We made it there with five minutes to spare.
This is Rome. Three hours to drive two kilometers.
Well, to be honest, we got to the destination with about 45 minutes to spare, but the office wasn’t there.
We circled the clock once and came back, really looking hard, but no green EuropCar sign. We even parked illegally and asked a friendly Polizia Municipal, but no luck.
Even worse, I had a couple cups of coffee that morning, and we hadn’t been able to take a break since nine. Things were getting really desperate.
And then I figured out what to do.
I pulled over behind a taxi, went up and hired the guy to lead me to the EurpoCar office. He nodded, beckoned me to follow him, and we were off. I stayed right on his bumper: through a red light, up a one way street the wrong way (only for a block) through a tunnel and around to a place just two blocks over from where the office was supposed to be.
That was the best five euro I have spent in my life.
I wedged the car into a tight tight parallel parking spot, we hopped out, returned the keys and ran to il bagno.
It was a relief, and an even greater relief to get rid of the car.
If I were to do it again, I would pick up and drop off the car in Florence, then take the train to Rome.
We walked to our guesthouse, the Arco del’Lauro, a quiet place in the Trastevere neighborhood, just across the Tiber River and near the Chiesa di Santa Maria church and piazza.
This became “our neighborhood” for the next few days.
The Trastevere is nice, in my opinion, because there is one main street fronting the river. But you move back in a block or two and it is quiet. All the honking and noise and traffic is kind of confined “out there” and you are tucked back into a peaceful neighborhood. One of the things we really enjoyed was eating breakfast every morning at “our” local café on the square. After the first two mornings, we became temporary locals.
Another thing that was really great was that our host makes her own limoncello, and provided it to us free of charge.
I was surprised by how compact Rome felt to me, and how walkable it was. We did not take the metro out to any of the outlying areas, like the Appian Way; rather we stayed in the central core and saw the sights.
Campo di’Fior, with its churches full of art was our closest square “in Rome,” that is, across the River Tiber from us.
But we really liked Piazza Navona best, and returned there many times. It is a big square, lined by wonderful buildings, filled with statues and fountains, artists painting and selling, and a variety of street performers. We stopped at a definite “tourist type” café there thinking to get a drink and just people watch, and ended up meeting the owner, a quirky guy trying to draw in patrons with a squirt gun. We introduced ourselves in Italian, and he was interested enough to put down the gun, pull up a chair, snap up a bottle of Prosecco and three glasses, and we talked over a glass of wine. Soon he was off, offering a plastic wedding ring to a pretty young blond girl (and wooing her and her friends in to a table – this guy was good!) leaving the prosecco with us. When it was all said and done, we had a nice meal, a cool dessert with a “Leaning Tower Of Pizza” cracker on top, a good story and afternoon of people-and-owner-watching, and he did not charge us for the wine!
Gail walked away with a wedding ring as well.
Piazza Navona was pretty central to a lot of places we wandered, like the Pantheon with its cool Oculus, the hole in the dome roof to let in light.
There were lots of columns with Egyptian hieroglyphics, and at Piazza Colonna, right next to the important government buildings, there is a huge Roman column circled with a “scrolling” carving, telling of conquest, rape and plunder.
We liked wandering the Via del Corso at night, doing the passeggiata or evening stroll, seeing and being seen. We stopped to sit on the Spanish Steps (which, ironically, were built by the French) before setting off again down the main drag, then sideways off into alleyways, window shopping and people staring.
One day we saw an orange Ferrari on the street, which was a really cool car, but I thought to myself, “What a waste, having it here.” I mean the traffic was so bad we caught up to and walked past the car. All that power, just sitting there, idling. But he sure looked cool.
Overall, the food in Rome was good, not spectacular, but good solid food. Really, with pasta, how can you go very wrong? But none of the meals were standouts.
We spent a morning at Vatican City. That was a great idea because the crowds were only packed and shuffling along as opposed to standing still in the afternoon, and it was not really hot out yet. To get to see the Sistine Chapel, you walk through miles of corridors, the Vatican museums of art and plunder. There are statues: the Caesars, fascinating animal statuary from the days before you could share photos of your travels, and many many men with penises hammered off, because, you know, that is offensive to some church leader at some time. (As a side, it reminds me of 2002, when that fool of an Attorney General, John Ashcroft, covered the naked female breast on a statue in the Justice Department with $8000 of taxpayer money because he was such a damn sensitive prick.)
