It’s almost embarrassing how long it took us to take a trip to Rome, we’ve only been here for nearly a year. Better late than never I guess…
So, technically we drove up there to pick up the cats but that just took us to “Cargo City” which isn’t the part of Rome you really want to see so this trip was the better touristy stuff. We had a friend we grew up with, Melissa, coming to visit and we decided to meet her in Rome for her first weekend. While all roads to tend to lead to Rome, that takes to stinking long so we headed there by air and met up at the airport and then went into Rome together.
To say that Rome is an old city is just silly. It’s like saying water is wet or that SEC football is better than the other college conferences, some things are just plain obvious. However, it doesn’t quite strike you just how old it is until you get there and walk through the city. Sure, there’s modern stuff, but sprinkled around everywhere is the evidence of a civilization who considered rocks the size of VW Beetles as average building materiel (imagine the size of THAT Home Depot).
Where we were staying was literally just down the street from the Vatican, so our first little stroll took us to St. Peter’s square. I’ve seen it on the news, in the movies, and in pictures but it’s really hard to really get it in your head unless you’re there. It has a “larger than life” quality that a lot of older buildings in Europe seem to have. Almost like it’s a movie set. There’s a lot of pain staking work that went into the details of the place and it’s quite beautiful. Now for the part that’s going to get us in trouble. We didn’t actually take the tour. I know, I know, how could you go to Rome and not tour the Vatican? Well, it was late on Saturday and there just wasn’t time, and the next day was Sunday (which for good reason puts tours on hold) and Monday we had other obligations. So a look at the inside will have to be another time. Don’t worry, we intend to.
Now, the next day we saw the first touristy Rome was the Colosseum, and that was purely by accident. The Vatican, while well within the outer “driving ring” of Rome, is a bit of a hike from the other sites that you want to see so we took the Metro across the river and into the most touristy area. As we popped out of the metro station and onto the street we noticed a lot of covered scaffolding across the street and looked around to get our bearings (we had a bike tour schedules and needed to find a particular street). As we started walking eventually one of us looked up towards the top of the scaffolding and realized that it was the Colosseum. Oh! Well look at that. For some reason I had in my mind that it was separated a little bit from the other buildings, but that’s not how it really is. Because of the rain our bike ride tour guide talked us into trying it the next day and we instead decided to get into a tour of the Colosseum. It’s hard to imagine something so large (and similar to a football stadium) being built at the time but there it is. Fantastic view. Half of the outer wall fell down during an earthquake a long time ago and some of the other missing pieces were taken after that to build other things (having been a place for feeding Christians to lions the Church back in the day didn’t exactly have a lot sentimental attachment to the place). Things dried up so we went back and did our bike tour (which I recommend by the way)
Over the next couple of days we saw most of the well known tourist stuff in Rome. Palatine hill (where the old palaces were), the Roman forum, the Pantheon, the Spanish steps (ironically built to give better access to the French Embassy), Trevi fountain, etc… There was a lot of walking and a lot of eating. Eating in particular led to a pretty cool story. Near the vatican there is a “club” (it’s actually a small restaurant but the rules are different for clubs and restaurants and apparently, so are the taxes) that Amy had read was a great little place to eat. As it turns out it’s a common place for a lot of well known priests, bishops, and cardinals to eat (even a couple who eventually became Pope’s). While we were there the table to our left was populated by two priests on Sabbatical who were studying at the Vatican (one from Calgary, Canada, and the other from New York) and the former U.N. Ambassador from Australia. During dinner we struck up a conversation and had a great time talking about our travels and hometowns. Interesting guys, those three. They were good friends with the owner, who in turn treated us (and everybody in there honestly) like royalty. The food, as you would imagine, was fantastic. Those little hole in the wall places really are the best to get a bite to eat…just make a reservation in advance.
Without too much protest a special request was honored by our friend and we had dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe so Amy could have American style Mexican food that we can’t get in Italy (I had West TN style ribs…hard to get that where we live in Italy too). Melissa was a good sport, though she was a little mortified at being a “typical” tourist who goes to another continent and eats American food. We made sure that she got her fill of Italian food after that.
Another interesting tidbit that struck me as a guy was how many “circuses” (oval chariot racing venues) they had in the city. Apparently guys back in the day liked to watch people competing against one another drive around in circles at high speeds achieved by raw horsepower. Some things just don’t go out of style do they? Ok, maybe Gladiators….but then how many million people watched that movie? At least now we have popcorn and M&M’s…
