We arrived at our hotel in Rome, Starhotels Michelangelo, late in the afternoon. The drive down from Assisi was pleasant, and the transition from rural town to urban metropolis was striking. From narrow, winding roads with minimal traffic to bustling city streets packed with cars and all manner of two-wheeled vehicles. My initial impression was of a creeping urban blight due to all the graffiti....everywhere! While Venezia had its share of graffiti, Rome eclipsed it by a large margin. I don't recall seeing much graffiti, if at all, in Firenze. Overall, though, the sheer amount of historic buildings mixed with newer construction gave Rome an eclectic view that I found charming.
Remember that clicking on a photo will display a large format version in a new window. Any links (in blue) will also open in a new window, so you won't lose your place here.
We had about an hour to refresh before departing for our optional "A Night of Food and Opera" dinner excursion at a local restaurant. Initially, Cindy and I weren't going to participate, but after talking it over, we decided to give it a try. Good thing, too, and the food and entertainment were both unexpectedly good.
Since we had some time to kill, Cindy and I ordered some drinks from the bar. She ordered a red wine ('vino rossi"), and I opted for a Limoncello spritz. When I placed my order, the bartender looked like I just asked for pan-galactic gargle blaster. "Signore, why are you ordering something from the Naples region and not here?"
Me: Ummmm, it just sounded good, I guess. If it's a problem, I'll have your regional red.
Bartender: I was just kidding you. Order that other drink if that's what you want.
He said he was kidding, but the look he gave me made me wonder. It was a delicious Limincello spritz, though.
Someone, anyone, PLEASE comment below if you know got my reference above. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
Our itinerary promised a very full day tomorrow, even more so than our day in Firenze. Breakfast would begin at 6 am, our earliest start yet. I'm glad we got to bed early, as it made it a little less painful getting up so early. A little. The "included" tour would take us to the Colosseum and the Vatican. The optional excursion, "Roman Highlights," would allow us to see the Pantheon, Piazza Navona and the Trevi Fountain. Let's go! (Or, as the Italians would say, "Andiamo!")
Today's plan
Interestingly enough, everyone on our tour signed up for the optional excursion, hence the crossed-out part at the bottom of the schedule. Before all that, though, many of us had the "A Night of Food and Opera" excursion to attend this evening. Apparently, Rome has a series of one-way streets, much like downtown Houston. Our bus would take us to the restaurant, but we would walk back. Our route to the restaurant took us across the Tiber River as we made a big circle around this part of the city. A thirty-minute bus ride to get to the restaurant and a fifteen-minute walk back. Makes sense to me!
Tonight we'd be dining (and listening to opera) at Papa Rex Restaurant. This wouldn't be "canned" music, either, but an opera singer and her accordion-playing accompanist. Wait, an "accordion-playing accompanist?" Wow, try saying that fast, three times. "Dude, where do you come up with these descriptions?" Psh, I don't know; my mind just made it up.
Anyway..... (Or as an Italian catch-all: "allora")
OST
"OST?" What, y'all don't remember this from my last installment? OK, one more time: OST is "obligatory selfie time." My term, not Cindy's.
Allora....
Our entertainment commenced as soon as we got seated and weaved itself into our courses. And speaking of courses, here's what we had.
Antipasto course
Unlike our previous dining experiences, we got our own plates, not family-style as we were accustomed to. Yay, there was more of that delicious Italian salami that was soooo good!
Pasta course
Main course
Dessert
Unfortunately I failed to get the names of the singer or her accompanist. Both were quite talented and were very.....interactive.....with us. You'll see just how interactive they were in the following photos.
And then things got.....interesting. I swear that I don't try to become part of the show. It just happens from time to time. Kinda like the time on one of our cruises when ventriloquist Marc Rubben picked me as one of his "targets" for the night. You can read all about that here. So there I was, minding my own business and enjoying the show....
photo by Brian Miller
photo by Brian Miller
For the rest of the evening, our singer would drop by the table and "enlist" my help with the show. Cindy shot some video of our performance, but due to its length I had to trim it into smaller segments. Here are two segments that pretty much tell the tale. Be sure to turn up the volume so you can hear the music and Cindy's comments.
Bull!
Conga line?
