Early in the morning of December 28th, we took the Athens metro back to the airport (quite easy to use by the way--once we convinced ourselves to wait for one that said AIRPORT). Then we flew to Fiumincino Airport in Rome. After a few hours in the air, it was time for another train ride. This time a 30 minute ride from Fiumincino to the center of Rome via the Leonardo Express train. That train runs nonstop from the airport to Termini Station. Termini Station was an experience! It is HUGE and crazy busy with people. So many trains coming and going-- both metro and trains-- and then several floors of shopping and restaraunts. It was hard to find our way out of.
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| Termini Station |
And before we could leave, we wanted to buy our ROMA passes. I had read they were available at the Tourist Information Office (PIT) but we weren't finding that. Luckily we noticed that all the tobacco stores also sold them, so we bought four from one of them. The ROMA pass is good for 3 days of unlimited use of mass transit in the city of Rome (not good for the airport train however), admission to two museums/sites and then discounted admission to any other museums on the list after that. Cost-wise it seemed a decent deal, but our main motivation was that it would get us into the Colliseum without standing in line and we HATE lines. We had to buy one for each member of the family. Italy was less kid-friendly then the other countries we have visited. Kids paid full-price for most things. I think EU citizens under 18 could get free/discounted admissions but as US citizens with just EU residency, we were out of luck.
Once we hit the street, then it was time for the maps and GPS to find our way to the convent where we would stay. We lucked upon a park that had this ancient ruin in it. According to the sign, it was once a huge water fountain at the end of an aquaduct-- a very ornamental city water tower that was originally decorated with marble statues and what not. Now it is an impressive ruin that happens to be inhabited by lots and lots of cats.
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| I Trofei di Mario |
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| Better known as the Cat Place |
We don't know if it is an official cat shelter-- there are ruins in Rome that are. We saw a caretaker inside the fence feeding them so they are definitely welcome. It was fun to watch them crawl all around the ruin, sleep in the openings, etc. And they were relatively friendly. The kids were able to pet a number of them and then there were a bunch of young ones that loved to play. We spent a lot of time watching them chase sticks around the park. Since this park was only a few blocks from where we were staying and right next to the Vittorio Emanuele metro stop, we visited nearly every morning.
Hotels in Rome were quite expensive and I was having trouble finding one we could afford that didn't sound frightening. Then I learned that there were convents and monasteries that rented rooms to visitors. I knew that historically that was the case, but I had no idea the tradition continued. The most economical way to arrange a stay is to call the convent or monastery directly, but since I don't speak Italian I opted to use a travel agency who specializes in monastery stays to book our stay. That meant we paid them a fee but it was worth it to us. We stayed at . And no, it wasn't a fascinating old building. It was a very typical city building that looked like the other apartment buildings and hotels in the area from the outside. It was on Via Merulana, about 20 minutes walk from Termini station and about 15 minutes walk from the Colosseum. We paid as much as we would have for a budget hotel, but we were able to stay close in to the city. Our room was like a typical European hotel room-- a double bed and two twin beds in a small bedroom and then an attached private bathroom. There were some differences from staying in a hotel. You were asked to dress and act respectfully, there were no tvs in the rooms (but one in the commons area), the decor was very religious and there was an 11 pm curfew. Those weren't problems. We did miss having Internet. They did have a computer in the commons area with internet, but it was very slow so you'd only want to use it out of desparation.Only one of the nuns we encountered spoke any English, so we weren't able to communicate much. There was a very simple breakfast each morning consisting of rolls with jam, cheese or nutello and coffee, tea or hot chocolate (they learned quickly that it was always chocolate for us).
Anyway, once we'd unpacked, we headed out to start seeing Rome. We walked to the Colosseum.
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| Ruins on the way to the Colosseum |
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| First View |
We were very happy to find that our passes really did get us right in, avoiding the lines entirely. Hurray! The Colliseum is interesting in its shear size and in imagining building it without modern equipment. It was a little unsettling to think about its uses which makes it not such a happy place.
