Rome: Caput Mundi (The Capital of the World)

When my alarm went off at 3:45am (I know some of you normally get up that early, but I don’t!) I about croaked. I didn’t sleep too much, just off and on during the night, but it was still hard to get up that early after a day of a lot of walking and a later night. But all is well that ends well. We caught the 4:45am shuttle to the airport and we didn’t have any problems at the airport. We arrived at Rome Fiumicino airport a little after 11:00am and caught a shuttle van to our airport. We were going to take the train into town, but it didn’t leave for a half hour and the shuttle van would drop us off right at the hotel. It only cost a little more, and it was money well spent! We checked in to our hotel, dropped off our luggage, and headed out.

We had no idea where to go, but we headed out anyway! It was beautiful, sunny, and hot; just what we wanted/needed after a cooler month in Norway and a cooler few days in Ireland. Heat at last! We started wandering down the main street near our hotel and turned in the direction of the Colosseum. Well, wrong turn; exactly opposite wrong direction. No problem though, this is Rome. There is something fantastic in every direction! We ended up at the famous Spanish Steps and the fountain at the base of the steps in the Piazza di Spagna. After wandering around for a bit in the area, I used my phone to find out where we were and how to get to the Colosseum. (Yep, I used my phone quite a bit in Rome for directions. The roads are not laid out in nice, even squares, so it is easy to get turned around.) After looking at my map I saw that I took a right instead of a left from the main road near our hotel. No problem, we just started walking again. On the way we found the Fontana di Trevi. The Trevi Fountain is one of the most famous fountains in the world, and it is the largest Baroque fountain in Rome. After looking at it for a few minutes, we kept moving on toward the Colosseum and ate a sandwich at a little street vendor.

Walking up the street, we were able to see part of the Colosseum between buildings before it came into full view. It was looking quite impressive! Once we finally got to it, yep, it was a lot larger than we thought it would be. It was one very extraordinary ruin! We took some pictures and hung out in the area for a little while, but because we were doing a tour of it the next day, we didn’t stay very long. (I just had to find out how to get there and see where to go for our tour.) Because we were both tired and did not sleep much the night before, we headed back to our hotel and took naps; very needed!

We got up and walked back to the Spanish Steps and sat and people watched. The fountains of Rome are all drinking water, so there were lines of people to walk up to the two spots where you could fill your water bottles or splash water on yourself at the fountain. The water actually tasted better than at our hotel! After we walked around a bit more, we stopped off at a gelateria for some gelato. David got a small cone and I wanted a dish, the big one. He questioned me about it, but I said yes. Well, it was quite large. It was also decorated with many little pieces of wafers, etc and I was getting a little uncomfortable watching him make it! He knew it was only for me, but he gave me two spoons in it anyway. It cost a fortune, but it was worth it; it tasted great and it was just what I needed! We then wandered around the area a bit longer, and then we headed back to our hotel for the night.

We had to get up fairly early Thursday morning for our tour of the Colosseum. We needed to be there at least a half hour early, and we wanted to be sure we could find it! We left our hotel at 8:15am and walked the 1.2 miles to the Colosseum arriving early enough to go inside and to take some pictures. We then walked back out to our meeting point and waited for our tour to start. The tour was most assuredly worth it! Not only did we have a guide to explain things to us, but we were also able to go to different parts of the Colosseum that the normal public could not go. We started off the tour by going out onto the arena floor. They have recently built part of the arena floor back over the underground ruins to show what it all looked like. After explaining quite a few things, our guide then gave us a few minutes to take pictures. After that, we headed down to the underground; the place where the gladiators, hunters, and animals used to enter the Colosseum floor. Yes, most of the “underground” is visible from everywhere in the arena, but we actually went down and looked at everything from the actual underground perspective and saw the arena floor from the underside. After more explanations and picture taking, we headed back up to the public areas. Our guide explained a few more things as we walked through the public area, and then we headed up to the upper sections where the public could not go. Felt kind of special when our guide kept unlocking gates for us to go through! We climbed the steps to the upper area and she explained more about the history and workings of the arena. We then had time to take more pictures and wander around a little bit in the area open to us. Then our tour was over and we all walked back down to the main area. David and I then walked around the public areas, taking pictures and enjoying the fascination of actually standing in the Roman Colosseum! There is so much history here, and in all of Rome, especially for a Christian, that everything is quite awe inspiring.

