Thursday in Roma

While hiking up and down the mountains of Cinque Terre along the Mediterranean coast Tuesday, I realized that in the past three weeks I have experienced quite a few superlatives: the coolest city I'd ever seen (Venice), the most enjoyable class I've ever taken (Food, Wine, and Language in Lucca), the longest time I've ever spent in Europe (3 weeks and counting, beating my 19 days from 2011), and now, the most incredible hike I'd ever been on. If you are planning a trip to Italy, Cinque Terre is a must-see!

Our last morning in Corniglia consisted of chocolate croissants (yummy!) at the internet cafe-bakery so we could access the web and check train times.  We realized we didn't have quite enough time to make it to any of the beaches in the neighboring towns, so I decided to do a long(ish) run of 9 miles round-trip on the road up to the fourth town, while Brad decided to do a little shopping in the second town, Manarola.   My run consisted of two miles up the mountain, gaining about 1300 feet of elevation, about a minute of flat road, and then two miles straight down to Vernazza. Then I turned around and came home. Very challenging, but what amazing views, especially coming back toward Corniglia!

Brad was due in shortly after me, but the minutes ticked by and there was no sign of him. We absolutely had to leave by 1:30 to make our first train (of two) to get to Rome, a 4.5 hour journey. After over an hour of high anxiety and silent curses on my part, Brad came running in at around 1:28, explaining he had missed his train to get back and the only options were hiking over the mountain or waiting for the next train, 70 minutes later, of which he chose the latter (and then sprinted up the 370 steps to the town). Quickly throwing his remaining things in his suitcase, we shot out the door to head to the train station. My nerves were not at all settled yet though, as we only had a 9 minute layover between our first train (a 15 minute ride to La Spezia) and the second one,  a 4 hour ride to Rome,

and of course, the first train was 10 minutes late.  So much for things being on time! Luck was with us, though, as even though we got to La Spezia several minutes after our train was supposed to have left, it had just started to pull in to the station by the time we made it to the platform. Whew! Between the run and my nerves, I must have sweated out several kilos in the period of 5 hours.  Speaking of weight, Sarah emailed me to say she made it home and actually lost half a pound.  Woo-hoo!! Three scoops of gelato a day is clearly the way to go.

So relieved to have made it!

And so onto Rome we went, arriving a little after 6 pm and heading right to the little budget hotel I had booked for two nights near the train station. We were pleasantly surprised by the place, Hotel Saturnia.  It was in a tiny alley, meaning there was no road traffic to keep us up, and they had actually upgraded us from a room with a shared bathroom to a room on the top floor (floor 4) with a private bathroom and balcony! It was pretty tiny, as all things are in Europe, fitting just our beds and a mini fridge (the smallest mini fridge ever!) but it was perfect for what we needed.

I was feeling pretty over-carbohydrated as I had eaten about .35 kilograms of focaccia (if you can't do the math to convert....it was quite a lot) with awesome fiore di Alpi pecorino cheese on the train, and so wanted nothing to do with pasta or pizza. We found a nice place with outdoor seating where Brad got his steak and potatoes while I was able to get grilled salmon for 10 euros and some spinachi with butter and parmesan. Delicious! We ended up chatting with the couple at the table next to us, from the Netherlands (I've met so many great Dutch people on this trip!) who gave us some tips about our upcoming dash of sightseeing.

One of the tips was on how to avoid the long line at the Colosseum, our first stop the next day after a lovely breakfast at the hotel. The ticket for the Colosseum also includes entry to the Roman and Palatine ruins, contained in a large park-like area just down the road.  Most people head to the Colosseum to get the tickets, because that is the main attraction, when in fact you can head to the ruins, where the line is extremely short, and then you have your ticket so you can bypass all the people once you get to the Colosseum. We explored the ruins first, which I hadn't even known existed, and they were pretty amazing to see. What surprised me was the time span between the various structures.  Some were from a couple hundred years before Christ and some from a few hundred yeas after.  The park was so big we ended up spending close to two hours walking around, then headed to the Colosseum.