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| It was a lot like a modern football stadium in design. |
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| They had restored one section of flooring to give you an idea what it would have looked like. |
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| Umdermeath the floor you could see a maze of passageways and holding areas |
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| Some seats-- most seem to have eroded away with time |
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| A staircase and a pillar. It said that most of the marble facade and decoration were stripped off and used on churches throughout the city. |
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| Looking out of the Colosseum. Rome had a lot of trees like those in the distance. |
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| Looking out from the Colosseum at the surrounding area |
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| These guys would let you take pictures with them-- for a price of course (this was a freebie) |
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| I loved this huge arch entryway into the Colosseum area |
Admission to the Colosseum also includes admission to the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill that are close by. The Palatine Hill was the site of many mansions and palaces. It is covered with ruins. Some of which are massive. This was the snobby place to live in ancient Rome. Legend also says this was where Rome began-- where the twin brothers were raised by the wolf. :-)
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| This will sound terribly snobby, but after all the amazing marble in Greece, all the brick in Rome seemed a bit ordinary. Apparently they put marble facades on top of the brick, but most of that is gone. |
The next few pictures are of a huge palace at the
The Forum was the center of government in Rome and there are many ruins left of government buildings and churches.
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| The huge building with the arches is the remains of a basilica that was once even larger than that. The Romans definitely knew how to build big! |
About dinner time, we decided it was time to figure out how our Roma passes worked on the metro. We would need that the next day to travel to the Vatican. We tried to scan them at the turnstile and got errors. Each of the four cards gave the same error (in Italian of course). Hmmmm... What were we doing wrong? We went and bothered the man in the "info booth." He figured we were doing it wrong and came out and tried himself-- doing just what we'd done. Same error! He just shook his head, opened the turnstile and let us through. To get back home again from dinner, we tried again with the same results. So far it hadn't stopped us from using the metro, but it wasn't fun to have to get help each time. The next morning we called the tourist info office and explained the trouble we were having. They said we must have gotten defective cards and to take them back and exchange them. So our first stop of the day was at the closest PIT office where they kindly exchanged our ROMA passes for new ones with very little trouble. These worked beautifully on the subway for the next three days.
The tourist office was next to
the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore so we visited it while we were there. A huge, extremely ornate church.
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| Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore |
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| Beautiful inlaid marble floors |
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| Amazing ceilings |
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| The nave |
After a short stop to visit our friends the cats, we hopped on the metro and traveled to the Vatican City. We had purchased advance tickets online for the Vatician Museums (which includes the Sistene Chapel). It cost a few extra dollars to do it that way (charged a service fee), but it was very worthwhile. The line to buy tickets extended all the way around the block. We walked straight in, showed our print out and were handed our tickets. The Vatican museums reminded us of Versailles in that there is so much it is just overwheming, and that there is such a crowd of people everywhere.
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| Vatican |
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| Every wall and ceiling was elaborately decorated--room after room. |
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| A cool tile mosaic on the floor |
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| A pretty blue room |
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| One room had a series of paintings showing the construction of St. Peter's |
Our main goal in visiting the Vatican was to see the Sistene Chapel, so we worked our way through the museum following the signs to it. M was very disappointed to find that the Sistene Chapel is just a room in the vast complex of buildings. She had imagined that such a famous work of art would be the centerpiece of a big domed cathedral.
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| The Sistene Chapel does not look like much from the outside. |
No picture taking is allowed inside the Sistene Chapel, so no pictures there--other than one I just pulled off of Google. It was interesting to see it in person. It is a relatively small room and simply overwhelmed by the paintings covering every surface. You often see close-ups of favorite sections. Seeing it all together is almost too much to process especially while jammed in the room with hundreds of other people.