We exited the Colosseum and took more pictures from the outside, and then decided to head to the Mamertine Prison. I wanted to go to Rome for two things: the Roman Colosseum and Mamertine Prison. Everything else in Rome, as great as it is, was just a bonus. The prison is not far from the Colosseum, so it only took ten minutes or so to get there. The tour is a guided, short tour using headphones to explain things. We were told when we purchased our tickets that it was a fairly religious tour; great! It did lean a bit toward Catholicism, but was actually quite good. I am sure that someone who is not a Christian might feel uncomfortable, but I thought it was great. We went down into one of the cells that has been preserved, went to another area where we could look down into some of the ruins, went to a couple different videos (which were very religious, explaining Salvation, etc.), and then ended in a small chapel. In the chapel was almost a sermon of sorts, and then it basically ended with a moment of silence for reflection on what Christ has done for everyone who believes.

We exited the prison and then headed to McDonalds for a quick lunch. It was the craziest McDonalds I have ever been in. There were many counters and they also had computers set up to purchase your food and then pick it up at a special counter. And the place was packed! It was a really neat setup for the restaurant, basically subterranean. We walked through a McDonalds Café, with a few seats, and walked up some stairs into the restaurant. (Because of the road elevation, we were still underground even though we walked up stairs to the restaurant.) We fought our way through the line, got our food, and then wandered around for a few minutes before we finally found a couple seats next to some people at a seating bar. After we ate we headed back to our hotel to rest. I knew we would be walking a lot in Rome, but not this much!

I didn’t think I was that tired and that I wouldn’t even take a nap, but I did fall asleep, for around two hours! It felt great and I was ready to head back out for more! We started walking in the direction of the Spanish steps, but once again my sense of bearing was a little off. Didn’t matter though, we found a little restaurant and stopped off to eat. David had lasagna and I had spaghetti; we wanted to at least eat something Italian while in Rome! We took our leisure time and then headed out. Instead of getting to the Spanish steps, I was a few blocks off and we ended up at the Trevi Fountain instead. The place was so crowded! It was some Italian holiday so there were many Italians out and about besides the normal tourists. I had to jockey my way around in order to take pictures, but it was worth it to be able to people watch at the same time. There was still a little light in the sky when we first got there, so it was a very beautiful setting; the fountain lit up, soft light on the sculptures and buildings, a dark blue in the sky. I just wished that it wasn’t so busy so I could take a really good picture. (Not that I am a great photographer, but I might be able to take better pictures if I wasn’t always being jostled.) We hung out for quite some time; I took many, many pictures hoping a couple might turn out decent, and we each threw a coin into the fountain (Rome tradition). We went in to a little gelateria and had more gelato (great stuff by the way) and then stood around watching people (and taking more pictures, of course). We finally decided to start the walk back to our hotel, so we headed out. It was probably a mile back to our hotel, and it was still very warm out, so we were both quite hot and sweaty once again. I love it! We got back to our hotel and relaxed for a while, did a few necessary chores, and then headed to bed.

We got up Friday morning and headed to the Palatino (the Emperor’s Palace) and Roman Forum. Our tickets to the Colosseum gave us entrance to these, but they had to be used by the next day. We didn’t know how long it would take, so we didn’t do it on Thursday after the Colosseum, instead leaving it until Friday. Good thing we did. The Palatino is huge! The Roman Forum, which is not that big of an area, did not take us too long to go through, but the Palatino took us over three hours to tour. There were a couple areas of the palace that we missed, but by the time we saw one nice one that we had missed it, we didn’t have the energy to go all the way back to it. The actual palace itself was very large, but it is the grounds that make the whole palace immense. Everything is ruins, but there are many, many that are still quite well preserved. The Roman Forum has very little in regards to large ruins; most are fairly small in stature, but great in historical value. After touring the grounds and looking in some of the museums, we exited and headed back to our hotel to relax. This has been a long trip for my legs and knees, and although worth the pain, I definitely need some downtime after walking so many miles and standing around so much.

