Tuesday the 8th
Main activity: Arrival
Weather: Warm and pleasant. No scorchio.
We arrived in the late afternoon, train from the airport to the city, and then a short walk from the train station to our hotel, “Hotel Champagne”.
We settled in, got our bearings, discussed our itinerary and then went out for a bit of dinner and, we thought, an evening stroll, perhaps to the Colosseum. Ambitious plans. We ate, it grew dark, the day’s travel began to take its toll and we retired to our hotel to sleep.
We noted with amusement that the illuminated sign for our hotel was not in full working order. “HOTEL PAGNE” it announced in quivering neon.
To let the struggling sign serve as my review for our hotel would be harsh indeed. It was adequate. Adequate room, adequate bathroom, adequate facilities; nothing to stir the heart with delight or horror.
Saying that, the one thing I thought I could rely on in Rome was a decent cup of coffee no matter where I chose to have one. This is before I was fully acquainted with the Hotel Pagne and its dubious breakfast room. The coffee was vile. Hideous. Undrinkable. There was a machine that whirred and declared itself able to produce cappuccino, latte, Americano and hot chocolate. These were all lies unless you like the taste and texture of powdered chemicals as part of your start to the day.
I was hopeful when I saw a separate machine that just had a spigot which offered black filter coffee. It was nasty and my hopes were dashed. For the first time since my teens, I did not start my day with a cup of strong, hot coffee. Oh, I could find great coffee just about anywhere else, just not first thing in the morning at our hotel.
Wednesday the 9th
Main activity: The Colosseum & Forum
Weather: Warm and pleasant with a cooling breeze. Intermittent spells of scorchio.
The first notable thing when we stepped outside was the almost constant sound of sirens. These mainly turned out to be from ambulances, and it didn’t take long to understand why. The drivers, cyclists and pedestrians in Rome are quite insane and all seem passionate in the belief that they have the right of way over every other creature in the city. The native pedestrians step into a road full of moving traffic and stare down any driver bold enough to challenge their right to be there. The drivers, in turn, meet this act of lunacy with grim determination to send the pedestrian scuttling back to the gutter from whence they came.
I think the ambulances are full of pedestrians, mainly tourists, who have not mastered the swagger needed to cow drivers at designated crosswalks. They lose their nerve and expose their vulnerability, so become prey to the Fiat Punto, their bones then picked over by the scavenging scooters.
We walked to the Colosseum, wandered around the outside of it, and in the mighty shadow of the ancient thing towering over us, I made my first excited declaration of the day:
"Ooh, look! Horses!"
We escaped the clutches of all the tour folk trying to sell us guided tours and crossed over to buy our tickets for the Forum & Colosseum and began to wander through the ruins, past many sites being excavated by teams of archaeologists and just tried to take it all in. I found it pretty overwhelming to be honest, such an immense area of amazing thing after amazing thing, all with plaques to read and things to be thought about and imagined. Just incredible.
We were at the Colosseum and Forum for several hours then finally left to walk through the neighbouring area. By chance, late in the day, we stumbled across a square where a few people were gathered and rather a lot of security was about. Then we heard a band. We stopped to watch, and were entertained for about half an hour by the changing of the guard.
The band led the Italian army boys up to a square. When they were settled in, they were joined by an equal number of sailors who stood on the other side of the band.
The band played the Italian national anthem and the army boys did some lusty shouty singing.
Then, with a musical accompaniment, one sailor broke ranks, paid his respects to the band, inspected his troops, and then sashayed over to the army boys and stopped in front of one column three men deep.
“Hello sailor!”
“Hello boys! Come with me to yonder barracks!"
The sailor turned, the three army boys followed him, at first stomping aggressively with their left feet in unison, and then dangling their rifles from their right hands like handbags until they minced out of sight. It was delightfully Pythonesque!
Then lo, from the building into which the sailor and soldiers had gone appeared one soldier leading a trail of three sailors behind him. He deposited them in with the other sailors, wished them well, and marched with the foot stompy thing again back to find his place with his army friends.
The band played, the sailors sang, and then all army boys disappeared into the building and the band led the sailor boys away.
This happens every day, we think, with the sailors and soldiers taking it in turns to guard whatever it is they are guarding. It was an unexpected highlight of our trip.
