Sunday, November 14, 2010
Belgium
My next trip will be to Belgium for work in December. I am not going to be doing a blow by blow blogging for the work days but will definitely have a weekend there to look about so will be writing about that at the least.
Italy Pictures
Now that all of the pictures from Italy have been posted I would like to apologize for how long it took to get them up. I had a busy week and it was just a bit too much to get them loaded up earlier.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Italy Day 16
Day 16 was of course the transit day back home. I got up early to clean up and finish packing then had breakfast at the hotel. I really liked the brand of yogurt they had. After eating I checked out of the hotel and made the brief walk to the train station. The Leonardo Express was completely full for the 8:22 departure. I had bought the ticket the night before but I probably didn't need to as they never checked it. The train was too full probably. In any event I did see the route this ride as the sun was fully up by this point. There is a lot of graffiti along the way.
I got to the airport and checked in but the baggage check conveyors were broken so had to wait for a guy with a cart to come pick up the bags of those of us waiting. This meant the security line got longer but I guess I was plenty early so it was of little consequence. After getting in I checked the shops and bought a snack then waited patiently for the flight.
The flight to Rome was 2 hours long and I had a window seat on the A320 with no one directly next to me. I did doze off a bit as the only entertainment was the airplane GPS.
Arriving on Heathrow I had to rescreen security then wasted the time before my flight boarded which was around 2 hours or so. We had a general boarding which involved riding a bus to a remote space and climbing stairs onto the plane yet again (time 3). This plane was a 777. I apparently got assigned a middle seat but lucked out because the guy on the aisle didn't like the tall guy behind him so moved to the only other seat on the plane. This gave me am aisle seat with no one next to me. The in flght entertainment was individual seat but you had to choose between set channels. I had hoped to watch Despicable Me bit of course that was the broken channel. Instead I watched Agora which was odd as a first film. I think it was anti-Christian which I liked. The meal was ok but they called the pudding creme brûlée which was wrong. There was a significant pause to the entertainment system then I watched Toy Story 3 which was ok but not as good as the first two. The sound was a bit crackly which may not have helped. After finishing that movie it wasn't long before they started another set so I started watching Jonah Hex which seemed bad but I couldn't finish it as the flight didn't have enough time left.
The start of the descent was very bumpy and a few people sounded fairly nervous but it smoothed out after a couple minutes. I guess there was some serious winds in the jet stream to contend with. Then we got a bit bumpy as we were in the final moments of landing but all in all it was a fairly easy flight. After getting off the airplane the passport control line was short. With its humble beginnings on the cart in Rome my bag did actually make it across to Boston. It was within the first 20 bags off the carousel, and customs was a breeze, the one funny part being the passport guy's stamp on the customs form was hideously wet and it wasn't dry by the time I went to the customs guy. I saved him from smudging himself so he pushed me right through I think. My brother was there to pick me up and the ride home was easy. All in all as travel days go it could have been a lot worse though I will never like having to ride a bus to a plane somewhere on the tarmac. At least I didn't have a huge bag to stuff in the overheads to carry up the stairs to the plane. That definitely caused difficulty for a few people.
Italy was a lot of fun. The drama with the car and the GPS aside I had a blast. Seriously though, don't stay in Palermo if you go to Sicily.
I got to the airport and checked in but the baggage check conveyors were broken so had to wait for a guy with a cart to come pick up the bags of those of us waiting. This meant the security line got longer but I guess I was plenty early so it was of little consequence. After getting in I checked the shops and bought a snack then waited patiently for the flight.
The flight to Rome was 2 hours long and I had a window seat on the A320 with no one directly next to me. I did doze off a bit as the only entertainment was the airplane GPS.