After we napped, relaxed in the room, and cooled down, I went online and purchased tickets for the next day to visit the Vatican museum and the Sistine Chapel. We then headed out and wandered around town a bit so I could find a few geocaches. At one place I was fiddling around with a wolf statue connected to a flag pole when a local woman came up to me and started talking to me in Italian. I tried to convey that I didn’t understand and she kept pointing at the wolf and jabbering away. Finally she said a word I understood; Polizia. I tried to tell her that I wasn’t doing anything, but she was very adamant. I wasn’t about to try and explain geocaching to the Italian police, so we just left and searched for another one. After we wandered around a bit, we found ourselves close to the Spanish Steps. We found a little restaurant nearby, so we stopped off for some dinner. David had lasagna and I had some short noodle pasta dish. I thought mine was fantastic! I was tempted to order another helping, but decided I would be better off with some gelato. We wandered over to the Spanish Steps, which were quite busy once again. This was a Friday night after all, plus many of the Romans were now on their normal vacations. We walked down to one of the gelaterias, got some gelato, and ate it on the way back to the steps. We found a spot partway up, which was still very warm from the daytime sunshine, and sat and enjoyed another warm evening in Rome. After dinner we stayed for around the Spanish Steps for almost two hours, until close to 10:00pm, and then walked the mile or so back to our hotel for the night.

We purchased tickets to the Vatican for 10:00am on Saturday. I wasn’t sure how it would all go, so we took the subway and arrived a little after 9:00am. There was a line a mile long; ok, not really a mile, but it was about a quarter mile, maybe a little more. Luckily someone, selling tours, told us that if we had a reservation for our tickets we did not have to wait in this line, but walk around the block to the entrance and take a different line. Wow, I was thankful we got our tickets online the night before. We never would have waited in that line to go in and we would have missed the museum and the Sistine Chapel. The guard would not let us enter until 9:30am because our reservation said ten, so we waited around for fifteen minutes and then headed in to the Vatican.

We went through security, picked up our tickets, and entered the museum. To say they have a few artifacts there would be a huge understatement. We went through some of the area fairly quickly, and we took our time in a few others. There was basically one way to go through the whole Vatican Museum, with many “museums” along the way, which went through many corridors that were so ornate and with such beautiful paintings, that words cannot describe them. After the museum we entered the Sistine Chapel. It is a holy place, so pictures were not allowed and people were asked to be quiet; nobody took pictures, but they had to keep “shhhing” people. The paintings all throughout the chapel were amazing. To think of the great Michelangelo painting the ceiling was a neat image to have. The work that the artists put into the chapel is incredible. We looked at all the paintings and paintwork along the walls and ceiling, and of course stood and gazed at the most famous of all, Adam and God with their arms reaching out to each other in the center of the ceiling. The whole place was mesmerizing. After spending time admiring the Sistine Chapel, we left and went to the exit area. There was a gift shop at the exit (there were also multiple gift shops/booths along the corridors of the museum) where David and I both bought postcards so we could send them from the Vatican with the Vatican postmark. We then exited the Vatican and had to walk all the way around to the other side of the Vatican in order to enter Saint Peter’s Basilica.