What can I say? I was perfectly content to just sit and watch the show, but once I got "selected," I thought I'd make the best of it. At least the rest of the group seemed to enjoy it. I didn't even ask for the employee discount, either. We finished our tasty dinner and walked as a group back to the hotel. Tomorrow was gonna start early and be a lonnnnnnng day.
Even though Cindy and I made a relatively early night of it, 5:30 was still too early to get up when we were on vacation. Yeah, yeah, I know I wrote in one of the earlier installments how Simonetta reminded us we were on a tour and not "vacation." Bring on the coffee! At least we'd have a short bus ride to our drop-off point to wake up.
I remember many years ago when I visited my father in Singapore and how crazily I thought all the people drove. Rome could be Singapore's rival in that respect, especially all the motorcycle and scooter riders. These people would constantly weave in and out of lanes, coming extremely close to our bus and other vehicles. At traffic lights, they'd form a pack and bolt through the intersection the instant the light turned green. You'd think they were running some sort of race.
Our first stop was the Trevi Fountain. This was one of the must-see locations on Cindy's list, so I'm glad we signed up for the excursion. From our research, we knew that the crowds there could be huge, so maybe getting up as early as we did would actually pay off. It did! Yes, there were still many people already there, but nowhere near the crowd we thought we'd see.
Trevi Fountain
Those devices hanging on lanyards around our necks are the "Whisper" radio units our tour director lent us. The tour guide has a transmitter and a microphone, and we use an earbud to listen to the guide. Very efficient for talking to a large group of people without having to shout.
Next up was the Pantheon, only a short walk away. Honestly, most of these "short walks" were anywhere from five to ten minutes at most, on essentially level ground. The only real challenge was moving around all the crowds. On the way to the Pantheon, we passed by a column dedicated to Marcus Aurelius.
Marcus Aurelius column
photo by Cindy Newman
Closeup of column
photo by Cindy Newman
Note the intricate scenes carved in the column. These carvings went from the bottom of the column all the way to the top. I can't even imagine how long or how many artisans it took to do this.
Our local guide pointed out something interesting to us. Click on the photo to enlarge it. See all the small holes in the triangular portion near the top? Those held mounts for a marble covering. As with the Colosseum, which we'll see shortly. most of these buildings were covered with marble. The marble was attached to the underlying stone. As marble became scarce, it was scavenged from places like this.
Pantheon exterior
A solitary guard caught my eye. From what I could determine by reading the information cards, he was guarding the tombs of King Humbert I and Queen Margherita Savoia.
We had almost half an hour of free time between this and our next stop, Piazza Navona. Barbara, Keith, Cindy, and I found a small cafe near the Pantheon and enjoyed an espresso and chocolate croissant ("cornetto al cioccolato").
Cornetto al cioccolato
Another brief walk brought us to the piazza and we were treated to three magnificent fountains. To make it even better, we found another virtual geocache (GC9P640). I'm glad that there are some virtual caches here, as trying to be stealthy with a traditional cache amongst so many people would be difficult. An added bonus was all the people-watching we got to do. We had just under half an hour to look around before meeting our bus for a ride to the Colosseum.
Piazza Navona
This would've been the perfect time for gelato, but we got so caught up taking photos that we let too much time slip by. We had to get photos of all three fountains with one of us in each photo to qualify for the virtual cache. I'd call it a good trade-off: log a smiley in lieu of gelato.
I'm guessing that by now, most of you readers have seen, if not heard of the movie Gladiator. We made it a point to watch it shortly before this trip just to refresh our memory. Yes, it was a historical fiction movie, but with the CG used to create the Colosseum as it looked during its time, it helped us visualize what was missing. We also watched some YouTube videos showing what the Colosseum must have looked like at the height of its popularity. I found this one video that gave a different perspective that I found both entertaining and enlightening. I can't vouch for how accurate this gentleman is, but it all seems plausible. He also presents a recipe for a snack that most likely was served during the games. Check it out here. I guess I was......entertained.
Maximus! Maximus! Maximus!
It's hard to imagine just how many people (and animals) lost their lives here, sometimes horribly, just for the sake of entertainment. The amount of suffering staggers the mind, yet in its day, this was nothing more than our full-contact sporting events today. I'm glad to have visited this place, and I remember seeing pictures of it in my history books in junior high and high school. I wondered back then if I'd ever get a chance to see it in person, and so many years later, here I am. Wow.
