We only had to wait for a few minutes until our car arrived to take us to our hotel. We had booked rooms at the Hotel Golden after reading reviews on Trip Advisor. It is ranked in the top ten for small hotels in the city, and it is located in the central part of the city. It is family owned and operated, and it is located on two floors of a larger building. There are fifteen rooms on the first floor (which is really the second floor) and a few ‘family suites’ on the floor above. One of the family members is always on duty at the desk, and they went out of their way to see that we were comfortable and had everything we might need.
We decided to take a hop-on, hop-off (ho-ho) bus to get oriented to Rome on our first day. We’ve been to Rome twice before, but John and Judy had never been there, so we took on the role of tour guide, which was fun for us. Once we had completed a loop of the city, which included the Coliseum, the Roman Forum, Circus Maximus, the Vatican and St. Peter’s Cathedral, we hopped off for the short walk to the Spanish Steps and then to the Trevi Fountain.
There are large posters of Pope John Paul II all over the city. He was beatified, one step on the way to Sainthood, in early May, and the Romans, indeed all of Italy, are celebrating that happening. He was a much-beloved Pope.
We had dinner at a restaurant close to our hotel, Il Pomodorino, or Little Tomato. Dinner in Italy starts at around 9 PM, and this restaurant was recommended by the Hotel Golden because they open at 8 PM. We had a very good meal and good, inexpensive wine. A typical Italian meal begins with appetizers and or salad, followed by a pasta course, then a meat or fish course, then dessert. Whoof! Too much for us! We found that we did better on a salad and pasta, or a salad and pizza. Pizza is great in Rome; thin crust with a light coating of tomato sauce, cheese and one or two other ingredients. There’s only one size, about 12” in diameter, and it is intended to serve one. We usually ended up splitting one between two of us.
The next day we started with a visit to the Borghese Gardens and the world famous Borghese Gallery. It’s not a large art museum, but it contains some of the best art, both sculptures and pictures, found anywhere. Scipione Borghese was the nephew of Pope Paul V, and he was named by the pope as a Cardinal of the church, and shortly after, he gave Scipione his “vineyard” just outside the walls of Rome. Scipione had his villa built in 1612-13 to house his collection of sculpture and paintings.
Works housed in the Gallery include sculptures by Canova and Bernini and paintings by Caravaggio, Raphael and Titian.
John had reserved tickets for us at 9 AM when the Gallery opened. Each group of ticket holders is allowed two hours in the Gallery, and then they must leave before the next group can enter. The Gardens probably encompass 50 acres or so, and includes a zoo and many shaded paths to walk. It’s located about 50 yards from our hotel, so we didn’t have much of a commute.
Once we left Borghese Gardens we hopped back on the ho-ho bus (our tickets were good for two days) and traveled to the Coliseum area.
Tickets are required to get in, but they also allowed us access to Palatine Hill, where the homes of the early Roman Emperors were located, and to the Roman Forum, which, 2000 years ago, was the center of Roman life and government. It is fascinating, particularly to Americans who tend to replace any structure that is more than 30 years old, (think Candlestick Park), to see buildings that are centuries old. It was a hot day, as turned out to be typical during our stay, which, of course, required several beer stops during each day.
On Day 3 in Rome, we took a train to Florence for the day. It takes 1.5 hours by fast train, and they run every 20-30 minutes all day long. We arrived in Florence at about 9:30 and walked several blocks to the Galleria Accademia where we had reservations to enter at 10 AM. In the Accademia can be found several sculptures by Michelangelo, including his most famous, David. When looking at it, it is hard to realize that it is made of stone. It is breathtaking to see it for the first time.
We stopped for lunch (and a beer) then journeyed on to the Medici Gallery where we had reservations for a 2 PM entry. The gallery has rooms and rooms of beautiful art, but by the time we had spent a couple of hours there, we were about done with art. We finished our visit on the third floor, and decided that we should take the stairs down to reach the restrooms.
