Rome: July 2012

Venice, Prague, Budapest, Oslo, Helsinki.. these trips are already going out of my memory. So I better write down Rome, before I forget.

We stayed at La Piccola Masion for the first 4 days, and then at Alex Inn, for the last 2 days.

Day 1: We reached Rome on separate flights, me through Zurich and Shyam through Amsterdam, at ~ 7 PM. Took a taxi to our hotel, checked in etc, and got out at around 9 PM. It was nice and cool, and very crowded. Walked past the backside of the Quirinal palace, and stopped by the Trevi fountain first (from Piazza Barberini, where we stayed). Had some lovely Minestrone soup for dinner, and walked down to the Spanish steps next. Sat by the steps for sometime, and tried in vain to identify some stars (the sky was not dark enough, and there were anyway too many lights around us). Headed back to our hotel at 11.30 or so.

Day 2: Started with a spinach and mozarella tramezini in a cafe, and walked up the Quirinal and Viminal hills, to the Piazza della republica. Saw the baths of Diocletian and the Santa Maria degli Angeli dei Martiri (basilica of St. Mary of Angels and Martyrs). Saw an exhibition dedicated to Galileo, with lots of space dedicated to proving that Galileo actually believed in god, and was not an atheist. Also a huge bronze statue of him from China. There was also a sundial, that was built along the 12.5 degree E meridian in the 1700s, such that at noon each day, the sun would shine at different points along this meridian, depending on the time of the year. The varying positions of stars during the year, were also plotted on this meridian. I think they used to make some actual astronomical calculations from this church.

Piazza della republica, with the Santa Maria degli Angeli and Diocletian baths in the background

Anyway, after that, we walked up the Esquiline hill, to the Santa Maria Maggiore. It was huge.. its one of the 4 major basilicas of Rome, one of the 5 patriarchal basilicas (representing Antioch), built in the 5th century etc. I don't remember much of the inside. We came out, and it was mid-day, and burning hot! We sat by a fountain outside, and cooled down with a gelato each.

Santa Maria Maggiore

And then walked on to our next destination, the Lateran church (yes, this was a church day, but you can't really help that in Rome i guess). This was impressive. It's the oldest church in Rome, and the first among all others, since this is the seat of the Bishop of Rome (the Pope I mean). In front of this church, is the largest obelisk in the world, brought to Rome from Thebes in the 4th century. We saw some paintings such as Constantine getting baptized, a huge statue of Charlemagne etc. 

Lateran church

The big obelisk in front of the church

Now, thoroughly tired and quite overwhelmed, we stopped for lunch and headed back to the hotel for some rest. It was just too hot to remain sane. Found a small Srilankan (can you believe it!) place, selling fried rice with potato curry and pappadam. I was delighted :)

Set out at 6ish in the evening, and went to the Pantheon first. This just gave me goosebumps. "M·AGRIPPA·L·F·COS·TERTIVM·FECIT" is still there, saying Agrippa built it in his third consulship. This was built by Agrippa, right after the battle of Actium in 31 BC! Well, everything other than that facade was supposed to have been destroyed and rebuilt by various people, and completed by Hadrian, sometime in the 2nd century. Some 400-500 years later, it was made a church. I was somewhat disappointed that it had been christianized, but then that was probably the only reason it has been preserved through the years. Inside, we saw Raphael's tomb, and also those of kings Vittorio Emanuelle  II and Umberto I. Outside, there were horse carriages, people dressed up as gladiators and a beautiful fountain at the Piazza della rotonda. We sat there for sometime.
                         

The next step was Piazza Navonna. We sat for a bit, by Bernini's fountain of the 4 rivers, saw Domitian's obelisk, went to a bookshop at the Piazza, and then walked down to the Tiber. We saw the St. Peters' dome and Castel St.Angelo from across the river, from one of the bridges, and the sun setting behind them.