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| Someone else's picture. Wish we could have seen it like this rather than with wall to wall people. :-) |
After the chapel, we'd hit our people saturation limit so we made our way as quick as we could outdoors. The courtyard and gardens were pretty and we found a part of the museum that people probably often miss.
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| Vatican museums from the courtyard |
They had an underground garage area where various papal vehicles were on display-- from carriages to modern limosines. That was a nice break from all the prettiness for the guys in our group.
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| Papal carriage--totally makes you think Cinderella doesn't it? |
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| For visits to Africa? |
A few more random notes on the Vatican Museums. They had a large and reasonably priced cafeteria in the basement. We ate lunch there and were pleased they didn't gouge us (like is usually the case at museums). Also, there was a busy Post Office in the museum and there was also a moblie post office in St. Peter's Square. I guess people think it is cool to have mail postmarked from Vatican City?
After lunch, we walked around to St. Peter's square. On our way we saw lots of massive walls. It was interesting being reminded that the Pope was once a civic leader as well as religious-- led armies, fought wars, etc. We had hoped to go inside St. Peter's Basilica but when we saw the line stretching all across the front and entirely down one side of the large square, everyone lost interest. Admission is free and there aren't tickets. If there is a way to avoid that line, we missed it. The square itself was very impressive with all the pillars down each side and the huge church in the center.
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| St. Peter's |
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| Both side wings looked like this. |
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| Being Christmas time they had a life-sized Nativity scene set up in the square |
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| Vatican City |
As we wandered away from the Vatican along the Tiber River, we spotted Castel Sant'Angelo in the distance and knew we had to check it out. It became our second free museum with our ROMA cards.
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| Castel Sant'Angelo |
Castel Sant'Angelo was originally built as a mausoleum for Emperor Hadrian. Then in the sixth century it became a papal fortress and sometimes a papal living quarters. So it had everything from dark, spooky tunnels in the bottom floors, to cannonballs and catapults on the ramparts and fancy frescoes in the apartments. It was a really interesting building that we all enjoyed.
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| You could plainly see the change in building materials throughout the years. |
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| This bridge across the Tiber, decorated with angel statues, leads right to the fortress. |
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| Notice the statue of the angel at the top |
One of the great things about this building is that you roam quite freely through all the various floors. And from the terrace on top you had wonderful 360 degree views of Rome and the Vatican City. I think it was the most enjoyable place we visited in Rome.
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Looking off the top. If you look closely you can see the Parthenon, the Colosseum and the Victor Emmanuel Monument (that last one is easy, the huge white building).
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| A funny fountain somewhere in our wandering |
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| The Pantheon |
We continued our walk down to the Pantheon. Being engineers, we've watched shows about the construction of its dome and had to see it. I was a little worried because the Pantheon is another free site and I wondered how long it would take us to get inside. Happily, we were able to walk right in and look around. The outside is honestly not very exciting, but the inside is beautiful. |
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| The skylight at the top of the concrete dome. |
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| The entire building is decorated with amazing marble in every imagineable color and pattern. |
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| Like so many things in Rome, it was interesting to see how a building that had been built to honor "the gods" was transformed into a Christian church as Christianity spread through the area. |
Our last tourist destination for the day was Largo di Torre Argentina. This was where Julius Caesar was stabbed on the steps of the theater. You can see the ruins of the theater and of several Roman temples. The main attraction for us was that this ruin is also an official cat shelter. Unfortunately, when we were there you couldn't do any more than look down through the fence along the road. All the entrances were blocked off. It looked like some excavation was going on. We were able to pet one cat that was sitting up by the road.
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| All over Rome, we saw street performers dressed as various statues. Some were very good at holding still and when they would move it would be alittle startling. |
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| Christmas lights in the city |
We'd hit all the major attractions on our Rome list and still had two days left, so now the trip took on a little slower pace. We headed out the morning of Dec. 30th to see the Circus Maximus. There isn't much at Circus Maximus besides a big open area, but the kids enjoyed running on it to say they had, and it was a peaceful area. We actually saw they were having an official track event there when we went by the next day.