Judy decided that she didn’t need a restroom stop and that she would take the elevator down and meet us. What we didn’t realize was that the stairs and the elevator do not meet; they are in different buildings. So, when we got to the gallery entrance we couldn’t find Judy. An attendant took us across the street to where the elevator stops, but still, no Judy. We waited a while and looked up and down the street many times, but still, no Judy. Finally John found her near the entrance to the gallery. She had realized that she was in a place that we couldn’t find her, so she went back into the entrance to wait by the room where John had checked his backpack when we entered. What she didn’t know, and we didn’t either, was that the check-out counter was in a different room than the check-in counter.
We all had worried some, but everything turned out OK. After that, we had time to visit the Ponte Vecchio, an old bridge over the River Arno, which has been home to gold and silver shops for centuries. Fortunately, the ladies didn’t see anything they couldn’t live without. A walk of a few blocks brought us back to the train station for our return to Rome.
Saturday was kind of a ‘kick back’ day. Our only scheduled activity was a tour of the Vatican Museum and St. Peters cathedral and that didn’t start until 3 PM. So, while John and Judy headed for Vatican City in the late morning, we waited until about 12:30 to start our sightseeing day. We traveled by Metro from near our hotel to the Vatican Museum. Because of the traffic in Rome, the Metro is the best way to get from one area to another. It moves a lot of people though, so the Metro is usually very crowded. There are only two lines in Rome, although they are currently building a third line. As you can imagine, Rome is such an old city that there are underground ruins everywhere. This has caused long delays in the building of the Metro.
We met J & J at a café across from the entrance to the Vatican Museum and we joined them in quaffing down a beer (Did I mention that it was hot in Rome?). We had a great conversation with our waitress who had immigrated to Rome from Romania seven years before. She has friends in Walnut Creek and visited America last year. We exchanged email addresses and asked her to let us know when she returns to the US. After finishing our beer, we walked around the neighborhood until it was time for our tour.
Debbie had found a tour company through recommendations on Trip Advisor and we had booked tickets several weeks earlier. We met our guide, Bruno, outside the café where we had our beer earlier, and he led us into the Museum. There were long lines of visitors waiting to enter, but we bypassed the lines and got in through a separate entrance. Bruno told us that it would take days to see all that is in the museum, but he would show us anything we specifically wanted to see. Otherwise, he would show us what are considered to be the highlights. Bruno also stated that he was “allergic” to large groups, so he would try to avoid them as much as possible. That was great with us, so off we went.
The original entrance to the museum was up a circular ramp that took visitors from the ground floor to the third floor to begin their visit. Five years ago, for the “Jubilee” celebration that happens every 25 years a new entrance was completed by Pope John Paul II, but the circular ramp is still open for those who wish to use it. We saw many beautiful pieces of art, but with the crowds and with limited lighting, it was difficult to get pictures to share with you. The walls of one long hall were covered with early maps of the known world.
It is amazing to us that the maps, done in the 12th to 15th centuries, are quite accurate. The richly decorated ceiling of that hall appears to contain picture frames and statues in 3-D, but it was all just paint and talent.
The highlight of any tour of the Vatican is a visit to the Sistine Chapel and its incredible frescoed ceiling done by Michelangelo for Pope Julius II. The frescoes were cleaned and restored in the 1990’s so the colors are bright and vivid. A small area, maybe 2 feet square, was left unrestored in each corner of the chapel so that visitors can see what an incredible difference the cleaning made. We had brought binoculars so that we could see the ceiling figures more clearly, but the lighting was so dim that the binoculars were not much help. After 30 minutes or so in the chapel we followed Bruno out of the museum to St. Peter’s cathedral.
Again, large crowds, and again, a special entrance so that we didn’t have to wait. St. Peter’s is the largest church in the world, capable of holding several thousand people. Again, the lighting was such that we didn’t get pictures, except for one “shaky” photo of the interior.
After completing our tour, we got back on the Metro and returned to the area near our hotel where we grabbed a light dinner before calling it quits for the day.
Our hotel host had told us about a small electric bus, No. 116, which stopped a block from the hotel and made a loop around the central area of Rome.
So on Sunday morning we caught that bus and traveled to Piazza Navona, one of the largest squares in Rome. During Roman times it was a racetrack or ‘circus’, and today it is a large public gathering place. In the piazza is a large fountain, I believe it was sculpted by Bernini, called ‘The Four Rivers’, named for the four largest rivers of the known world.
