Added 18 November 2008. Pictures and stories from our trip to Italy, from November 1 to 14.
The hotel wasn't too far from the Colosseum, and I wondered if we'd have time to visit it that day. We got a map from the hotel and started walking in that direction, but it soon become clear we wouldn't have time to go in. The Colosseum closes at sundown; we'd already missed the last entry time. What we did have time to do, though it proved a little frustrating figuring it out, was purchase a "Roma Pass". This pass gave us free admission to the first two museums we visited there, then discounts to any others (other than at the Vatican). It also gave us a metro and bus pass for three days. Very handy!
But basically the first day was mostly about orienting ourselves—which was actually very useful for getting ourselves around the next couple days. We did see, and go to and were very impressed by, the San Vittorio—a sight we later learned Romans themselves don't much care for, as they find it too white for the surrounding, older marble.
We also saw some semi-famous Piazzas and some archeological digs and such, and tried to get used the sound and speed of the city, which was quite a contrast to Cinque Terra.
We picked our own restaurant instead of trying to locate a guide-recommended one, and food-wise, it didn't turn out that well. Wasn't terrible, but wasn't that great, either. But we did get to talking to yet another American couple (the Italians often seat people really close together) and got a few tips from them.
And by the end of the day, Jean—who had been a bit leery—was already saying he was really glad I had dragged him to Rome.
Traveling in November, we quickly realized we really didn't need to worry about the crowds, line-ups, and reservations that were a major concern for tourists in the peak months (and that the guide books were full of warnings about). But there was one museum in Rome that mandated reservations: the Borghese. No reservations, no getting in. So we had called ahead and made them for this day at 11:00.
But these reservations were now giving me a headache, because having to go out to the Borghese for 11:00, then try to squeeze in lunch, then back to the Colosseum and Forum to try to see them before they closed at 5:00—it just wasn't fitting.
Going to the Borghese before the Colosseum just didn't seem a logical itinerary
Until I finally got the bright idea to call and change our Borghese reservation. In low season, no problem to change your reservation the same day! So we made that for 5:00 pm, leaving us lots of time to visit the Colosseum first.
There were actually some lineups here, but with the Roma Pass, we were able to bypass the worst of that. We did get the audioguide. Although not the world's greatest audioguide, it was definitely helpful in pointing out and explaining things we otherwise would have missed or just not understood.
The Colosseum is the remains of the big ampitheatre where gladiators fought and Christians were fed to lions and fun stuff like that. It's huge. It's open air, so it's fortunate it wasn't raining this morning. And it's really something to see.
The Colosseum, inside and out
Next, once we finally figured out how to get in, we visited the Forum. And while the Colosseum still basically looks like a Colosseum (only with parts missing), much of the Forum is really hard to decipher without guidance. Fortunately, our guidebooks included pretty useful maps and descriptions.
Archway that appears kind of between the Colosseum and Forum areas
The Forum is the remains of many huge temples, speaker's corners, Julius Ceasar's grave, the housing for the Vestal Virgins, arches, statues. Often enough tall, huge things remain that you get really get a sense of how impressive it all must have been in its time. It's hard to describe, but it was a really worthwhile visit.
Part of the Roman Forum, a really fascinating archeological site. Bring a guidebook.
Our lunch was somewhat notable because we found it via the Rick Steeves guide (definitely the guide of choice amongst the tourists we'd met) and the host noticed it and whether this was why, I don't know, but we got rather good treatment throughout the visit. The food was quite good--prosciutto and melon, pasta and porcini, pasta trio. And we were given bonus limoncella to drink at the end. It's delicious.
Though we could have gone (with our Colosseum ticket) to visit the Palatine Palace, we decided to instead take the metro to the Borghese area, which is in a large park. We walked around that for a while. Trying to visit the animal park there, we somehow got into a dog park, which was really unpleasant. Anyway. Also becoming increasingly unpleasant was the rain, so we went into the museum itself early. But we weren't allowed into the exhibits until 5:00. Here, numbers are always limited, and each visitor gets only two hours to visit.
