Day 7 - Sunday 11 April - Rome

Church bells woke me at 7am and then again at 8.15, so I got up to go to the market - it wasn’t there. So much for a picnic lunch on the Appian Way! Stopped at the little patisserie and picked up cornetti, and mortadella in bread for lunch instead - also thought I bought Tortetti (like biscotti) but when I got home, they weren’t in my bag…… will pop in later to see if I left them there. The lady in the shop is very lovely and helping me with my Italian…


Tried to get to the bus for the Appian Way today - packed the mortadella as a picnic lunch - graham kept complaining about the weight of the back pack - couldn’t find the bus, but stumbled upon the Forum behind the Piazza Venezia - where we had the most expensive cup of coffee to date - 9 Euros for 2 coffees!! Bought a guide book that included a map, but really non the wiser….. Walked down the street towards the colosseum - magnificent.

 

 

The street was closed to traffic - something they do on a Sunday - what a great idea - the people were able to wander around without worrying about the traffic. It was almost enough for us just to see it from the outside, but we will come back another day, when we do not have to queue so long….. Had lunch on the hill overlooking the colosseum - also got caught up in some wedding photos!! What a backdrop - almost rivals the harbour in Sydney…

 

The wall showed the takeover of the Romans across the empire......... starting with the small white dot and then enlarging across the known world - no wonder there are ruins to be seen all over the continent...

 

 

Wandered back along the Imperial way and headed home for a snooze - had dinner in a little Trattoria around the corner - Il Fico - Melanie’s favourite and one we agree is lovely. No one there until we had almost finished and then we were invaded by 80 school kids! They were a school group band from Aurora High school just north of Toronto - very well behaved and polite - they are on a ten day tour of Rome, Florence and Salzburg and had just finished playing in the St Peter’s square, What an experience! Best pasta we have had so far in Rome, so will be going back, I’m sure…. Got a complimentary drink because of the ‘trouble’ of the students.. We tried to reassure them that they were no trouble at all, but didn’t seem to get our message through. Sitting at ‘home’ while there is a storm over Rome - thunder and lightening……

Day 6 - Saturday 10 April - Rome

Up at 7am and went for a walk back around to the market - bought an orange - the market is still setting up at that time of the morning - stopped at the little bakery and bought ‘due croissants per favore’ - Euro 1.20 then stopped by the local coffee bar and had my first caffe latte standing at the bar - just like an Italian! - Euro 1.30 grazie… Found graham’s missing ipod - in the shorts pocket that he washed on Wednesday!!!!! The ipod is dead, but the earphones are still working - he will have to share my ipod on the tours we downloaded - off to the Pantheon today.

The Pantheon is the most remarkable structure - a still functioning dome which is used for church services now - it holds the tomb of Raphael as well as Victor Emanuel. There is a hole in the top which lets the rain in, but the drainage system is so ggod it doesn’t matter! The frescoes were truly beautiful and the place still has a sense of holiness, even though it was built for pagan gods. The dome was the basis for all the other types of domes built since then, from St Peters Basilica to the Capitol building in Washington. The other great thing was it was free to get in! We shared my ipod tour so we got a bit of the history of the building.


  Raphael's tomb.....

We headed up towards the Trevi fountain (now that we weren’t lost, there were signs everywhere!!!) When we found the Trevi, I almost burst into tears... What a magnificent fountain! No wonder it has such an aura - even with hundreds of people surrounding it, you couldn’t miss how gorgeous it was - so far, the best thing I’ve seen…… even if it is BIT over the top.....
 
 

 
 
After the Trevi we walked north towards Piazza Venizia - there is a monument to Victor Emmanuel and also this is a very familiar roundabout from all the movies featuring Rome as a setting…. The traffic is mad and you really do have to judge when to cross! Graham decided we should walk in tandem with one of the locals... we certainly took the advice of the previous tour guide - once you start walking don't stop!!! We sat in the middle on the grass to get a better view of the ‘wedding cake’ which is the monument and realised it is the white building we can see from our balcony.