Arriving on Heathrow I had to rescreen security then wasted the time before my flight boarded which was around 2 hours or so. We had a general boarding which involved riding a bus to a remote space and climbing stairs onto the plane yet again (time 3). This plane was a 777. I apparently got assigned a middle seat but lucked out because the guy on the aisle didn't like the tall guy behind him so moved to the only other seat on the plane. This gave me am aisle seat with no one next to me. The in flght entertainment was individual seat but you had to choose between set channels. I had hoped to watch Despicable Me bit of course that was the broken channel. Instead I watched Agora which was odd as a first film. I think it was anti-Christian which I liked. The meal was ok but they called the pudding creme brûlée which was wrong. There was a significant pause to the entertainment system then I watched Toy Story 3 which was ok but not as good as the first two. The sound was a bit crackly which may not have helped. After finishing that movie it wasn't long before they started another set so I started watching Jonah Hex which seemed bad but I couldn't finish it as the flight didn't have enough time left.
The start of the descent was very bumpy and a few people sounded fairly nervous but it smoothed out after a couple minutes. I guess there was some serious winds in the jet stream to contend with. Then we got a bit bumpy as we were in the final moments of landing but all in all it was a fairly easy flight. After getting off the airplane the passport control line was short. With its humble beginnings on the cart in Rome my bag did actually make it across to Boston. It was within the first 20 bags off the carousel, and customs was a breeze, the one funny part being the passport guy's stamp on the customs form was hideously wet and it wasn't dry by the time I went to the customs guy. I saved him from smudging himself so he pushed me right through I think. My brother was there to pick me up and the ride home was easy. All in all as travel days go it could have been a lot worse though I will never like having to ride a bus to a plane somewhere on the tarmac. At least I didn't have a huge bag to stuff in the overheads to carry up the stairs to the plane. That definitely caused difficulty for a few people.
Italy was a lot of fun. The drama with the car and the GPS aside I had a blast. Seriously though, don't stay in Palermo if you go to Sicily.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Italy Day 15
The one thing I hadn’t succeeded in doing in my visit to Rome that I had sort of set my mind to was to walk the Appian Way. I had tried it on the first Sunday when the weather was nice but missed the mark in finding it. I do not feel too bad about that as it was a good distance away, not actually on the map I got from the hotel and I was following signs that said Appia but apparently meant Appia Nuova rather than Appia Antica. So that was a failure. The second day I found my way to the head of the road but unfortunately I had already been walking for many hours and though I got in a small distance I was not able to finish it with any gusto so I returned to Rome standard.
Today I was not really sure what to do with myself but when I woke up I was nagged by the idea that I should again try to walk the Appian Way or I would regret it. So after my breakfast I set out immediately. This time I was armed with the knowledge of where everything was a fairly efficient route to get to the park. It is technically a park. In fact I was there by 8:20am. What I had sort of realized but was sort of deluding myself on was how long the park is. I think it measures 11 miles from top to bottom.
In the early going I really needed to visit a bagno and there happened to be a couple sites to visit so I hit both of those. They were both castles in their time dating back to the 2nd century BC or so. Owned by important people and all that. They are ruins now but still the size of the first is very impressive and the latter was still neat. The second had a cat that followed me around a bit and figured she should get some cat dander on me as well. There was a box where she sleeps inside the castle.
If I were J.R.R. Tolkien I would have to give you a step by step detail of 11 miles of course. I think walking over 22 miles not including my in Rome time has sort of worn me out to the idea of actually writing things in too much detail. Suffice it to say the longer it felt like it was getting the greater the pace I took on in an attempt to finish it quicker and get back to Rome to buy some souvenirs. I checked the clock when I reached what I presume was the end of the trail and it was 11:20. Granted on the early going I was walking slower and no matter what I was stopping to take pictures on the way out so the timing is a bit deceiving. The roads on the trail are all very uneven cobbles of different make-ups that cause for some tiring footing at times. I am sure that didn’t help me in either direction. There were a couple points where work was being done on the cobbles and I was forced to walk on the shoulders which were also torn up in those areas. After a very long time the road turned into a trail. In the very latter stages it appeared that the locals dumped their trash there and occasionally someone came and picked it up but didn’t clean every last bit. I found that a bit disappointing.