But it's enough. And it's a wonderful gallery. We did use the audioguide, and it was an excellent one. Of the exhibits, it was definitely the Bernini sculptures that wowed us. Just so much detail; so realistic and light. More like sculpted in wax than marble. (Of course, we weren't allowed to take pictures. I tried to a web photo that did the live statues justice, but could not.)
The museum itself was also impressive, with some incredibly ornate rooms. And a lot of famous paintings as well, some by Da Vinci, and Caravaggio, and Rubens.
Our dinner pick for the evening is FISH restaurant -- Fine International Seafood House. In a break from the Italian food we've been eating the whole time, it offers sushi and other Asian flavors. But the prices are incredibly high! I was a little stunned. So we skipped the appetizers and selected a couple of the more moderately priced entrees. These are very well done, if not that much food for the price. But then we decide to go for dessert. And these are really amazing—a cardamom creme caramel for Jean, and molten chocolate cake with cherry sauce for me. Worth 12 Euros each? I don't know, but I was in a happy chocolate place afterward.
This was to be our Vatican day. We took the bus there—very crowded and slow, but did the job.
As we arrived, we did see a really big line-up. We got in it for a bit, then realized it was actually for St. Peter's Cathedral, not the Museum. It was close to 11:00 at this point, and I figured it would be worth heading right to the Museum. We did that, expecting a lineup here too, but there was none. We went right in.
We decided not to do the audioguide for this one—there were a lot of warnings about the size of this museum, and how it could be exhausting. So we focused on certain exhibits.
We started with the "Pinocotecca", which is where the paintings are. It was a good collection, with some big names—Da Vinci, Titian, Rubens, Caravaggio. And unlike most museums, we were allowed to take photographs, as long as we didn't use a flash.
An example of Vatican Museum art—by some artist named Michelangelo
Next was the Egyptian room, which contain the usual artifacts and sarcophoguses, but also actual mummies, which was a little weird.
We passed through an ornate room full of sculptures fairly quickly. (The Roman and Greek exhibits were closed.) We went a little more slowly through the Gallery of Maps, which showed large, ancient maps of many parts of Italy.
I should mention that, at this point, it had clearly started to rain really hard, accompanied by thunder and lightning. We were inside, of course, but it was enough of a storm to hear from inside there. (Jean kept joking that this was God's comment on him visiting the Vatican.) So, we had some motivation to start looking at things more closely now, to defer going outside any too soon.
The tapestry room had some pretty impressive examples, though tapestries are definitely subject to colour fade.
The Raphael rooms, painted by Raphael and his apprentices, are one of the more famous sites at the Vatican museum. They were good, but I think in some ways we were just as impressed by the less-visited modern art museum that appeared in that area as well. It featured some modern takes on religious, which was very interesting to see, and some paintings that didn't have a religious theme at all, by artists such Dali, Chagall, Rodin, and so on.
Jean's cool photo of one of the modern art pieces at the Vatican Museum
The final site was the Sistine Chapel, and here you are not allowed to take photographs (and although plenty of people were ignoring that rule, we didn't). The chapel ceiling was recently restored and does look absolutely fantastic, with really vibrant colours. Of course, there is such a build-up to it, it's hard for it live up to the hype! But there's no doubt about the genius of Michelangelo in creating this huge work.
Rain had not abated at all, so we went out a side passage for a short run to St. Peter's Cathedral. It has been pronounced the greatest chapel in the world—I don't know about that. We've seen some pretty fantastic ones. But this was certainly the largest. And it did feature Bennini's work at the altar, and a chapel by Michelangelo. Jean's theory was that it was so ornate throughout, you became overwhelmed and somehow less impressed that with other churches that had fantastic centerpieces and were otherwise relatively plain. Maybe...
