We arrived in Rome from opposite ends on the globe, one from San Francisco and the other from Hong Kong. Despite on different landing times, we were able to meet up at the baggage area. Finding our way to the Express Train into the city also wasn’t too difficult. The train we were on was quite packed, with many people standing near the train ends and a relative small luggage area per cabin. The train appears to be much older than the airport express trains I have ridden in London, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur and Tokyo.
Arriving at the Rome Termini Station, our first encounter with the local taxi did not turned out well. First we didn’t find any taxi at the station exit that we came out. Then one came along and gave a very high estimate (90 Euro) to our hotel. After another 20 minutes of not finding any other taxi, another one came along and gave a 55 Euro that we decided to go with. The ride over to the hotel made us think taxi drivers in Rome is as crazy as those in China. We probably should have been more alert when the taxi driver wouldn’t go into the hotel driveway and offered to drop us off outside the hotel gates. James was getting the luggage as Jessica was to pay the driver. But there was a dispute of what Jessica gave him. After some back and forth, we finally settled. But after we run through all the amounts and double checking what she had and what she now has, we ended up paying 135 Euro for the taxi ride. In hindsight, because of the location of our hotel, we should have just taken a taxi from the airport directly. We stayed at the Rome Cavalieri, which is located north of the Vatican City up on a hill, providing some spectacular view of the city.
After getting a quick bite at the hotel as we waited for our room, we headed out to Vatican City. Inattention in making payment again on our taxi ride there caused us to pay 15 Euro than it should be. Both Jessica and James started to feel that like two bumpkins getting taken for a ride in a big city.
Nonetheless, we decided to make the best of what the Eternal City has to offer. Our first stop was the St. Peter Square. It wasn’t too crowded when we got there at about 3:30PM on a Friday. After walking around the square and taking all the obligatory pictures, we decided to head into the basilica. Going inside the church is free, and the line was fairly light. However, the security is almost as tight as those at the airport. Cash, coin and my belt set off the alarm as I went through.
The interior of the church is very big, with lots of nooks and altars on the side and a large front altar. The length of the church is as long as I have seen. It is bigger than Notre Dame in Paris and Cathedral of Saint Mary in Seville, two of the bigger ones I have visited. Coming out of the basilica, we went into the post office to get some Vatican stamps. One thing Vatican City has learned from other tourist places is to place gift shops and stores around the exits to entice people to peruse and purchase souvenirs.
After buying the stamps, we started walking to look for a gelato place. There are numerous shops around St Peter Square and on Via Della Conciliazione as we walked along the streets. But Jessica wanted a ‘good’ one, i.e. where there is a long line of people waiting at the shop. We didn’t see one, and we just walked around the area between Castel St. Angelo and the Vatican. We saw some interesting shops and buildings. This is still a predominately tourist area, but it seems to have lots of locals as well.
After finding a gelato parlor to Jessica’s acceptance near Piazza del Risagimento, we sat in the Piazza as we ate the gelato while planning our next move. It was getting close to 6PM, so we started thinking of dinner options. We didn’t find any “recommended” places in the area that aligned to Jessica’s taste, so we decided to just walk around to see if anything would look good to us. We spend the next hour or so checking the local shops on and around Via Ottaviano, which feeds into the Piazza. We found a trattoria that seemed decent a couple of blocks from the piazza. It was a run of the mill restaurant, nothing fancy, just basic dishes. James ordered spaghetti and Chicken Milanese while Jessica ordered vegetable soup and roasted chicken. But we did notice that the food is a bit lighter than what we find in the States, in both portion size and also in the amount of sauces used, with just enough to give it the favor without overwhelming the food.
We braced ourselves for another round of taxi adventure as we decided to head back to the hotel. We went to a taxi stand at the Piazza. Both the ride and the payment turn out to be uneventful this time. After putting away our things and settling in, we started to watch Angels and Demons on the iPad, to see all the spots we may want to catch the next few days. (With limited English language TV options, this wasn’t a bad option.) But about half an hour into the movie, we both just kind of dozed off.
James got up early the next day with his jet lag; although Jessica was able to sleep through it pretty well. James started doing things on the iPad in bed around 5am. Even though the iPad can be fairly quiet, the screen can be bright in a dark room. Anyways, after about an hour and a half of web surfing, James rested for an hour or so before getting up.
