Italy
2004
Wednesday
9th June,2004
London to Rome
At 4.30pm we land at Fiumicino or Leonardo da Vinci Airport in Rome. This is more like it! The weather is hot and sunny, no-one is speaking English and Italians are everywhere! A monorail takes us to baggage collection then we catch the airport train into the city. After half an hour we enter the outskirts of Rome and see ancient ruins already. At Termini Station we put on our packs and head off to find our accommodation that we’ve already booked on the internet. I think we take the long way round and it’s a hot thirty minute walk to Via Giovanni Lanza. At last we find the right address in a row of old buildings with an avenue of trees outside. Mark presses the buzzer for the Red Rose Bed and Breakfast but no-one answers. Inside the foyer another couple is also trying to get in so Mark makes a call on his mobile. While we wait we chat with the young American backpackers who’ve been in Italy for ages and give us a few tips. I just love this foyer with its marble floor and wrought iron winding staircase. It’s so very Italian and the real thing. Soon a lady called Anna Rosa arrives with the key. She’s a buxom bleached blonde in her fifties and not exactly friendly until she wants us to come to her restaurant.
The Red Rose is fabulously Italian! Our room is huge with ornate furniture, a marble floor, a chandelier, two velvet couches and a gilt mirror over the fireplace. The window has three sets of shutters and looks onto an old convent. Mark opens the shutters to let the afternoon sun flow into our room – lovely! We also have a shared bathroom and a homey kitchen where we’ll have breakfast tomorrow morning.
After unpacking we walk up to the busy Via Tonna to look for Anna Rosa’s restaurant. Sorry, Anna Rosa, it’s far too expensive so we find a small osteria instead and sit at a table on the sidewalk to order wine and a capricciosa pizza - olives, prosciutto, mushrooms and artichokes. Now we wander the streets and stop at a small fruit and vegetable shop. The owners are a friendly old couple and we buy cherries, onions, tomatoes and a lettuce that we drop back at the Red Rose. Further down Via Giovanni Lanza we find a wonderful little piazza called Piazza Madonna del Mondi in a maze of tiny laneways. It has a fountain in the middle and cafes on two sides. We have a lovely time sitting in one of the cafes watching the locals and drinking expensive vino bianco to celebrate our first night in Italy.
Thursday
10th June, 2004
Rome
Buongiorno! Our first full day in Rome. It was a bit noisy last night with traffic outside our window and guests coming and going but we still managed to get plenty of sleep. By seven thirty we’re up, showered and having breakfast made for us by another Italian lady in the kitchen. She doesn’t even bother trying to be friendly and throws us stale croissants, tea, coffee and orange juice – welcome to Italy.
At eight thirty we set off and realize that we can see the Roman Forum at the end of our street – don’t know how we missed seeing it last night. Our first stop is the Colosseum. It’s only a five minute walk and sits in the middle of a sort of giant roundabout. It looks wonderful even though it’s now just a shell of its former glory. The queue isn’t too long and we’re inside within fifteen minutes.
Climbing the stairs to the top level we can see how incredibly huge it is. It once held fifty thousand spectators who during the one hundred day inauguration games watched five thousand animals killed and gladiators fight to the death. During another set of games that lasted one hundred and seventeen days, over nine thousand gladiators died. They could even fill the arena with water to put on displays of sea battles. It’s hard to imagine all this happening in this lovely peaceful place. We spend an hour or so inside then I have a photo taken with one of the gladiators out in the forecourt.
Now we head for the Roman Forum which is just a short walk uphill along the Via Sacra. At the top of the hill is the pretty Arco di Settimio Severo where we sit on a boulder in the shade to eat bananas for morning tea. From here we can see the whole area – the Basilica Aemilia, temples, churches and columns – all in ruins amongst orange poppy fields – beautiful! This is also where Caesar was buried and where Mark Antony gave his famous speech – ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar not to praise him’. It’s so much bigger and beautiful than we expected and so spread out that it’s still a relaxing haven despite the hundreds of tourists.
We walk up the stairs on the far side to Capitoline Hill for an even better view and to see the Piazza del Campidoglio. The piazza is surrounded by three palaces and reached by the Cordonata which is a wide ramp designed by Michelangelo. At the bottom of the ramp it’s just a short walk to the Piazza Venezia which is dominated by the spectacular monument of Vittoriano. A fountain and pool at the bottom is a good place to cool down as we splash water over our arms and legs.
From here we walk through back laneways then sit on the shaded steps of a church to look at more monuments across the street – this whole city seems to be a treasure trove of ancient history. Mark has packed a salad for our lunch but we stop at a nearby supermarket to buy more supplies – two bottles of wine, a loaf of crusty bread, salami, a block of Edam cheese and prosciutto. We plan to be out all day and to have a picnic somewhere wonderful.
Using our map we soon find the Pantheon, the next stop on our itinerary. It’s surrounded by lively cafes and men playing Italian music on accordions which adds to the wonderful atmosphere. The Pantheon itself is spectacular and apparently the greatest architectural achievement of the Roman Empire. The marble floor spans a forty three metre diameter circle and the dome is also a soaring forty three metres high. Outside we sit at the base of one of the sixteen Corinthian columns to have our picnic lunch and to watch all the action.
