were once again on our way. When we passed the Castel Sant’Angelo, I began to doubt that we had communicated, and asked where we were going. “Musei Vaticani,” was his reply, and I said “No,” and repeated what the map said, and gave the address. He asked to see where we wanted to go, and then said, “Synagogue.” I don’t think he got many tourists asking to go there, and automatically assumed that ‘Museo’ and ‘Tempio’ mean we were talking about the Vatican. I can’t say that I blame him for his mistake. But, he got us there, and we arrived at a building that was fenced and guarded by uniformed men holding large automatic weapons. I used one of my other words of survival Italian, “ingresso?” and he pointed around the corner. There we rang a bell, and were admitted to the museum after promising not to take pictures or use cell phones. Dad tried to explain that Mom was the photographer for the Skirball Museum back in LA, and the guard nodded and said, “No cameras.” He repeated it for the guides at the ticket counter, who knew of the Skirball and spoke highly of it. “Too bad you can’t take pictures here, though,” was their final answer as well. Rules are rules. I think Dad was hoping that they’d make an exception. We had fifteen minutes before our tour to look at the two small exhibit rooms. One of the most interesting exhibits was a small prayer book, complete with bullet holes and bloodstains from where it had saved it’s owner’s life.
The guide admitted us to the Synagogue. We admired its opulence as the guide explained that after being forced to live in a ghetto for 300 years, there was a statement to be made. The heavy security was a result of a terrorist attack in 1982 where a two-year-old boy was killed. All synagogues in Rome are orthodox; the Italian Jewish tradition predates the division of Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews, which took place around the year 70.
We wandered the streets of the old ghetto after the tour, looking at kosher butcher shops, and those selling expensive items of Judaica, and decided to continue up perhaps as far as the Pantheon, which didn’t seem too far away on the map. We found a street with a sign that matched the map, and it seemed to run in a straight line directly to the Pantheon. After walking about 4 blocks, with a minor stop for gelato, we found that we were on a different street and ended up at the “wedding cake”, the Vittorio Emanuele Monument at the Piazza Venezia. Score another one for tourist maps. We hailed a cab and rode back to the Savoy, where I went up to Mom & Dad’s room to compare it to ours. It really wasn’t all that much nicer, although the hotel itself was certainly more posh. As a matter of fact, the hair dryer in our room was much better than the Savoy’s.
I went back to our hotel and met Dan for lunch. We walked the other direction this time, and found another trattoria as good as any other; we split a porcini pizza. We got back to the hotel before it started to rain, and Dan fell asleep. It didn’t stop raining before it was time to meet Mom & Dad for dinner, so we took a cab. The hotel’s front desk had this little machine; they punched in their code, and it gave a printout of what cab company will be coming for you, what number cab will be yours, and how many minutes it will take to get there. Pretty nifty. And pretty accurate, too. Only drawback is that when you call for a cab, there’s a surcharge, but it beats standing in the rain trying to hail one.
Mom & Dad also decided that the ‘five minute’ walk to the restaurant as quoted by their hotel might not be totally accurate, not to mention the fact that it required navigating more than one street. Their hotel called a cab and told us to wait outside. No nifty little printout here. After a number of cabs that weren’t ours came by, we finally got the right one. The driver had a little trouble finding the place, especially with the one-way streets, but we got there and were seated immediately. Given that it was about 7:45, this wasn’t unexpected. The place didn’t start filling up until nine. We had another excellent meal, although I don’t think it was that much better than our little holes in the wall. Location, location, location. The wait staff did speak more English, though, and their antipasto misto was more elaborate.
The rain had stopped, so we walked back to the Savoy, which was indeed not much more than five minutes away. Since it wasn’t raining, Dan and I decided to take the Metro, and we all walked down the hill to the station and said our farewells. We did most of our packing and went to bed.
The airport shuttle van arrived right on time the next morning. We were the second passengers on, and we had to stop at another hotel to pick up the third couple. I think we covered all of Rome twice before we finally got on the freeway to the airport. Rush hour should have been over, but in the city, it seemed that traffic was always bumper-to-bumper. It took about an hour to get to the airport, but we were still in plenty of time to look through the duty free shops. I found the Chianti we had had with our dinner the night before, and bought two bottles, as well as two unfamiliar ones for comparison. Unfortunately, we were still on the waitlist for our upgrade, and it wasn’t going to happen, so we flew home in the back of the bus. But, we were over an hour early landing, so we spent that extra time in the crown room instead of squeezed into those airline seats. The flight back to Orlando was technically on time; they include the time waiting on the runway when you’re number twelve for takeoff into the flight time. It was about 4:00 am according to my body when we got back to the house. Unpacking would wait until tomorrow.