 

Graham then wanted to look more closely at the Sacre Area - where Caesar was killed - again it was free, but being restored so you can’t get down into it - we had to be content with looking into it over the fence. Lots of cats here - they would give Nigeri a run for his money, they are so big! Apparently the Senate was meeting here instead of the Forum for some reason, so that's why Caesar was killed here and not over in the Forum.

We had a very simple lunch of meat and cheese at Cul de Sac, a little restaurant in Piazza Pasquino we read about in Authentic Rome and were entertained by two girls setting up a tap dance in the middle of the road! The cars and trucks went around them (sort of) and sometimes they had to move their gear, but they persevered! We didn’t have any change or we would have contributed to their fund…. One of the numbers they did was ‘Cabaret’ - not too badly, either!

Had a siesta after lunch and then went back to the local for drinks and to connect to the internet and let everyone know we are still alive! Dinner down the road - tried the fried artichokes - can’t say I’m a fan, but at least we tried them, also had fried vegetables which were better - Graham even liked the eggplant! Veal Scallopini for me, Pollo Cacciatore for Graham (not as tomato based as we expected and a bit stringy).

Day 5 - Friday 9 April - Rome

Slept in until 9.30 - by the time we got organised it was close to 11am - headed over to Campo de Fiori (field of flowers) to check out the markets - really just one block south from where we are staying.

Bought a jacket for me up one of the streets leading off the market - a trench coat I will be able to wear back home as well as keeping a bit warmer here at night. Got some souvenirs for the girls - Murano glass rings and necklaces. Graham bought 2 t-shirts as well. Decided to bit the bullet and buy provisions for lunch - a little deli on the market - 2 slices of ham, 2 slices Porchetta (pork cooked in rosemary - delicious) and some cheese. The man was very patient…but I was in a cold sweat... bought some tomatoes from the market and picked up 2 Panini, a canola and a ricotta cake in a bakery on the way back to the apartment. Put it all together with a glass of our Pinot de Pinot from the supermarket and we were in heaven! The pork was especially delicious. Not really much cheaper than buying lunch from a cafe but definitively ‘funner’.

Met the tour guide - Gina - at 3pm for our culinary tour of this part of Rome - Gina and Daniela were very lovely guides and we were joined by Anna and Tom from Boston, and Jenna and Natalie from Toronto. We spent the afternoon getting totally disoriented and the bakery in the Jewish ghetto we visited was closed because Sabbath was about to start… we managed to visit a chocolate shop (and saw a E600 egg!), saw some gelato being made and tasted it (corn gelato - who would have thought of such a thing?) it was ‘belissimo’ - then we headed to a coffee shop where the process of roasting to coffee was described (didn’t get to see it, but it was interesting anyway) and finally ended up in one of the pizzeria/Panini/vino shops where we tasted Margarita pizza (tomato and cheese) and Marinara pizza (just tomato) - you buy it by weight - point to how much you want and the guy slams down his knife to cut it to size.

After all that food we decided a drink was in order, so we headed back to the ‘local’ after the tour and had a few drinks in the Irish pub down the road. Had dinner in a Trattoria up one of the laneways from the Irish pub - it was full of students and priests. Apparently we are still in Holy week and the children, nuns and priests will go home soon. I had spaghetti carbornara, graham had fettucine with mussels and clams - we shared a litre of house wine then staggered back home to bed, dodging the vespas and other cars in the cobbled lanes.

Day 4 - Thursday 8 April - Rome

Woke up at 7am and went for a walk/jog with the camera and took lots of photos of the St Peters Basilica and other shots of significant looking buildings from the Tiber river - wanted to see if the morning sun made a difference to the light…. got a couple of good shots. Needed to come back to the apartment and look up to see what I had taken photos of!!

Had some trouble working out the hot water, so we sat around for a while reading and updating this journal while waiting for it to get hot. Computer not charging properly, so relying on it staying on through the adaptor plug to be able to use it…… bit disappointing considering I bought it for the trip! need to find an internet café to update the get jealous blog and send a facebook hello to the girls….