In any event the trail is basically an ancient highway to Rome from the southeast. Along the way there are all sorts of buildings and parts of buildings that had been unearthed. Some of them were fenced off, some were not. Some looked very fantastic and others were just bits of stone wall. I took pictures of mostly everything that needed to be represented along the way, mainly skipping things that looked too similar to things I had already seen and taken pictures of.
I can say that the weather held out a bit too perfectly as it was sunny and hot the whole time. Most of the people along the trail seemed to distrust someone walking so fast that wasn’t in a running suit but what do I care really? When I reached what I presumed was the end I turned around, put the camera away and just did a speed run back to the top of the way. I checked when I was officially back on Roman streets and it was 1:30pm. I can’t say if I really went the full 11 miles each way but if the pictomap at the point I turned around was accurate to what I think I saw then yes, I did. I will need to check with more detail on picture I took of one of the maps that was in the early going of the road. Like most of Rome they are not generous with You Are Here maps so I really had no idea what sort of progress I was making on my way out the whole time. On the way back I at least had the benefit of knowing what I had already seen. There are tons of bicycles on the road but overall cars are kept from being on there except people how have farms or houses along the way it appears so the traffic was many foot and bicycle. There is the early stretch which is quite scary with the close walls and cars racing through in both sections but after the two catacombs I didn’t actually get to visit (and didn’t bother with this time) it wasn’t long before traffic was detoured away from the course. It did make for a pleasant summer feeling walk. I would have preferred to get going even earlier if I had any idea how long it was going to be.
The thought did cross my mind to try to take a bus on the far end but it didn’t appear there would be anything of the sort available so I just turned around and headed right on back. By the time I returned to Rome my feet were fairly sore and my legs tired and since I had only bought a bottle of water and a wafer cookie package on the way back I was very hungry as well. As soon as I got into the vicinity of the Coliseum I searched for a restaurant and ended up at one named the Coliseum which I am not sure was the best choice overall. I got a beer, a bottle of water and fettuccini with pesto. The pesto wasn’t really all that filled with basil and they had included small tomatoes in the mix but it tasted like pesto overall. They basically scammed me on price by about 2 Euros but I would have tipped them that if they hadn’t so I didn’t leave the tip I had been doing at other places. The food was OK overall but more than anything I think I needed to rest my legs for a bit. The beer was nice too if the more watery Nastro Azzuro? brand of beer around here.
Once done eating it was about 2:20pm and it was my mission to buy some souvenirs in the form of t-shirts and the like. All the shops are owned by Asian people of some sort. I think one shop had an Italian woman at the desk. Most of the stuff is basically the same from shop to shop and not one place sells teddy bears of any sort. I would think it would be a natural to have a Roman Centurion or Julius Cesar bear to sell, but no, only cheap crummy looking puppets of Pinocchio which there was no way I would buy. I managed to buy a few things in a windy course that took me up and down the Vias Cavour and Nationale. By then I was spent for much more walking and even if there were more shops down further I couldn’t put the energy together to get any further away from the hotel than I got. I do hope the airport has a thing or two worth buying in the international terminal. I didn’t really seem much in the terminal I used when I flew to Sicily but also I had no time at all. I am also hoping that I can actually get in the plane on a gate rather than a bus to stairs outdoors. We’ll see.
After the shopping I returned to the room to rest because it was about 4:45pm. Still too early to get dinner in most places around here and I needed the time off my feet anyway. I started out by writing the best majority of this before just relaxing a bit until it was time to eat.