                     

Piazza Navonna

The four fountains

The view from a bridge on the Tiber

         Then we turned around and went to Augustus' Mausoleum. It was really in ruins, with many areas cordoned off for excavations. This was so ironical, that Diocletian's and Caracalla's and Vespasian's buildings are standing and crowded by visitors, while Augustus's mausoleum, the man who said "I found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble" was crumbling and completely deserted. We skirted around for a bit, hoping there was some kind of entrance to it and we could go in, but no, it was really not open to the public.

Augustus Mausoleum

We walked back from there, through some trendy shopping streets, to have dinner at Ristorante Ciro, recommended by our host Giorgio. Excellent bruschetta, and good pasta. Oh, the lovely Roma tomatoes!

Day 3: This was a big day - We had tickets to the Vatican. We took a metro to Vatican city, and went to the Vatican museums. We spent more than 6 hours at the Vatican museum + Sistine chapel. There was too much to see and way too much to write about. So I am just skipping any descriptions here. Oh, I bought a jigsaw of the 'School of Athens' painting here. Once we came out, I was so tired of it, that I didn't want to go to St. Peters' right away. So we just went back for our usual afternoon siesta.

No, the photo does not do any justice.

This evening, we walked past the Quirinal palace and gardens, to the Piazza Venezia - the Vittorio Emanuelle monument, palazzo venezia and palazzo Bonaparte (where Napoleon's mother was granted asylum after his death) were some of the sights. By the side of this square was the huge Trajan's market and the forum romanum. In the fading light, these riuns were just beautiful, and for a change, not crowded. I think we enjoyed these evening strolls much much more than the daytime business in the heat and crowd. We just picked up the map and wandered in some general direction each day, with no itinerary in mind. Back to the Trevi fountain area for another late dinner, I couldn't resist fresh vegetable soup once again - the vegetables were just so fresh and smelling and tasting awesome. I think the background is that Swedish vegetables leave much to be desired :(

Trajan's market

Day 4: The forum romanum and palatine hill and the colosseum. All these are covered by one ticket. We hadnt bought our tickets online, but a useful tip we got off the internet was to NOT go to the colosseum first, since that's where the queues are longest. This was absolutely true. We got in to the forum in less than 10 minutes! Clearly the oldest part of rome, there were the Temple of Saturn, the arch of Septimius Severus, the Curia Julia, the temple and complex of the Vestal Virgins, the basilica Aemelia, the basilica Maxentii /Constantinii, the Arch of Titus etc. Again, it just felt unrealistic to even stand there. The only real thing was the heat of course. By now, we were washing our faces, hands and legs as frequently as possible in the fountains and then just filling our bottles to pour water on our heads. That the water from the fountains were actually cold felt like a miracle.

Thought he was just being nice, but he charged 10 euro for this ridiculousness!

Next, was the palatine hill. Here, we saw ruins of the Augustus palace, Livia's house, Flavian palace, Domitian's hippodrome and other things I can't remember anymore. Next stop was lunch before we went to the Colosseum. This was the Flavian Amphitheater, started by Vespasian and finished by Titus (or maybe Domitian, i don't know). It was a good idea to read the Allan Massie books just before/during the Rome trip, so that these names and places made some sense to me. Very huge, very impressive and very hot. After this, we went to the Circus Maximus, only to see that there's almost nothing left standing there. It was just another huge, cordoned off area.

 

Domitian's stadium

This evening, we set out towards the termini, in search of an Indian Restaurant that I had read excellent reviews about. We saw the Marcus Aurelius column on our way. It was a small dhaba like place, but what unbelievably tasty food! Easily, the best Indian food I have had in the last two years in Europe. And really cheap as well. We were still very tired after the day's visit to old Rome. So we took it easy that night.




Day 5: We moved to alex inn this morning. And then headed off to St. Peters. After majorly bulbing in the vatican, I had done lots of wiki'ing before going there, so that we would know what to look out for, both in the square and in the church. So I pointed out several things to Shyam (very proudly :) ) and then we took the metro and went to the same Indian restaurant as the previous day for lunch.

