Classical Rome

We were up early ready to check out of our hotel by the train station and transfer to our next hotel by the Villa Borghese, where we would start our 10 day tour. We decided to do “Classical Rome” today since I did not want to be creamed by my dad, the ancient history professor, when we returned.

Leaving our bags at the hotel, we first made it back to Santa Maria degli Angeli  to catch the Meridian Line for Sam.  We thought that this would happen around noon, but in September the phenomenon occurs around 1 pm, and we did not have time to wait another hour.  Foiled again!  We will be back in Rome once during and then at the end of our 10-day tour, so we were confident that we would see it.

From Santa Maria, we made our way via metro to the Coliseum.  As we exited the metro, we found a reasonably-priced tour that took us throughout both the Coliseum and the Forum.  We had two good  guides, and enjoyed both locations.  The Forum is one of the other Seven Hills, and is considered to be the birthplace of Rome.  The oldest ruins of the city can be found there.  In addition, almost all of the Emperors of Rome had their residences there.  I wanted to take a tour of the villa of Augustus while we were there, but it was getting dark and we had a long walk back to our old hotel so that we could check out and get across town to check into our new hotel, north of the Villa Borghese.

At 4:20, we were back at the Metro station, experiencing the Roman Underground.  In Munich, we used the undergrounds all the time, and they were fantastic.  In Rome, everyone shoves into the cars as tightly as possible, and the smell is, frankly, profound.  We missed our first train by not being aggressive enough, but squeezed into the second train 10 minutes later.  I was concerned at first that I couldn’t reach a pole to support myself, but you are squeezed in so tightly that it doesn’t matter if you are holding on to something or not; you don’t move.

We emerged, relieved, two stops later and stopped for a pizza before picking up our bags and climbing onto a city bus at the train station to make our way uptown, basing our trip on the vague directions to our second hotel which we found online.  Our trusty map, now pretty worn out, did not show us this neighborhood.  After a moment, we realized that Italian buses do not announce their bus stops, and the bus stations are not well marked, so we had no idea where we were going.  Fortunately, three women from Belgium were sitting in front of us and overheard our conversation.  They introduced us to a Philippine woman who lived in the area, who not only told us where to get off, but got off the bus with us and walked us to our hotel.  Thank God, because we would never have found it otherwise.

Our intention was to check into the hotel and go back into town to our little shopping street, but we were too exhausted.  Instead, we repacked our bags for the next four days (we are going to Assisi, Siena, Florence and Venice, and then coming back to Rome for a few days, so we only took our small bags with us), and then Eric went out to see if he could scrounge up some food.  He was gone for quite a while, because this second hotel (Hotel Polo) is in the middle of residences and, it appears, people who do not need to eat.  He finally returned with a Panini and gelato. (Our favorite combination so far is pistachio – but not the bright green stuff! – and cherry.)  Technically, the Hotel Polo is a three star hotel, but we missed our Hotel Ariston, which was cheaper, friendlier, and in the middle of everything.