One more short bus ride and we reached another place I've been wanting to visit for many years: The Vatican. While my mom was Catholic for a portion of her adult life, I was raised as a protestant, mainly Methodist. Regardless of our specific denomination, though, The Vatican was an emotionally powerful place to visit. I'd love to visit Jerusalem and am sure the experience would be the same. I use the term Vatican to mean the Vatican Museum, Sistine Chapel, St. Peter's Basilica, and Square collectively.
Our tour started in the Vatican Museum, followed by the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's Basilica. We finished our tour outside, in St. Peter's Square. Normally empty, the square was closed off for Easter Sunday preparations. As with all the other places we've visited so far, the photos never do it justice. Following are some of my favorites that will give a good idea of what we saw. No photography was allowed in the Sistine Chapel.
Vatican Museum
The photo above is actually the ceiling of the hallway leading to the Sistine Chapel. This was a long hallway, and the ceiling was decorated like this the entire way.
I was surprised at just how huge St. Peter's Basilica was—it was gargantuan! According to our guide, it's almost 500 feet tall, making it the tallest building in Rome. As beautiful as the Sistine Chapel was, St. Peter's Basilica was every bit as breathtaking. There was so much "wow" here that I experienced that ever-present sensory overload while in these magnificent buildings. Let's take a look, shall we?
St. Peter's Basilica
We had one more task to complete before leaving St. Peter's Square. Now that we had found a few Italian caches, we wanted to add another "country" to our list. Yes, Vatican City, or the Holy See, is considered its own country! There were a few caches scattered about, but the closest and easiest lay just a few yards from us, another virtual cache (GC892N6). The requirement to log this cache was to display a flag of your country in a photo posted on the cache page. This flag could be a real flag, a photo, a patch, or anything that clearly demonstrated which country you were from. Cindy agreed to pose for the photo with a picture of our flag on her phone.
We got a Vatican smiley!
After our touring and caching were done, we stopped by the official Vatican store for some souvenirs. I bought a few rosaries for Mom, my sisters, and a couple of others. To make these even more special, all of the rosaries had been blessed by a Vatican priest. Cool!
And for the second time this trip, I got emotional. If you haven't read about our day in Venice, where I describe the first time, you'll see the link below. This time, as I stepped out of the Vatican store, something came over me right out of the blue. I got emotional and teary-eyed....again. I could understand the first time, but now? Cindy asked me what was wrong, and all I could do was answer with, "Nothing, babe, just give me a minute to compose myself." This is truly a spiritual place, no matter if you are Catholic, Protestant or another faith.
Our hotel was.....you guessed it.....a short walk from St. Peter's Square. Simonetta led us along the route back to the hotel, asking us what we thought of today's tour. Based on all the answers I heard, I believe all of us had a great time.
We were on our own for dinner, and fortunately, there were several restaurants just around the corner from the hotel. Keith and Barbara joined us, and we found a charming little place that fit the bill nicely. And we didn't have to wait for a table, either.
I had the pesto gnocchi
We split a chocolate panna cotta, and once we settled the bill, we trudged back to the hotel—trudged because we were tired from a lot of walking. All of us really wished there was a hot tub at the hotel, but it was not to be. No worries; a hot shower was almost as good...almost.
Even though I posted this same photo at the beginning of this installment, I'm adding it here so you won't have to scroll alllllll the way back to the top. Breakfast starts at 6 tomorrow morning, with bags outside the room by 6:45. Departure for Pompeii and Sorrento would be at 7:45.
Why was a hot tub so desirable? Take a look at my step counter and mileage on my watch. I'm betting there were many more steps not counted when I wasn't moving my arm in the normal stride motion.
Coming up next, our tour of Pompeii and Sorrento. Jump to our day in Pompeii by clicking here.
Have you taken any of these tours? What did you think about them? I'd love to read about your experiences and thoughts in the comments section below. If you have a question, please ask and I'll happily answer it.
Here are the previous installments in this series:
Until next time....
carpe cerevisi
No comments:
Post a Comment