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| Circus Maximus with Palantine Hill behind it. |
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| A temple near Circus Maximus |
We decided to go for a walk along the Tiber. There was a footpath down along the river. It was very peaceful. We only saw a few other people. The Tiber is quite shallow and had a number of little falls. I was wanting our canoes. The kids were throwing in leaves and sticks and watching them float downstream.
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| San Bartolomeo all'Isola--a church on an island in the river |
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| The current in this area was very strange-- it trapped things, in particular soccer balls. We wondered where the nearest soccer field was. :) |
We left the river and wandered back up to town, through the twisty, narrow cobblestone streets. We stopped a a gelatto stand for a snack-- even though it was really too cold for gelatto.
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| We took a peak inside this little church. It was funny to see so many churches connected to the buildings next to them. |
We eventually found Piazza Navona. I had read that there is a big Christmas market there and wanted to check it out. The square was full of booths selling candy, Christmas decorations, and toys. There was also a midway with carnival games and a carousel. We watched one guy making huge bubbles and another guy putting on a puppet show. It was a lot of fun.
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| It felt funny to have this fair set among the beautiful old fountains and buildings. |
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| Babbo Natale-- the witch that delivers presents to Italian children. There were also lots of ornmaents made from broomsticks. |
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| Many booths sold figurines to make a nativity scene. But these were far beyond basic scenes-- more like building a miniature railroad or fancy dollhouse with the level of detail and variety of miniatures you could buy. |
Now we'd been on our feet almost every day for about 4 days and we were tired. This part of Rome is not served well by the metro, plus metros are boring to ride. you can't see anything. We decided it was time to see how our ROMA passes worked on the buses. We'd managed to find a map that listed what bus numbers stopped where and tried from that to navigate around. There were lots of bus numbers and the map was not very good. It was challenging to get to a particular spot, but since we weren't in a hurry, it wasn't a big deal if the bus took us on a scenic tour. It was nice to sit down for a while and see the sights. The drivers didn't ever want to see our passes and the transfer/ticket machine didn't seem to do anything with them either. So we would just get on and off as much as we wanted without doing anything. I guess they just assume everyone has some kind of pass. We saw some parts of Rome that I don't think we'd ever have seen on foot.
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| A cool church on the river we spotted from the bus |
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| Really old looking buildings surrounded by newer |
Eventually we made our way to the Fountain de Trevi. Of course, so did every other tourist in Rome.
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| So many people! |
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| Fountain de Trevi |
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| Luckily the pool around it is pretty large, so we were able to get close enough to one section to throw our coins and make our wishes. T tried to hit a pigeon with his! :-) |
We ate a late lunch at a street cafe just up the street from the fountain. They offered us a nice table next to a heater (pretty much all restaraunt seating in Rome was outdoors) and answered that "yes" to the important, "Do you have a bathroom?" question, we were sold. We had a very nice meal of Italian pasta. It was pretty funny having cars squeeze by our chairs to get down the narrow street.
We rode a few more buses and went for a walk in the big central park-- Villa Borghese-- before calling it a day.
We had considered taking a day trip out of Rome-- to either Pisa or Pompeii-- but when it came down to it none of us were excited to spend 3 hours each way on a train. Nor were we excited to try to figure out how to buy the train tickets at Termini station. We decided to opt for a slower paced end to our vacation and spent our last day exploring a little bit more in Rome.
We had read that you could rent and ride bicycles on Via Appia Antica--an ancient cobblestone road bordered by catacombs. The best day would be a Sunday, when they close the road to vehicles, but we didn't have a Sunday in Rome. We decided to go down and take a look and see if riding with traffic would be fun and/or safe. Via Appia Antica is a little ways out of town. We managed to catch the only bus that seemed to go down there from the Caracalla Baths.
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| Caracalla Baths |
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| Wall Museum |
When the bus went out through the old city gates and onto the narrow cobblestone road, you knew it. It was a very bumpy bus ride!