There are rooms of tapestries, then art, then more statues and more art, Egyptian artifacts and other art. Then, finally, as a grand finale, the Sistine Chapel with its painted ceiling. You are not supposed to take photos, and you are supposed be silent and reverent, but the many tour guides talking, and the tourists cameras continually popping, while the big guards yell “Silencio!” kind of take any real hope of reflection out of the place. It was so crowded that we didn’t stay long looking up, and we stopped by the gift store and there in the uncrowded quietness, looked at the photos of it instead.
In Basilica di San Pietro (Saint Peter’s Cathedral), there are a couple of dead popes on display, and floor markings showing the relative size of other famous cathedrals in comparison to this one, the grandest of all.
You see, size does matter.
And this is why the cathedral in Bologna is unfinished.
St. Peter’s is not really a cathedral anyway, as St. Peter himself is supposed to be buried here, along with many of the popes. So technically, this makes it a basilica.
We saw the stoic Swiss guards in their striped pajamas, holding their long pikes. I know they are supposed to be fierce warriors, but still, it is a little hard to take them seriously.
I liked St. Peter’s Square in front of the church, which was designed by Bernini in the 1600s. He designed the colonnades, which stand four deep, in an ellipse, so that your perspective makes it seem more massive. In a cool mathematical trick, if you stand on a certain spot the columns line up as one. This must have been during a time when the mathematical sciences were determined to not be Devil’s work. (Think of poor old Galileo!)
The 4400 year old obelisk in the center of the square was stolen from Egypt. That, along with marker stones set in the pavement, marks the sun’s path as it enters each of the signs of the zodiac.
More impressive to me was the Colosseum, the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill, and Capitoline Hill. It is pretty awe inspiring to think that, just perhaps, you are standing on the exact spot that Marc Antony walked on, or you are leaning against the very stone that Julius Caesar leaned against. You can almost imagine one of the returning war parties marching triumphantly into the city through the Arch of Titus.
If you have time, you really should read some Roman History before you visit Rome, and it will make it come alive. Another good alternative is to download some of Rick Steve’s podcasts, which you can listen to while you are right there, looking at the monuments.
There are pages and pages written about ancient Rome, and many websites that tell you all about what you will see there, so I won’t belabor the point. But one last anecdote:
Julius Caesar was assassinated on 15 March, in 44 BC. His body was burned, and then at that very site, his nephew Octavius Augustus built the Temple to the Deified Caesar. So, get this, now, over 2000 years later, people still place fresh flowers on Caesar’s alter, in the remains of this temple.
Really, spend your time at these sights. Take them in slowly. Sit and stare, and use your imagination. You won’t regret it.
We stopped by the Bocca della Verita, the Mouth Of Truth. It is a big, round stone face with an open mouth, and the tradition states that if you are a liar and put your hand in the mouth of the statue, your hand will be chopped (chewed?) off.
Legend? Fable? Superstition?
All I know is that I walked away from the statue minus a whole arm! See the photos below.
There are ancient ruins everywhere throughout the city, standing alone and incorporated into some of the “modern” buildings. In fact, it is nearly impossible to build anything new here, or to even expand the metro system, because you keep running into more and more ancient artifacts.
One of the best places to spend time is up in the Gianicolo Park, which was on the hill above our guesthouse. We just walked up the tree-lined streets to the top, where there are some cool buildings and fountains. But the real draw of the park is the great, sunset view over all of Rome. It is romantic, and standing there taking in all the places you have seen; the sights and far-away sounds as the sun sets, well it makes a memorable final view of an eternal city.
At least that is what they call it. Eternal.
We might return to Rome, and if we do we will spend time walking the streets again, but also head out on the metro to see the outlying areas. Will we return?
Well, I threw a €0,01 coin in the Trevi Fountain for luck. The rumor is, if you throw a coin, over your shoulder into the fountain, you will return to Roma one day. But because I am so cheap, and I don’t really believe in superstitions, I decided to only waste a penny, not a euro.
But still, I did it.
Because you just never know…
-June 2010