For dinner I had intended to go back to La Mensa di Bacco again because of all the restaurants around here I liked them the most. Unfortunately I had not noticed that they are closed on Saturday so when I got outside to look for them they were all chained up. I was a bit disappointed about that but I chose a secondary place I had eyed most of the week but not gone to yet which was called 27 Tudini Gabriele & Tomoko. I would assume that they cater to Japanese people based on the Japanese tour that went in and the fact that they had a Japanese menu. They were a bit expensive but had a couple distinguishing features, the main one being a fairly extensive artisanal beer list all from Italy. From that I chose a beer that was an Italian version of an American pale ale. I shudder to think how much it cost but it was actually pretty good as in I would drink it again if for a more reasonable price. For dinner I skipped primi and went straight to having the roast chicken, which turned out to be two legs and some red and green peppers with a very nice yellowy-orange sauce. I cannot say what the sauce flavor was supposed to be but it was enjoyable. I accompanied that with some roasted potatoes that had maybe a touch too much rosemary on them. Overall it was easy to get rid of the excess rosemary though and they were cooked correctly and quite tasty especially when rubbed through the sauce from the chicken. After eating I was deciding if I wanted dessert for a couple minutes but instead opted to get a grappa as I had not had one yet in Italy (mainly because it was hard to identify them in restaurants). It was a clear grappa that was a touch rough but really not bad. It was definitely not the best grappa I have ever had though. After I was done with that it took the waiter forever to get my bill but it appeared that he was really overwhelmed with tables and I wouldn’t have held it against him too much if I hadn’t needed to use the facilities fairly badly. Since it was a few moments from the hotel I paid and rushed back to do so.
I came back to the room and finished up this while watching some Europa League Soccer. I never did mention the thing that irks me about European sports. The real issue I have is that every single jersey design is basically an advertisement for some sort of product rather than the team. Some, like the hockey team ones were a mess of ads rather than any sort of team name or logo. In many respects their jerseys are the equivalent of NASCAR paint jobs. It doesn’t matter what sport you are talking about. This becomes an issue when, say, your favorite team takes on sponsorship from a product or company you dislike I would think. How can you support your team by wearing their gear if you hate the logos plastered all over it? At least that would bother me. It would be like if the Patriots got rid of their team logos and replaced them with Vonage logos or something. Yeck. Anyway, the next thing to mention is about European league football. That is soccer. I am sure that they have resources the world over to get the best players out there to play professionally. The problem is there are so many teams in so many countries on so many different levels of the sport that it is honestly very watered down talent in I am sure more than 75% of the games you can watch. I am sure that what they are airing here in Italy is not remotely the premier teams with the premier players. I have seen British Premier League soccer and know there must be versions as good in many other countries including in Italy but they must play so infrequently you are more likely to get bad football than good. It makes it all the less interesting for a person who is not really truly a fan of the sport. I am American after all. It doesn’t make sense to not stop time when play stops and then arbitrarily add on an amount of extra time based on guesswork. It is also tough to watch guys get barely touched and flop around for 5 minutes like they were shot by a gun. It gets much worse when teams don’t even really have the ability to accurately pass and there is no speed whatsoever to the game. I think, world sport or not, the world could use a lot less professional soccer teams and maybe we might find it more enjoyable. I might anyway. But enough of sports.
Day 16 is my return to home. I am set to get up early. I already purchased my ticket for the Da Vinci Express. I am basically packed already. As vacations go this one has seemed like 2 full weeks. I am not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing. I did like Rome a lot after all though. My legs and feet are tired…
It may take me until next week to get all the pictures posted. I hope folks can be patient.
Today I was not really sure what to do with myself but when I woke up I was nagged by the idea that I should again try to walk the Appian Way or I would regret it. So after my breakfast I set out immediately. This time I was armed with the knowledge of where everything was a fairly efficient route to get to the park. It is technically a park. In fact I was there by 8:20am. What I had sort of realized but was sort of deluding myself on was how long the park is. I think it measures 11 miles from top to bottom.
In the early going I really needed to visit a bagno and there happened to be a couple sites to visit so I hit both of those. They were both castles in their time dating back to the 2nd century BC or so. Owned by important people and all that. They are ruins now but still the size of the first is very impressive and the latter was still neat. The second had a cat that followed me around a bit and figured she should get some cat dander on me as well. There was a box where she sleeps inside the castle.