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| Via Appia Antica |
It was an interesting area to see, but we decided that with traffic, it was too narrow to be fun to ride on. We settled for seeing it by bus and rode the bus back into town.
It seems as though all buses in Rome lead to the Wedding Cake. Seriously, I can't tell you how many times we went past it or got on and off there, etc. It's just right in the middle of everything.
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| Piazza Venezia-- also known as "The Wedding Cake" |
As we wondered around that afternoon, we found they were setting up between the Wedding cake and the Colosseum for a big New Year's Eve concert. They were sound testing so we sat and listened to the music for a while.
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| New Year's Eve concert stage |
We decided to head back to the park, Villa Borghese, and do our bike riding there. We had noticed the day before that there were crazy 2 or 4 people bikes that you could rent. Not tandem bikes-- but golf cart like things. It turned out they were even more like golf carts than we realized. You did peddle but it had an electric engine to assist you. Very handy since the park is on a big hill. We rented two 2- people carts for an hour and then let the kids drive them-- inspite of the posted rules of needing to be over 18. We definitely weren't the only ones cheating on that. The kids loved being in the driver's seats. Mom couldn't resist trying to steer with the dummy steering wheel on her side. :-) There were a few exciting moments-- lots of pedestrians, other carts, kids, dogs, etc. to dodge. Most exciting was when we'd wind up on streets that also had real traffic. M found herself sandwiched between two taxis in a round about-- that resulted in some squealing. It was a nice afternoon.
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| This area of the park had a great view looking down over the city. Most of the park was very green with huge trees. A very pretty place. We didn't take enough pictures of it. |
The Spanish steps were nearby, so after our ride we walked down them-- or about half of them anyway. Once again, so many people that it was hard to see the architecture. We caught the metro and headed back to our room for a little break.
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| Another one of those strange mixes-- an obelisk covered in Egyptian hieroglyphics with a cross on top? |
After a short rest, we took the metro out farther southeast then we'd ever been in search of a pyramid that we'd spotted on the train from the airport. We found it. Apparently it was built in 12 BC as the tomb of a rich Roman who apparently liked Egyptian architecture. It has survived well because it was incorporated into the Aurelian wall and became part of the city fortifications. The walls were one of the impressive parts of Rome. Throughout the city you would run across huge chunks of wall that remains or a tower, gate or fortification. They are massive and very striking.
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| There was also a cool gate to the wall nearby. |
We ate dinner at another street cafe and then rode the bus back into the center of town. We'd seen that the big concert wouldn't start until 10 pm but we wondered if they'd have any preshow entertainment going on. Streets had been closed down and the bus routes were a bit crazy and even harder than normal to navigate. We got up to the Wedding Cake, but all the roads to get behind it seemed to be blocked off.
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| Nativity Scene in Piazza Venezia |
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| We thought the lights on this street were really cool. |
We decided to hop on another bus and go to the Colosseum and work our way up from there. It was dark and we were tired and when we saw this we hopped off the bus thinking we were at the Colosseum.
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Theatre of Marcellus  |
Nope. It was an ancient open-air theater. Interesting building though. You could tell that upper stories were later additions. (I read that a family used it as a palace at one point). The downside was that we were now on the back side of the Forum and Palatine Hill and there is no place to cut across them. We had to walk clear down to the Circus Maximus and then took the metro from there up to the Colosseum. Oh well. Eventually we got to our goal, the concert stage area. A crowd was beginning to form but not much was happening except for some light and sound checks. We waited around for a while, but then the kids decided they were tired and cold.
Being the partiers we are, I think we were home and in bed by around 9 pm. We were awoken at midnight when the city was shook by fireworks and then again around 2 am when lots of honking traffic came down our road. The next morning, it was back to the train station for the ride to the airport and the flight home. It had been a great trip but we were ready to be home again in Sweden.