Tickets were not required to enter Saint Peter’s Basilica, but there was a fairly long line that we had to wait through. Because we were entering the Vatican again, we needed to go through security once more. It didn’t take too long and we gained entry to the famous church. It is immense! The church is still used for normal services; they were holding mass while we were there. We wandered around the many areas of the church (I am calling it a church even though the word church does not conjure up a correct picture of how large the basilica is), taking pictures and admiring the walls and ceiling, and then saw a line heading down some stairs. We weren’t sure where it went, but we figured we better go! It went down to where the burial areas are located. It has many popes buried there, along with (the supposed) burial tomb of Saint Peter. After walking through the tombs (where pictures were not allowed) we exited outside to another line, this one to climb to the top of the cupola. This was a fee area, but of course we were going to go up! We paid the extra two euros and took the elevator partway up. We still had about 330 steps to take, but the elevator cut out an additional 225 or so. Money well spent! We walked in at the rotunda where we could look down into the basilica, right in the center. They had a fence around it where we were allowed to go, so pictures were not the best. We then exited the rotunda and hit the stairs. It was single file, person to person, throughout the whole climb. There were areas of circular staircases, regular staircases, switchback staircases, and a couple sections of ramp. As we went up to the top of the cupola, the sides start slanting, so we were walking up stairways with the left wall leaning in on us. It made for a bit of an awkward climb, but that was not the bad part. The bad part was that it was very, very hot in the close quarters. Much of the stairway was so tight two people could not pass each other if they wanted to, and there were only a couple places where there was a slot in the wall going outside. Other than that, it was a very closed in, hot climb. We finally got to the top, exited the stairway, and walked out onto the small area surrounding the cupola of the basilica. It was completely crowded and we had to fight our way to make it all the way around. Except for a few areas, the pathway around the top was only about four feet wide. It was also a game of patience to wait for an opening at the rail to take pictures overlooking the Vatican and Rome. It was worth waiting in line and the climb to go up to the top.  The view was spectacular and very breathtaking. After slowly fighting our way around the top, taking pictures along the way, we exited and headed back down the stairs. Same situation on the way down, except it went much faster (and of course the wall was slanting from our right!). We exited the stairway, took the elevator back down, and exited back inside the basilica. We spent a few minutes inside before we exited, two hours after arriving, and left the massive church. We took some more pictures of the outside of the basilica and the surrounding grounds (which were spectacular), and then we walked back to the subway station. We grabbed some lunch on the way back to the hotel, eating it in the room, and then sat around relaxing our tired and sore legs.

After resting for a couple hours, we headed out once again. We strolled in the direction of the train station to go and check on tickets for the next day to make a short day trip to the coast. On the way I went and grabbed the geocache that the lady had threatened to call the police on me for the previous day. After that, we headed in the direction of Trevi Fountain and decided to just eat pizza and gelato. Well, I ate gelato twice. We strolled in and out of many shops, just following the crowd, for a long time. We kept walking until we popped out into a large courtyard area; what do you know, we stumbled upon the Pantheon. I had forgotten about it, so I was glad we went out walking. It was closed, but at least we went and saw it. After hanging out there for a bit we decided that our legs had had enough. I checked my phone and we were about a mile and a half away from our hotel, so we started heading back. Ouch! We were both feeling quite sore by the time we reached our room. It had been a long day, with a lot of walking and standing. We started just before nine in the morning, took a couple hour break, and then went out again until almost ten. Not counting our break during the day, we only sat down for about ten minutes at night eating a quick dinner. No wonder my legs hurt! We got back to the room and I started trying to organize some pictures to post on Facebook and finish writing this blog post.