It’s so hot by now that at nearby Piazza Navona we sit on the edge of one of the fountains to paddle in the cold water. Pigeons are sitting on the nude statues and one is pecking at a doodle. Two young boys have thrown their mate fully clothed into the fountain and throw the poor guy in again when they see our video camera. In the centre of the piazza is Bellini’s beautiful Fountain of the Four Rivers and surrounding the fountain are a few hawkers and artists selling original paintings of Rome.
From here we make our way to the famous Trevi Fountain. This is set in a tiny piazza and is every bit as magical as we’d expected. The sunshine is glaring as it’s reflected off the white marble sculptures and the blue pool beneath. Hundreds of tourists are crammed into this little square but we find an empty space on the edge of the pool to throw in three coins each over our shoulders. In a nearby air-conditioned internet café we spend an hour emailing home then head back out to find the Spanish Steps. We read the map wrong and lose our way for an hour and have to stop for soft cone Cornettos. The best part of getting lost is that we stumble across Bellini’s Fontana del Tritone in Piazza Barbarini. This is one of my favourite sculptures because the very spunky body of the figure reminds me of my darling with his clothes off – ‘I wish’ he says but I know it’s true. An old man is running around the piazza dancing and dunking his head in the water and spouting it out of his mouth like a fountain.
At last we find the Spanish Steps but we’re almost too hot to care. Hoards of more fucking tourists are here as well. The heat is sweltering so we don’t hang around for long but take the Metro to Termini Station. We’ve never seen a train so packed and I even have a man rubbing his crotch against my leg. At Termini we can’t stand the thought of another packed train or another pervert so we decide to walk back to the Red Rose. On the way we stop at a supermarket to buy more picnic supplies – cheese, proscuitto, salad dressing and aluminium containers. The checkout chick is a model of Italian service – lazy, talking to her friends and a scowl. Closer to home we come across a travel agent and book tickets for the train to Florence leaving tomorrow morning.
So glad to finally get back to our room to lie around on the bed eating cherries and reading with the fan keeping us cool. At seven thirty we wander down to Piazza Madonna then find a crowded pizzeria to have dinner. The atmosphere couldn’t be more Italian if it tried. An accordionist is wandering around between the tables, everyone is smoking, there’s a jug of wine on every table, the air is thick with garlic and everyone except us is Italian. Predictably the menu choices are pizza or pasta so we order both as well as a jug of vino russo. The tomato and basil bread seems to be free till we get the bill. A great night.
Friday
11th June, 2004
Rome
Both wearing earplugs we slept much better and ready for our second day in Rome. Waking at seven we shower, have breakfast and Mark packs our picnic food. Outside is hot already but it’s great to see the sun and blue skies above. At nearby Cavour Station we buy a day ticket each then catch the Metro to the St Peters stop in Vatican City. A ten minute walk from the station takes us through pleasant streets past shops and souvenir stalls to reach the seventeenth century Piazza San Pietro. St Paul’s Square is a massive area in front of the domed basilica with fountains in the centre and flanked by semi-circular Doric colonnades four rows deep. We sit here in the shade to admire the view, eat cherries and feed the pigeons.
Before we can enter St Paul’s Basilica we must line up for fifteen minutes in the sun then have our bags checked. Only one gate is open because the guy in charge of the other gate is having a casual chat and a fag. It’s free to get in which is like most of the sights we’ve seen in Rome so far. Once inside the foyer it’s much cooler and the atmosphere is amazing already. But the Basilica itself is even more amazing. The interior is huge with shafts of sunlight beaming in from the tall windows above. We stop first to look at Michelangelo’s Pieta which, in a sculpture or painting, means the dying Christ in the arms of the Madonna – very moving. The Basilica has so many other famous statues but the building itself is so marvellous that it’s hard to put it into words – so I won’t.
The other wonder of Vatican City is the Vatican Museums mainly because this is where we’ll find the Sistine Chapel or the Capella Sistina. The sun is scorching and we line up in the street behind hundreds of people. As we get to the corner we realize that the line goes up another street, around a corner, up that street, around another corner and then up another street. One and a half hours later we’re finally paying our 11 Euro each to get in. To reach the Sistine Chapel we have to walk through untold rooms of priceless paintings and statues while all the walls and ceilings are painted with frescos of Biblical stories. This is really unexpected and by the time we arrive at the Sistine Chapel it’s almost an anti-climax. No cameras, no videos and definitely no talking and it seems that the main job of the guards inside is to go ‘shoosh’. We see the famous Creation of Man at the very centre of the ceiling and The Last Judgement on the back wall and Mark manages to get most of it on video. The fact that most of the chapel was painted single-handedly by Michelangelo himself is enough to draw thousands of visitors here every day.
The exit to the Museums is back at the Basilica where we see some of the army of the Swiss Guards wearing the traditional blue, red and yellow costumes. We decide to have lunch in the shade of the colonnades so we wash our hands and splash water over our faces from one of the water fountains we’ve seen all over Rome. The water is freezing cold and great to fill our empty water bottles. |