We then walked to the Trevi Fountain and found it, like just about everywhere else, heaving with so many tourists that we couldn’t get close. We decided to re-visit early the next morning.
We had dinner that night in an outdoor café. There may have been some ice cream involved at the end of it. We had music outside (wretched Celine Dion, Bryan Adams, Whitney Houston doing that “I will always love you” power ballad of hers). “They’re playing all the stuff you hate!” observed the Ent with amusement.
We occupied ourselves watching the television inside the restaurant, which was showing the Italian version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”. We couldn’t hear it, and of course could not translate what the questions were, so made them up as we went along.
Our favourite question involved a “cavallo” which we knew was horse, with answers that we couldn’t quite make out, partly because of language, and partly because of distance from the screen. In this case, one answer seemed to be "aggressio" and another "somnumblio".
We came up with:
“If a horse is given a radish when he is expecting an apple, he will be:
A) Surprised
B) Happy
C) Angry
D) Sleepy
The answer, for 5,000 euros, is C) Angry.
10th September
Main activity: Vatican City
Weather: Persistent scorchio.
We got up early for breakfast at 7.00 am so we could be at the Trevi Fountain before the crowds. No coffee. Knowing that there wouldn’t be any didn’t make it any less disappointing.
We arrived at the Trevi Fountain at 8.00 am and it was very quiet, as we had hoped. Not just lack of people, but lack of water; the fountain was shut off for cleaning. Perhaps not so much cleaning as sucking up all the coins that had been tossed in the previous day. Three men with sweeper hoses collected six white sacks of coins and heaved them into the back of a car with two policemen overseeing it. They also picked out a couple of plastic drink bottles that had also been carelessly tossed into the fountain.
The process of “cleaning” didn’t take that long so we waited. Not so an American couple who briefly made an appearance, surveyed the scene and pronounced loudly:
“It’s not working!”
“Well that sucks!”
They turned on their heels and stomped off. Had they waited but two minutes, they would have found the fountain in full flow no longer sucking so bad.
The fountain scene depicts Neptune’s chariot, pulled by two horse/bird/sea creatures. The one on the left is wild and the one on the right is tame. Or, perhaps the one on the left has been given a radish when he was expecting an apple.
On we went to the Spanish Steps. Ent pointed out the Keats/Shelley museum (next to Byron the Shirtmaker’s shop) and we noted that it didn’t open until the afternoon, so decided to come back for that. Climbed the steps nevertheless.
Top of the steps, me looking at Keats' house.
From the bottom looking up:
We walked on to the Vatican, along the Tiber.
Once at the square, a large group of priests joined the queue for St Peter’s just behind us, and we saw them again outside of St Peter’s. The Ent wouldn’t let me take a photo of them because “they are not comedy priests” he said, sternly. They were awfully earnest looking!
You can’t see the queue in this photo because it’s taken from the queue.
St Peter’s, tomb of the Popes, Sistine Chapel. This was wonderful and miserable all rolled into one. Irksome tourists were walking through it all at speed holding video and digital cameras aloft, recording all but not pausing to look at what was in front of them. Disrespectful! Of the place, of the people around them in the moment, and the people who had been there in the past, building and crafting what we were all there to see and experience.
Why take all the time to travel, plan your journey, pay the money, ensure that you get to such a place, and then pay it so little attention whilst there? Can life not be lived in the moment? Is the treasure you have travelled to see worthless if not encased in the plastic coated sheets of a photo album, within a frame or viewed on a monitor? Is it nothing unless there is a narrative and an audience?
The Sistine Chapel was amazing and strange. All through the chapels leading to it, equally bountiful with paintings, tapestries, incredible objects, there were signs reminding visitors to be respectful and quiet as “this is a sacred place”. Little heed was paid, as you can no doubt imagine.
At the Sistine Chapel though, there was a priest by the door next to a big “Silenzio!” sign and he made a valiant effort, shushing people as they walked in, clapping his hands for attention and shouting “Silenzio!” to no avail. The great din would not be shushed.