Jessica had arranged to meet up with her friend Lei and her husband Carlo late in the morning at the Trevi Fountain, who had came over from London to meet up with us that weekend. We took a taxi down to that area a bit earlier to let us stroll around the area by ourselves. In this area, you can see and feel the history of the city. The narrow alley ways between the buildings and the local shops epitomize old Europe. With all the people around the Trevi Fountain even at the early morning hours, it didn’t quite have the same quietness from what we recall from the movie Three Coins in a Fountain. Nonetheless, it is still a spectacular place, both the fountain itself and the surrounding area. We took a big circle around the area and enjoy the nook and crannies that the neighborhood has to offer.
After meeting up with James’s friend and her husband around 11AM, we headed out from Trevi Fountain to the Pantheon, the oldest temple/church in Rome, built around the time of Christ. The journey of getting there was as much fun as seeing the sites. Carlo is a native Roman, so he was able to provide some tidbits on the little things we saw along the way.
The Pantheon has an oculus at the dome where it brings natural light inside. Directly beneath the oculus are drainage holes that let the water flow out when it rains. The Pantheon is still the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome, and it is considered to be an architecture marvel.
Inside, it holds the tomb of the first king of the reunified Italy and the last king as well. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Italy was splintered into a number of self-ruling States, such as Florence, Venice, etc. It wasn’t until the 18th century that it was unified again. The temple also holds the tomb of Raphael Santi, the fame Renaissance artist. But unlike depicted in the Angels and Demons movie, he was brought there as soon as he died, rather than moved there at a later date.
From the Pantheon, we headed towards the Roman Forum and the Coliseum. We went into a few small churches that were along the way as well as looking into some of the shops. We went to a local coffee house that Lei had visited before. As it was very crowded in the coffee house, we end up deciding to just buying a few bags of coffee beans and snacks to take with us.
We walked by Il Vittoriano (also called the Monument), which is distinguished not only by its size, but by its whiteness, which is very different than the color of most structures in the city. This is a monument to Italy’s first king, Vittorio Emanuele II and home to the tomb of the unknown solders. We headed to the Chiesa Di Santa Maria in Aracoeli, which is located up a staircase near the Monument. Despite that the church was closed during the lunch hour, the platform in front of the church offered a great vantage point of the city.
After taking a number of photos, we decided to go to one of the nearby restaurants for lunch. We end up picking one that the menu seems agreeable to us all. During the meal, Carlo provided some background of meals in Rome, the various type of courses, how the courses are usually taken, the long lunch breaks (kind of like Spain) and the typical family meals. We talked of the difference of how bread and salad is served and used between Italy and the US. We each ordered a different type of dish: pasta, risotto, fish and meat, along with two vegetables. We shared a bit of our dish with each other and thoroughly enjoyed the food and the company.
After the meal, we started walking toward the Forum. Right behind the Monument, there is a little hill which provides a view down into the old ruins of the Roman Forum. I have seen pictures of the place lots of times, but this is something that one can only truly appreciate when it is seen in person, to imagine what Rome was like 2,000 years ago. It is also interesting that today’s Rome is literally built on top of the old Rome. This is why every time some place is excavated, there could be discoveries of the past. We didn’t walk down onto the Forum ground itself, but a guided tour could probably bring even more history into light. Across the street from the Forum is the old Roman market place, which is another ancient site worthy a visit.
The hill that we were on also offers some great photo vantage point of the Forum and beyond, including the Coliseum. The Coliseum, located down the street from the Forum, looks majestic from a distance. The most interesting part of the place is all the “pot holes” around the outside of the Coliseum, looking as if mortar rounds have bombarded the place. But in fact this is where people over the years have punched out pieces to use for their own needs. Of course, the missing upper part of most of the Coliseum is where the stones were cut to build other buildings. The line to get in was long, so we decided not go in. We just walked around the outside a bit and peeked into the entry ports.
We next visited the Palatino, the Beverly Hills of ancient Rome. There was no line to get in here, but we decided to pass and see other places. From Palatino, we walked toward where Circus Maximus was located. Today, aside from some remnants at one end, this is just a big open area with a dirt path and grassland. What surprised me is the length of the place. It looks to be over two football field long, which seems to be much longer than what it looked like on screen in the movie Ben Hur. But then for chariot races, it has to be big to let the horses run.
We proceeded toward the river and stopped at Isle Tiberina, a small island in the Tevere River. The main structures on the island today are a church and a hospital. But next to the church, there was a Gelato shop with a long line when we got there, just the kind of place Jessica likes. We each got a small cone. And while we ate the gelato, we enjoyed the quiet scenery and small talks.