After breakfast went walking - went to the Castel St Angelo - Hadrian’s Mausoleum - took lots of photos across Rome - fascinating to think that this was a burial place that is so ancient and we were walking on the same stones as those so many and so long ago…..

 Headed towards Augustus’ Mausoleum (is there a theme about death here?) and when we got to it, there was a big fence around it - it is in a sad state of disrepair.


Continued walking in no particular direction and found ourselves on the Via Del Corso - almost like the Rodeo Drive of Rome - so any designer shops. Had lunch in a little café - shared a pizza and had a few glasses of prosecco. We estimated that we must be fairly near the Spanish Steps, so went to find them - very easy to ‘stumble’ across….. Not so the Trevi Fountain, which we thought we headed towards, but instead found the column of Marcus Aurelius just sitting there in the middle of the Piazza Colonna….

Decided we had missed the Trevi Fountain so decided to try to head for home - not so easy really - we thought we were further south than we were, but eventually we came upon the Tiber and could figure out where we were - realised later we had done a big circle around the Spanish steps back to the Ponte (bridge) Umberto 1 - at least we new where we were.

 After a little snooze, went to Piazza Navona to meet our tour - I thought we were doing wine bars near the Piazza Navona, but it turned out we were doing an orientation to this end of Rome - our guide Andrew was lovely - an American living in Rome - he is an architect and gave us an insight into the architecture of Rome and how each successive generation basically builds on what was there before (or builds around it!) which is why nothing much seems to connect with anything else and explains why we went in circles in the day….. Had a great tour - it’s nice to get some background to the things we were looking at - even found the entrance to the original stadium tucked away behind the top end of the Piazza Navona… went through Campo d Fiori and across to Trestevere which was just starting to come alive - lots of wine bars and young people. Campo de Fiori is a market by day and then becomes a night spot at night - fascinating. We will start there tomorrow……. Had dinner close to home - lovely spinach pancake for me and ravioli for Graham - became very cold and had to head home….
 

Day 3 - Rome Arrival! Wednesday 7 April 2010

Piazza Navona - fountain

View from the other corner of our street

Corner of our street

View from the terrace

View from the apartment terrace Mark #2

Early morning taxi to the airport - 6am left the hotel. The Dubai airport is huge - it took us at least 30 minutes after going through customs to get to the departure gate. Plane was a lot smaller than the airbus, but managed the flight OK. First time in an exit row.

Bit disorienting when we got to the airport in Rome- everyone gets off the plane, then onto a train to get to the baggage claim and customs. Once we got the bags (a big crush with people very pushy…) we had no trouble finding our lovely driver, (holding a sign for KEY SMITH) who whisked us away very efficiently and then gave us a mini tour on the way to our apartment.

When the Forum popped into view it was quite remarkable - Graham’s face absolutely lit up! It is soooo enormous and everything around seems in miniature. Once we connected with the girl - Melanie- to let us into the apartment, it was just as described on the internet - quite perfect…. but we will need to be careful not to fall down the gaps!!

Spent the rest of the afternoon having a bit of a wander - found ourselves up at Castel de Angelo and then came back down and found the Piazza Breschi around the corner from our apartment, and the Piazza Navona just one diagonal street away! Fantastico!

Discovered a little pizzeria/panini/vino/deli on the way and bought a slice of potato and rosemary pizza to share and some pistachio biscotti - bellisimo! The people were lovely and let us practice our Italian - very helpful and I’m sure we’ll be back. Found a little Irish pub’ that Graham thinks might become a regular when I am needing a snooze in the afternoons….

Had dinner in a little ristorante on Piazza Pasquino - just downstairs from our building. Spent a very enjoyable couple of hours over a caraffe of vino biancho, some pasta - spaghetti for graham and gnocchi for me - while we watched people coming and going - watching the parking was particularly entertaining!!

Wandered up to a supermarket after dinner and managed to buy cereal and milk and vino to take back to the apartment. The view across to the St Peters Basillica is quite lovely at night from the apartment’s terrace.

A perfect start to our time in Italy.