I wondered (silently) what would happen if I stood in the middle of the throng in the Sistine Chapel, out of reach of the furious priest and suddenly shouted an expletive as loud as I could. Would he bound through the throng and tackle me? Would I be trampled by the indignant crowd? Laughed at? Joined? Or would I create the longed for silence and therefore be forgiven?
Then I had to leave because it was too tempting a thought, as wrong thoughts often are.
Nevertheless, on my birthday, I gazed up at the ceiling and saw “The Creation of Man”. It was awesome,in the true sense of that word.
I am so glad I saw it, but I wish I could have seen it alone and in silence. I’m with the furious priest on that one.
We retraced our steps back to the Spanish Steps and I went alone into the Keats Museum, and visited the rooms he occupied in Rome a short time before his death. I loved the Keats museum. I wondered vaguely if I should make a point of visiting the rooms of ailing/dying literary greats a more formal pastime. Just Bronte, Austen and Keats so far (I think).
My birthday dinner was at another outdoor café. We passed a very pleasant evening chatting with our neighbours, a couple from California. They had both lost their spouses in the preceding two years. Don’t know how they met, but they were travelling through Italy for three months together. I guess they were in their late 60s/early 70s. Our conversation began when they refused a basket of bread that was offered, and I explained that I thought the waitress was trying to tell them that the bread came with the salad they had ordered.
They were charming companions for the evening, and we chatted easily about film, wine, politics and our collective travels. Joanne and Bill were their names, and we shall never meet again.
After dinner the Ent and I wandered back to the Colosseum to see it lit up at night. Was subtle lighting, but a wonderful sight.
Birthday sparkles. I even bought sparkly eyeliner! Warning - I am not photogenic and am much better in person. My grandfather said of this family trait, "In photos I always look like I'm a criminal or insane!"
Or criminally insane!
Friday the 11th
Main activity: The Pantheon, Circus Maximus, wandering aimlessly.
Weather: Relentless scorchio.
Well, sadly, this was the day I reached saturation point. Weary, not enough coffee, aching from days of stomping around the paved and cobbled streets of a very busy city, I was ready to come home. Unfortunately, our flight wasn’t until nine o’clock in the evening.
It sounds churlish to want to rush away from Rome when there was still so much to see, but there it is. If I had a comfy hotel, if I’d had a break from walking on cement and reading plaques, a little rest and relaxation, if I hadn’t spent days in the midst of a crowd (I’m not good with crowds at the best of times) then perhaps I could have regrouped and carried on with renewed vigour.
As it is, I am not a happy city dweller, and my feet were longing for Hampshire soil beneath them again, the smell of horse, the sound of tractors lumbering past the front window rather than endless sirens and beeping horns punctuating the traffic altercations of Roma!
And then there was a little street altercation involving me. You know how you are warned about being pinched by Italian men and it’s all a bit of a joke? Well, I wasn’t pinched, I was groped. Even a boob honk I could laugh off, but not this.
The Ent missed it even though he was walking with me, probably holding my hand, just a few steps in front of me.
A group of young people, boys and girls, approached us, a hand coming towards me, a shock, and then me connecting my elbow with his ribcage with as much force as I could muster whilst cursing him roundly and loudly. Hey, I grew up watching "Hockey Night in Canada"! I know what to do with my elbows.
A burst of laughter from his group of friends (I hope I broke a rib), an explanation for my outburst to my confused husband and a fervent desire to be on my way home and away from the careless jostling of strangers, even though most of it was perfectly innocent.
For the one that wasn't innocent, after the Ent got over his dismay, he said, "He picked the wrong woman to try that on."
Saying all that, the Pantheon was… how many times can I say “amazing”?
It is believed the Senate had the same sort of roof, those inlaid squares.
From here we walked, and walked and walked some more. Up hills, up stairs in the scorching heat, then suddenly, unexpectedly, down perfect, quiet little streets, pastel colours and shuttered windows. Beautiful.
Weary traveller:
We walked out to Circus Maximus and walked away again, found lunch, walked on, found a park, sat on a bench, read our books, and eventually made our way to the train station. Then to the airport.
Then we came home.
Arrividerci Roma! I threw some coins in the Trevi, so I will be back. Would love to go back. In off season!
Romulus & Remus
Overlooking the Forum
(Normal service for Max's blog will now resume)
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