Detail in St. Peter's Cathedral
It was still raining really hard (I couldn't believe how much rain we got that day, really), but we were pretty darn hungry by this time, so decided to make the run to a restaurant anyway. We arrived near the end of the lunch period, so we had some decent food, and they no problem with us taking our time and lingering over coffee afterward. (At peak times in Italian restaurants, you're most definitely rushed through your meal.)
When we left, it actually had stopped raining, so we decided to walk a bit, potentially get to the Campo di Fiorini (a market square), which we hadn't seen yet. As we neared the area, though, dark clouds started moving in again, and given how the day had been, we didn't want to get caught out in it too long. So instead we found a bus stop and took another crowded, slow bus ride back to our hotel.
Our final Roman hurrah was a dinner. But first we took the elevator up to the third floor Terrace of our hotel. We hadn't realized it was completely outside! Given the weather (still rainy, though much lighter at this point), not somewhere we wanted to stay long. But did give a nice view of the city and the nearby archeological dig.
For dinner, we took a bus (not crowded) to the Travestere neighbourhood. It's kind of a charming, medieval sort of area, very popular in the evenings. Rain happily stopped as we walked around it, and eventually found our way to our target restaurant. Dinner was good—smoked tuna, porcini ravioli, beef in barolo wine, and a really good berry dessert—and partway through another Canadian couple was seated beside, so we compared some notes. They were off for a week, and were spending it all in Rome, except for a one-day trip to Pompeii, which sounded really interesting.
Then it was back on bus #3 to pack up for our final night.
This is least interesting part, so I've left it for last!
This wasn't supposed to be an Italian trip, originally. The
idea was actually a Danube river cruise. We were just waiting for that to go
on sale. Only when it did, we discovered that the tour company wouldn't sell
to Canadians. It would not send any information to a Canadian address.
So although we figured out US addresses we could use, we also got to thinking
we should maybe book something else. Our time off was about two weeks away.
After a lot of painful searching, we came across Gate 1 Travel's
Italy trips. Inputting our data seemed to be pop out a reasonably priced itinerary,
and we (Jean says especially me) were interested in Italy, so we decided to
give them a call. The travel agent was quite helpful, suggesting that we really
didn't want to miss Rome (Jean was leery of it), for example, and finding us
some pretty good airline prices.
Gate 1 ended up booking the flight, transport in Venice and Rome, and all hotels
except the Cinque Terra ones. We also added the tours a few days later. Cinque
Terra we booked ourselves, with the help of guidebooks.
We also signed up for Citizen's Bank account. This was originally motivated by the cruise, in which we would stop in many different cities using different currency. Citizen's Bank offers a no-fee bank account that includes withdrawals from foreign ATM's. That is, you can take money out over there and only pay whatever the currency exchange; no additional fees. Though less critical when only visiting one country with one currency, it was still nice to take out money as needed without worrying about a special fee every single time.
Our flights were direct from Toronto to Rome, which was great. They were on Alitalia, which is encountering some difficulties at the moment, but we didn't have any problems with them. Our initial flight was perfectly on time, the transfer from Rome to Venice only slightly delayed. They handled our luggage through, though we did have to pass through security again in Rome, which we found surprising. We were hoping the food might be superior to general airline fare (as Air France's is), but it wasn't, really. We were able to sleep some on the flight up, though the seats did seem particularly uncomfortable. On the way back, we were sort of dreading the length (about 9 hours), but it wasn't so bad. The flight was delayed only half an hour, and they did play Mamma Mia, which is a fun movie neither of us had seen. (Yes, Jean liked it also.)
Though flirting with the idea of leaving the car at Michelle's, we went with Skyway Parking again, and again found them to be quite good and reasonably priced. Probably one of the worst parts was the drive home from Toronto on Friday afternoon, as I believe we were heading into the rush hour period, and kept hitting traffic snags.
But all in all, it's good that the travel part of our travels doesn't make much of a story!