St. Peters Basilica

Michelangelo's Pieta

Queen Christina of Sweden!

That obelisk that was brought to Rome from Egypt by Caligula. It used to be in the Circus Maximus, where it is supposed to have witnessed the martyrdom of St. Peter. So now it's in the St. Peters square :|

In the evening, we went to the Borghese gardens (I think we saw some sections of the Aurelian walls on the way). The gardens were lovely, and surprisingly cool. We walked around quite a bit, and sat under the trees and just chilled for sometime. Incidentally, it was here that I was thinking that if I don't start writing down all this stuff, I would soon not remember any of it.

Then off to Piazza del Popolo we went. On the northern side, we saw the gate leading to Via Flaminia, the road to Ariminum (which will mean a lot if you've played Rome total war). Also saw an Obelisk of Ramesses II, brought by Augustus and as usual, lots of fountains. Then walked by the via del corso once again, and ate our first disappointing dinner in Rome. Food was bad, portions were ridiculously small, and it was expensive. But by then, I was more disturbed about something else - my upper lip had started swelling up sometime in the afternoon, and by now, it was the size of a small balloon - I could barely eat or speak. So we just walked back to the hotel, thinking it's probably some food allergy or an insect bite, and hoping I'd be fine by the morning if the toxin left my blood.

Day 6: Oh, this was the most eventful day of our trip. The day started at 3 am, when I woke up, seeing that my whole upper jaw had swollen up to the size of a tennis ball! (no pictures unfortunately :D)Startled, I woke Shyam and we took a taxi at 4 Am to go to the nearest 'Pronto Soccorso' - emergency! It took 8-9 hours for the swelling to subside - yes it had been an allergy. A very late lunch and we retired to the hotel, quite shaken up. The hospital was scarily like a government hospital in India - actually, in all fairness, i have never been to one in India and I should refrain from saying that. The doctors were efficient (well, whatever they
did for me worked), but there were flies buzzing about in the emergency room, where people were waiting for surgery, and a dysfunctional toilet, to say the least. Anyway, we were thinking of either going to the Appian way catacombs, or taking a train to Tivoli on sunday or just shopping, and none of all that happened. So that night, afraid to eat at any restaurant, we bought some fruits, bread and cereal from the local mercato, and ate in our room. I was touching my face every 5 minutes or so, since I couldn't believe that I was alright :) Our entertainment was some scenes of La Dolce Vita, kung fu panda 2 and an old Barcelona-Real Madrid El Clasico.

That night, I finally had sometime to look up at the Italian night sky. Having started star gazing only in Sweden, I hadn't had a chance to see a number of stars from so far south. Plus of course, there is no night sky in Sweden in summer. So, with the fourmilab software and compass on my iphone, our 6th floor balcony was quite a good spot (since we were above most of the lights). Starting in the South, saw sagittarius and Scorpio for the first time. Couldn't see Libra really, but then saw Virgo in the W. I have seen Ophiucus during early mornings in the Swedish winter, low in the eastern sky, but it was good to see it nice and high in the southwestern sky now, at ~ 10-11 PM. Bootes was highest and Arcturus was the brightest, and the summer triangle of Deneb-Vega-Altair were nicely visible right on top. The usual suspects - Ursa major, minor, Cassiopeia, Cygnus, Lyra and Cepheus were easy to see, and I also saw Aquila fully for the first time. The Corona Borealis was also easy to make out. We had buildings behind us in the North. So couldn't easy much more in that direction.

Day 7: We left Rome in the morning and took a train to Pescara. We saw some sections of the Servian wall from the train. Beautiful mountains, old castles, some ruins here and there, little Italian villages and green countryside, a good book to read, and nice company - the 4+ hours just rolled by easily. Pescara felt much cooler than Rome. Our hotel was just by the beach, and there was a nice sea breeze that had already set in, late in the afternoon. I spent 4-5 days there, and returned home. I was happy to eat thayir sadam before going to bed :)