We got right through the line, but then had to wait in a separate, short line for the guided tours.  The big tour of all the floors was already sold out for the day, but we got the 5 euro tour of the main two floors. It was worth it, as we found out some cool things I had no idea about.  One was that the whole place (which was built in the year 80 AD) used to be entirely covered with marble. However, in the Middle Ages, the material started to become very precious to they stripped down the whole place.  It was also interesting to learn the land that  the Colosseum was on was formerly a swimming pool of some ancient ruler. Additionally, the name "colosseum" is not derived from the fact that it's so big, but rather, because there used to be a massive statue of Colossus (so big it took 24 elephants to move it to that spot) just adjacent to the stadium.

After that, we headed out in search of lunch and had some pretty good pizza in what seemed like the "Little Israel" section of Rome. Then we headed up along the West Bank of the river (the Tiber River in fact, which I recognized from Mrs. LaPorte's 7th grade world history class!).

It was at some point during this time that I had my airhead comment of the day: while consulting the map, I noticed yet again, how many streets were named after men with the first name of Giovanni (btw, I have yet to see a street named after a woman who isn't a saint). "Wow, there are a lot of Giovannis!" I commented.  "It's like as common as the name John." Then..."oh yeah, Giovanni IS the the name John!" This was confirmed a short time later when I saw a photo with the name of Pope Giovanni II.

Speaking of the pope, our other main stop for the day: Vatican City.  With only one day to see Rome, and the vatican requiring a full day on its own to really see, we figured we would just pop in, say hi to Pope Francis, and continue on our way.  The line to get into the basilica (with free entrance) was long but moving quickly so we made our way in after about a 35 minute wait. It was impressive! But I feel like now that I've seen so many amazing churches, it's not quite as jaw-dropping as it once might have been for me. The next time I'm in Rome, I will make plans to tour the Vatican and see the Sistine Chapel, but we just didn't have time on this trip.

From there we continued on our walking tour to get some gelato, glance at the Pantheon, climb the Spanish steps (nice view!) and return to our hotel.  Being the dork that I am, I wore my garmin gps watch all day to see how many miles we clocked. We managed to do 12! (That's almost 20 kilometers for you metric folks). It was 6pm so we had a little bit of time to rest and shower before our 7:30 appointment.

View from top of Spanish steps 

So, a little backstory: a couple months earlier, when this trip was starting to be pieced together, I heard that one of my colleagues was also heading to Italy this summer. Renata is one of the math coaches in the district and was also on the interview committee that hired me last year. I asked her about her trip and she said she and her mother had just booked a week in Rome and it turned out they would be arriving the same day we were! Each of us had just made hotel reservations and so I google mapped them and we realized we were staying 150 meters apart. How funny! So of course we had to meet up.

So fast-forward two months, and here we were, meeting up in Rome! And what a fun time we had.  She and her mom were hysterical, and combined with some entertaining servers and the craziness of subway trains on the road passing literally 2 feet from our table, we laughed all night long.  I love how restaurants here don't try to push you along at all.  Finally, close to 11:30, we had to call it a night, as Brad and I only had 7 hours till our train departed Rome!

I'm not much of a city person, and Rome was more of an obligatory stop on this trip as the capital of Italy and since it was so convenient, but I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. As people had told me, it was quite amazing the extent to which the 2000 year old structures were seamlessly woven into modern-day life. It was pretty incredible to see. The only thing we were not fans of (besides the expected hordes of tourists) were the increasing number of beggars and the peddlers who were constantly trying to sell you something.  All night long we shooed them away from our table like mosquitos. But for a city, Rome was pretty neat. On to Naples, our last stop in Italy and the origin of the D'Aniellos!

Our route around Rome, in black, starting with our hotel circled on the right (3 o'clock position)

SoG: 105