By the time we were finished with the gelato, it was just past 5PM. Lei and Carlo has some family stuff to attend to. After parting, we headed out toward Trastevere. We took a loop around the area over the next hour and a half. We saw Santa Maria Church and a number of small shops and restaurants in the area. We probably should have picked a restaurant there for dinner, but instead I suggested we headed toward Plaza Navona on the other side of the river. However, by the time we reached Plaza Campo d. Flori, a few blocks short, we just wanted to sit down. There were a few restaurants there, and we picked one that has soup on its menu. We ordered some bruschetta, a seafood soup and a pizza. The bruschetta was just some meat slapped on an ordinary toast. The soup was a bread based variety that was very thick and not what Jessica had wanted. The pizza was ok but nothing special. When we asked for the check, the soup wasn’t on the bill, but then on a 29 Euro bill, the change from 50 Euro note was only 11 Euro.
The restaurants at the Novano Plaza seemed to look to have better menu items. Of course, what’s on paper doesn’t necessary translate to reality all the times, but we may have been able to find something better if we had walked just a bit further.
The fountain at the plaza is where one of prime site shown in the movie Angels and Demons. (In my judgment, it is a bit unlikely that what happened in the movie could have taken place without a lot of people noticing it.) Anyway, after looking around the plaza, we found another gelato place for our dessert. After savoring the gelato, we took a taxi back to the hotel.
Our first order of business the next day was to go to the train station and booked our train tickets to Florence in a couple of days. After breakfast, we took the hotel shuttle to the city center. The shuttle took a route through Villa Borghese, a ‘Central Park’ north of the city center that used to be part of vineyards, monasteries and noble estate gardens. It remains one of few areas that have escaped the building boom of the city. Driving through it, we see signs where the lake, amphitheatre and other activities can be found in the “park”.
After getting dropped off, we took a short subway ride to the Central Termini. We bought our tickets in one of the kiosks. It wasn’t too difficult to buy the tickets through the menu offering, although even under ‘English’ menu, there are some details only in Italian. Walking around the station afterward, we realized that the main lobby was indeed very far from where we had exited when we arrived from the airport the first day. If we had walked to the front of the station instead of exiting from the back, we would have found more transportation options.
Leaving the train station, we headed to the streets to walk around the area and intend to go toward Republica Square. But we went in the wrong direction and headed toward Plaza Santa-Marie Magglore instead. It turned out to be not a bad diversion, as we saw some interesting shops and street scenes along the way and Santa Maaglore is a fairly good looking church. After winding our way over, Republica Square didn’t turned out to be anything too special, but it has some neat Georgian buildings.
We then took another short subway ride to the Spanish Steps. This is one of Rome’s most popular destinations for both tourist and locals. When we arrived there, around noon, the place was packed with people, both at the plaza at the bottom of the steps and all the way to the top of the stops. As we walked around the area, we saw that the area is packed with name brand shops and restaurants. We stopped to browse a few of the local shops, but didn’t find anything we end up buying. Strolling along, really not a clue on the direction we were heading, we start thinking of a place for lunch. We end up in a courtyard where a few restaurants were interspersed with shops like a small shopping center. We picked one with vegetable soup on the menu. Jessica ordered the soup and grilled Sea Bream, while James ordered lasagna and vegetables. The portions were generous without being overly big. All the dishes were prepared well, but the grilled fish was especially good.
After lunch we continued our stroll in an unknown direction and eventually reached People’s Square. (This is the first of four landmark stops in Angels and Demons.) The square has a big set of gates on one end, and toward the back on the other side toward the hills, there is a viewing platform. We decided to walk our way up to that vista point. Along the path up there, it winds its way through a couple of garden areas and a number of vendors also set up shops along the way. The view up there has a perfect view of the western part of Rome, which includes the Vatican City and St. Peter’s Basilica. We discovered that this hill is part of Villa Borghese. 
On the way down the hill, we saw a DaVinci museum nestled along the side of the hill. It was a small museum, but it has a number of replicas of inventions that DaVinci conceived along with copies and some originals of his writing and sketches. Coming out of the museum, we started our way toward Castel St. Angelo. We decided to cross the river toward the Prati district and worked our way westward toward the castle. It was a quiet neighborhood on a late Sunday afternoon. We passed Palazzo di Giustizia, which is the Hall of Justice building; almost too beautiful to be a government building. Between the Plazzo di Giustizia and Castel St. Angelo, there is a small park area along the river, where some vendors, including a small carrousel operated.
Castel St. Angelo is where the church kept its prisoners and stored much of its treasures once upon a time. It is a castle. There was an exhibition of art work related to the Garibaldi family when we visited. One of the highlight of St. Angelo is the terrace, which offered a 360 degree view of Rome as you walked around it. We decided to grab a table on terrace for a break of gelato and lemonade. It was good to just sit back and soak in the view as we rested. After the snack break, we then went up to the top of the castle for a higher panoramic view of the city. With the late afternoon sun, it provided some interesting color background to our photos.