If I were J.R.R. Tolkien I would have to give you a step by step detail of 11 miles of course. I think walking over 22 miles not including my in Rome time has sort of worn me out to the idea of actually writing things in too much detail. Suffice it to say the longer it felt like it was getting the greater the pace I took on in an attempt to finish it quicker and get back to Rome to buy some souvenirs. I checked the clock when I reached what I presume was the end of the trail and it was 11:20. Granted on the early going I was walking slower and no matter what I was stopping to take pictures on the way out so the timing is a bit deceiving. The roads on the trail are all very uneven cobbles of different make-ups that cause for some tiring footing at times. I am sure that didn’t help me in either direction. There were a couple points where work was being done on the cobbles and I was forced to walk on the shoulders which were also torn up in those areas. After a very long time the road turned into a trail. In the very latter stages it appeared that the locals dumped their trash there and occasionally someone came and picked it up but didn’t clean every last bit. I found that a bit disappointing.
In any event the trail is basically an ancient highway to Rome from the southeast. Along the way there are all sorts of buildings and parts of buildings that had been unearthed. Some of them were fenced off, some were not. Some looked very fantastic and others were just bits of stone wall. I took pictures of mostly everything that needed to be represented along the way, mainly skipping things that looked too similar to things I had already seen and taken pictures of.
I can say that the weather held out a bit too perfectly as it was sunny and hot the whole time. Most of the people along the trail seemed to distrust someone walking so fast that wasn’t in a running suit but what do I care really? When I reached what I presumed was the end I turned around, put the camera away and just did a speed run back to the top of the way. I checked when I was officially back on Roman streets and it was 1:30pm. I can’t say if I really went the full 11 miles each way but if the pictomap at the point I turned around was accurate to what I think I saw then yes, I did. I will need to check with more detail on picture I took of one of the maps that was in the early going of the road. Like most of Rome they are not generous with You Are Here maps so I really had no idea what sort of progress I was making on my way out the whole time. On the way back I at least had the benefit of knowing what I had already seen. There are tons of bicycles on the road but overall cars are kept from being on there except people how have farms or houses along the way it appears so the traffic was many foot and bicycle. There is the early stretch which is quite scary with the close walls and cars racing through in both sections but after the two catacombs I didn’t actually get to visit (and didn’t bother with this time) it wasn’t long before traffic was detoured away from the course. It did make for a pleasant summer feeling walk. I would have preferred to get going even earlier if I had any idea how long it was going to be.
The thought did cross my mind to try to take a bus on the far end but it didn’t appear there would be anything of the sort available so I just turned around and headed right on back. By the time I returned to Rome my feet were fairly sore and my legs tired and since I had only bought a bottle of water and a wafer cookie package on the way back I was very hungry as well. As soon as I got into the vicinity of the Coliseum I searched for a restaurant and ended up at one named the Coliseum which I am not sure was the best choice overall. I got a beer, a bottle of water and fettuccini with pesto. The pesto wasn’t really all that filled with basil and they had included small tomatoes in the mix but it tasted like pesto overall. They basically scammed me on price by about 2 Euros but I would have tipped them that if they hadn’t so I didn’t leave the tip I had been doing at other places. The food was OK overall but more than anything I think I needed to rest my legs for a bit. The beer was nice too if the more watery Nastro Azzuro? brand of beer around here.
Once done eating it was about 2:20pm and it was my mission to buy some souvenirs in the form of t-shirts and the like. All the shops are owned by Asian people of some sort. I think one shop had an Italian woman at the desk. Most of the stuff is basically the same from shop to shop and not one place sells teddy bears of any sort. I would think it would be a natural to have a Roman Centurion or Julius Cesar bear to sell, but no, only cheap crummy looking puppets of Pinocchio which there was no way I would buy. I managed to buy a few things in a windy course that took me up and down the Vias Cavour and Nationale. By then I was spent for much more walking and even if there were more shops down further I couldn’t put the energy together to get any further away from the hotel than I got. I do hope the airport has a thing or two worth buying in the international terminal. I didn’t really seem much in the terminal I used when I flew to Sicily but also I had no time at all. I am also hoping that I can actually get in the plane on a gate rather than a bus to stairs outdoors. We’ll see.