There are a number of street vendors selling handmade art in the piazza. It is very good and we were tempted to buy some, but the difficulty of packing it for the trip home kept us from it.
From Piazza Navona, it is only a couple of blocks to the Pantheon, the oldest church in continuous use in Rome.
It was built as a pagan temple, and then converted to a Christian church in the 3rd century AD. It has a large, free-standing dome that was an architectural marvel at the time it was built. It has a large hole at the peak of the dome to provide light inside the church. I believe the hole, or ‘oculus’ is about 10 feet in diameter.
From the Pantheon, we returned to Bus No. 116 and traveled to a nearby Metro stop. In Rome, a bus ticket can be purchased from a Tobacco Shop (they are everywhere) or on the bus. Once on the bus, the ticket is validated in a machine that stamps it with the date and time. From that time, the ticket can be used as many times as needed, during a 75 minute period. So, you can get on the bus, transfer to the Metro, get on another bus, etc., until that 75 minute time period has expired. It’s basically on the honor system, but there are inspectors who check tickets randomly. We didn’t ever get checked during our stay in Rome.
Anyway, we traveled by Metro to a large cathedral, St. John Lateran, next to the City Wall.
The cathedral is the home church for the Bishop of Rome, who, incidentally, is the Pope. He says mass at St. John at least once a year, including his first mass after being elected as Pope. Incidentally, the main altar is only used by the Pope. The church is adorned with very large statues of the disciples. When we were in Rome in 2001, we stayed in an apartment just a few blocks from St. John Lateran, so we visited the church at that time.
From St. John Lateran we walked a few blocks to St. Clement church to see the underground area of the church that our Vatican guide, Bruno, had told us about. The Church of St. Clement was originally built during the 2nd Century AD as a ‘domus ecclesiae’ or house of worship within the private home of Clemente. A church was built in the 4th Century over the original structure. In the early years of the 12th Century, the early church, which by that time was about 5 meters below street level, was covered over, and a new Basilica of St. Clement was built on top. It is still possible to visit all three levels of the facility.
By the time we left St. Clements, it was starting to rain, and in Rome, an unusual phenomenon appears whenever it starts to rain; dozens of Pakistani street vendors appear, selling umbrellas. Since we had neglected to bring our umbrellas from the hotel, we dodged raindrops for a while, and then succumbed to the offer of two umbrellas for 5 Euros (maybe $3 each?). Thus equipped, we made our way back to the Metro and home.
On Monday morning we took Bus No. 116 again, this time to Campo del Fiore, a large piazza where there is a daily street market selling primarily fruits, vegetables and flowers, but also selling a large number of craft items. Like markets we’ve seen in many places around the world, this market is a primary shopping area for local residents.
Everything is beautifully displayed, and the quality of the fruits and vegetables appears to be first rate. Our ladies did a little shopping for costume jewelry, both for themselves, and for gifts.
John and Judy took off for gift shopping for family and Tom took the No. 116 back to the hotel. Debbie took the No. 116 to the Metro and hopped off at the stop for Santa Maria Maggiore. Debbie spent time wandering in and around the church and took pictures. St. Peter’s, St. John Lateran, St. Clement and Santa Maria Maggiore are four of the five “pilgrimage” churches in Rome. We didn’t find a chance to visit St. Paul Outside the Wall. Maybe next trip.
On our final day in Rome, we journeyed by bus to the Trastavere district of Rome. It is across the Tiber River from the central area of Rome, and is a quaint neighborhood of small shops and restaurants.
We crossed the river on the Fabricius Bridge, built in 62 AD to join the left bank of the Tiber to Tiber Island. It is about 60 meters long and about 5.5 meters wide. Once across the river, we walked several blocks, following a walking route suggested in a Rick Steves’ guidebook of Rome.
We stopped at several churches, including one with the oldest bell tower in Rome, built in the 5th Century. We stopped for a beer, of course, and also for some gelato which had also become a habit for us.
Then it was home to pack, since the next day John and Judy were to fly home, and we were to fly to Munich to spend a week with our friends, Karin and Wolfgang, in their Bavarian home.
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