After leaving the St. Angelo, we walked toward St. Peter’s Square and then checked out the back streets behind the Vatican that we didn’t see on Friday. There were many shops along Via Vitelleschl that leads to Piazzo Risorgimento. It was approaching early evening on a Sunday, but the streets were still crowded. But there weren’t many restaurants on this street, so we went back to the other side of Piazzo where we wandered on our first night. We settled on one on a corner with a menu we liked. We ordered a minestrone soup, Linguine with Clam sauce, a seafood rice plate that was off the menu and a vegetable side dish. The two main dishes came on a large plate with plenty of clams and seafood respectively. Again, there was just enough sauce to provide the taste without overwhelming it.
By the time we finished it was about 8:30PM; even thought it was Sunday, there were still plenty of people on the streets. We took another stroll around the block to walk off our dinner and to enjoy and soak in the local atmosphere before heading back to our hotel.
The big event on Monday was to see the Vatican Museum. It was recommended to go early as the line is always long. We got there around 9:30AM, but the line is already wrapped around the block. If we go with the normal line, it would take 3-4 hours before getting in. The alternative is to join a ‘tour group’, which typically have scheduled entrance time. The ‘tout’ says we can get in ‘right away’. After deciding to go with the tour group, we still end up waiting about an hour or so before we got into the museum. We essentially were added onto a tour group.
Once inside the museum, the guide did provide some interesting tidbits on the museum and in particular, background on the Sistine Chapel, which is one of the main reasons to visit the museum. But there were quite a bit of other artifacts, painting, sculptures, etc. and the unfortunate part is the ‘tour’ seemed to move very fast through to get to the Sistine Chapel.
Inside the Sistine Chapel, it was packed with people, both standing and on the bench along the walls. This is where the College of Cardinals meets to select the pope. But the reason just about everyone comes to see is what is up on the ceiling and along the wall: The mosaic that Michaelangelo painted there. To study the details, you can probably stay there all day. We stayed about 15 minutes and then headed out. We went back to see more of the museum, spending about another hour there.
We left the museum close to 2PM. We went to a restaurant near the museum that has been recommended in one of the guide books. We went with basic items: Spaghetti, salad, vegetable soup, etc. After all the time spent in the museum, the food hit just the right spot for us.
After lunch we went back to St. Peter’s Square to meet up with Lei and Carlo again. We stopped at a Gelato shop to grab another cone for dessert on the way. The Square seemed a bit busier than Friday afternoon when we first visited. The line going into St. Peters were much longer.
We decided to walk the ‘back way’ along the hills from Vatican City toward Piazza Garibaldi and then work our way down to the Trastevere area. As we started to ascend up the hill, it started to drizzle a bit. The four of us seemed to be the only people on the road; in a way, it was almost a serene and peaceful walk along a road that was lined with gated housing estates. Despite the rain, we were able to enjoy the view down toward the city as we ambled up the hill. At the Piazza Garibaldi, it offers another view of the Rome down below. As we started down toward Trastevere, we ran into a few monuments, which we never quite figured out what they were. Although we could kind of figured out the year of some of these things were completed by the years scribed (in Roman Numerals of course).
When we reached the streets of Trastevere, we looked around at some of the stores. We went into a local store that sold cheese and meat. There were wheel size Romano cheese and a number of other local cheese varieties. Carlo bought some cheese to take back to London. We also tried some sample baked Ricotta which was better than what I had expected. Visiting these kinds of stores is what makes exploring new places interesting. We continued to walk around the area that we didn’t see previously, looking in stores and checking out churches along the way. There was even an American University in that area.
As darkness fell, we decided to pick in a restaurant there for dinner. With so many, selecting one is also not easy. With this being our last night in Rome, we want to have a good meal. After scanning a few menus, we picked one that seemed to have a good balance of dishes and price. After going back forth between risotto, fish and pasta, James selected the Seafood Fettuccine. Jessica selected the steam Sea Bass. Lei had Gnocchi (a dumpling dish), while Carlo had another pasta dish. All four dishes were good, but the sauce of James’ seafood Fettuccine probably put it as the best of the four. And just as good were the two desserts we split, a perfect ending to a good meal.
The next morning, after breakfast, we went up to roof terrace of the hotel for a view and some pictures. It was windy and overcast, but it offered yet another spectacular view of the city. It gave us a chance to look at all the places we had went these past few days, and the places we didn’t get a chance to see. As we headed out to the train station to go to Florence, we knew that we need to return to the Eternal city for more exploration.