After the shopping I returned to the room to rest because it was about 4:45pm. Still too early to get dinner in most places around here and I needed the time off my feet anyway. I started out by writing the best majority of this before just relaxing a bit until it was time to eat.
For dinner I had intended to go back to La Mensa di Bacco again because of all the restaurants around here I liked them the most. Unfortunately I had not noticed that they are closed on Saturday so when I got outside to look for them they were all chained up. I was a bit disappointed about that but I chose a secondary place I had eyed most of the week but not gone to yet which was called 27 Tudini Gabriele & Tomoko. I would assume that they cater to Japanese people based on the Japanese tour that went in and the fact that they had a Japanese menu. They were a bit expensive but had a couple distinguishing features, the main one being a fairly extensive artisanal beer list all from Italy. From that I chose a beer that was an Italian version of an American pale ale. I shudder to think how much it cost but it was actually pretty good as in I would drink it again if for a more reasonable price. For dinner I skipped primi and went straight to having the roast chicken, which turned out to be two legs and some red and green peppers with a very nice yellowy-orange sauce. I cannot say what the sauce flavor was supposed to be but it was enjoyable. I accompanied that with some roasted potatoes that had maybe a touch too much rosemary on them. Overall it was easy to get rid of the excess rosemary though and they were cooked correctly and quite tasty especially when rubbed through the sauce from the chicken. After eating I was deciding if I wanted dessert for a couple minutes but instead opted to get a grappa as I had not had one yet in Italy (mainly because it was hard to identify them in restaurants). It was a clear grappa that was a touch rough but really not bad. It was definitely not the best grappa I have ever had though. After I was done with that it took the waiter forever to get my bill but it appeared that he was really overwhelmed with tables and I wouldn’t have held it against him too much if I hadn’t needed to use the facilities fairly badly. Since it was a few moments from the hotel I paid and rushed back to do so.
I came back to the room and finished up this while watching some Europa League Soccer. I never did mention the thing that irks me about European sports. The real issue I have is that every single jersey design is basically an advertisement for some sort of product rather than the team. Some, like the hockey team ones were a mess of ads rather than any sort of team name or logo. In many respects their jerseys are the equivalent of NASCAR paint jobs. It doesn’t matter what sport you are talking about. This becomes an issue when, say, your favorite team takes on sponsorship from a product or company you dislike I would think. How can you support your team by wearing their gear if you hate the logos plastered all over it? At least that would bother me. It would be like if the Patriots got rid of their team logos and replaced them with Vonage logos or something. Yeck. Anyway, the next thing to mention is about European league football. That is soccer. I am sure that they have resources the world over to get the best players out there to play professionally. The problem is there are so many teams in so many countries on so many different levels of the sport that it is honestly very watered down talent in I am sure more than 75% of the games you can watch. I am sure that what they are airing here in Italy is not remotely the premier teams with the premier players. I have seen British Premier League soccer and know there must be versions as good in many other countries including in Italy but they must play so infrequently you are more likely to get bad football than good. It makes it all the less interesting for a person who is not really truly a fan of the sport. I am American after all. It doesn’t make sense to not stop time when play stops and then arbitrarily add on an amount of extra time based on guesswork. It is also tough to watch guys get barely touched and flop around for 5 minutes like they were shot by a gun. It gets much worse when teams don’t even really have the ability to accurately pass and there is no speed whatsoever to the game. I think, world sport or not, the world could use a lot less professional soccer teams and maybe we might find it more enjoyable. I might anyway. But enough of sports.
Day 16 is my return to home. I am set to get up early. I already purchased my ticket for the Da Vinci Express. I am basically packed already. As vacations go this one has seemed like 2 full weeks. I am not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing. I did like Rome a lot after all though. My legs and feet are tired…
It may take me until next week to get all the pictures posted. I hope folks can be patient.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Italy Day 13
Today I opted to go for something I had researched way back when I first started planning this trip. Outside of Rome there was a city named Ostia, it is quite close to the coastline. It appears that it is somewhere in the 2400 year old range or so but it fell into disuse in the 5th or 6th century AD. The site of the ruins is called Ostia Antica.