We took our time getting up and ready on Sunday morning. David got up earlier than me, but I didn’t get up until 9:00am. We wanted to go to a beach, so we researched it and found one to go to. We knew it would be busy because it was a Sunday and that a lot of Italy was on their vacations, but we figured we could at least dip in the water. We went to the train terminal and purchased our tickets for the 12:15pm train to Santa Marinella, and then tried to figure out where to go! It was a very large train depot and it was very confusing. We finally found someone to ask and he pointed up to the rail we were supposed to go to. It was a long ways away and, because the train was behind schedule by five minutes, we had about twelve minutes to catch it. When we were at the correct rail, we weren’t sure what car we were supposed to go to, so we asked someone (who we luckily found) and he told us any car. As we were walking back to the cars a “bus boy” of sorts came up to help us out. He grabbed our ticket and ran us down to the machine to validate it (which I had already done, but he didn’t see it) and then ran us back to a car and found us two seats. I gave him the change in my pocket (a couple euros) and he was offended; he wanted more! I was going to dig out a five euro bill, but then he told us ten each! I said not a chance and didn’t give him anything else. He asked a few times and I told him to forget it. He finally left to go find some other sucker. I don’t mind helping people out, but we had everything done except step onto the train and grab our seats and he wanted 20 euros! Rail robbery! I am not sure what some of the locals thought of us; tightwads or suckers, but a while later they helped us figure out where our stop was, so they didn’t think too lowly of us!

It was about an hour ride to Santa Marinella. We got off the train and walked the few blocks down to the beach. We read before leaving the hotel that most of the beaches were private and you had to pay to use them, and that there were a few public beaches. We were right in our initial assessment, it was crowded! We also found out that all of the sandy beaches were the private ones and the public beaches were just a rocky shore. All of the sand was trucked in to make the nice beaches (roped off into private sections), therefore the private owners (hotels, etc.) charged to use them. All of the private beaches had umbrellas and chairs that you could rent, and the beach was covered with them except for the shoreline. We tried a couple beaches, but they would not let us on. They were “sold out.” They only let so many people on (which is a good thing) and told us we could walk down to the public beach. The man was nice enough to tell us how to get to the public beach, because we tried earlier and couldn’t find a way down to it. We could just walk through the private beaches down to the waterline, and then walk along it to the end, past the last umbrellas. There was still a bit of sand at the end that overflowed from the last private beach and it was fairly crowded. After all, it was only about fifty feet by twenty feet big. We walked down and found a spot on the rocks where we could sit. Because we didn’t have any way to secure our belongings, I went in the water first while David watched our stuff, and then we switched. I didn’t really need to go swimming, but I just wanted to be able to say that I took a dip in the Mediterranean Sea. Been there, done that, check it off the bucket list!

We sat around on the rocks drying off a little bit, but felt a little uncomfortable sitting there. We gathered our stuff and walked over and up to the main walkway that overlooks the beach. We sat on the stairs for awhile until we dried off sufficiently to put our socks and shoes back on, and then we walked around a bit. (We had said the night before that we didn’t want to do any walking, but we still ended up walking a couple miles!) We had about 45 minutes to kill waiting for our train back, so we found a bench that overlooked the beach and sat there people watching and relaxing. We then walked to the train depot and waited for the train. There were a lot more people there than we expected, but we figured it was a Sunday evening and people were heading back into Rome. The train was already crowded when we got on, but I was able to have someone move their bag and sat down, and then David did the same. Many people had to stand and we still had about five more stops to go before we got to Rome! Not only did we get to go swimming in the Mediterranean, we also got an Italian sauna. The train was so unbelievably hot that I was almost as wet with sweat as when I got out of the water! There wasn’t any air conditioning in our car (there had been on the trip there) and there were only a couple small windows at the end of the car. That was one long hour! All part of the experience, right? We survived, arrived in Rome around 6:00pm, and walked to our hotel. We sat around cooling off for an hour or so and then went to grab some dinner. Neither one had the energy to do much, so we just went to a little pizzeria located close to our hotel; we ate and headed back to our room. We got back at 8:00pm and stayed in for the night. This was our first night where we actually got in early and had time to just relax in our room before going to bed. Splendid! After five days in Rome, our bodies are screaming at us to stay still! It is our last night in Rome and I hope that our time in Germany (and elsewhere) is a little more relaxing. I am planning on driving to a lot of places and touring that way, but we will see.

Because our Internet is really bad in the hotel (hence the really long blog; I kept typing more and more even though I couldn’t post it), I have never been able to connect my computer. I am now using my iPhone as a hotspot to at least post this blog (probably cost a fortune!). The things we must suffer! Until next time…….