To get to Ostia Antica you really need to take a metro train from Rome. The best place for me was to walk to the Piramide station (right near the Pyramid of Sestia) and to get on there for the ride to Ostia Antica which is about half an hour. I could have taken the metro the whole way I assume but I like the walking and all that so rather than get in a dark crowded stuffy underground I would prefer to walk the 45 minutes or so to the train I needed to take. Vacations are supposed to be about relaxing and walking is a way I relax so it makes sense for me anyway.
I woke up at 7 and had breakfast at the hotel at 7:30 and was on my way to the train station. Armed with a lot more knowledge of how to get around the city it was probably less than 45 minutes to get to Piramide station. First I used a self cleaning bathroom which looked like the self cleaning part wasn’t working so well, and that for .50 Euro. Inside I bought a day pass metro ticket and then found myself confused as to which train to take. It says this way to Lido line but then the Lido line just says the name of the stop Porta St. Paolo. So I had to ask if it was the train I needed to take. It took a few minutes to get through this process but I boarded a train that departed at 8:45 or so. The train ride was about a half an hour. This train was not very clean and very shabby looking and didn’t have any announcements or anything so I just had to keep track of the stops myself which I guess wasn’t too difficult.
Arriving in Ostia you get out of the station and do a flyover walkway over the autostrada towards the site. On the way you see a castle wall and then as you get there you turn into Ostia Antica. The site costs 6.50 Euro to get in if I recall. I think it was highly worth it. The city of Ostia is all ancient Roman ruins without the various transformation that Christianity brought on in Italy. There is one Christian basilica ruin but that was from 400 AD or so. I realize that most all of it has fallen down and many of the buildings would be much taller than they are now but it is still amazing to think how people actually used to live there well over 2000 years ago.
The site is gigantic. I need to point that out. Getting there at about 9:15 or so I was inside the actual grounds until about 2pm, including only a few minutes for a pizza and beer lunch. It is the remains of a complete city that used to live on the banks of the Tiber. The problem is in the 15th century the river flooded and the course of the river changed so the site is no longer on the river but that might actually be for the best. There is still a fair amount of excavation and restoration going on but even then there is an unbelievable number of buildings to see and may different varieties whether they be warehouses, housing, hot baths, temples, stores or whatever. I would have to assume there are some liberties taken with some of the placements of statues and the like but overall it looks like they mainly have tried to dig up what they have found. Another cool thing is that there are a very large number of areas that are free reign to walk about. I mean there are more places you can go than can’t. It was neat to get inside some of the buildings and even into some more underground stuff. I am not sure if they are dug completely down to the original ground level. I suspect some buildings may have had cellars based on stairways and the like. In the common living areas it is obvious that the living quarters were overall very small. I am sure the wealthy had more to live in but still if the book I bought is accurate most of the buildings were made of non-flammable materials in an effort to reduce fires. They also had a fair amount of water collection and deposit to help deal with fires. It is believed due to their regulations they had a lot fewer fires than the city of Rome did in similar time.
Something that is found all over Ostia is mosaic floors. Whether in the mercantile area or in the baths or whatnot there are tons of black and white mosaics. I am sure most of what has been found is restored and according to their information boards they have had to recover from problems caused by poor restoration techniques in the 20th century. In many cases they had to go back to original photos in order to more accurately reproduce the corrupted versions that were created during initial restoration. Still there are tons of them all over the place and many of them are quite nice. It was not really predictable where you might find one so it meant a lot of zig-zagging through various parts of the ruins to see every nook and cranny to make sure you don’t miss anything. I think it was worth it though. It was a lot of walking and even a fair bit of climbing steps and the like but I enjoyed every minute of it. It helped that the weather was all sun with a maybe 75F day an no real wind, though I think a touch of wind may have helped for cooling this off a bit at times.
They have a small museum with some relics that were taken out of the ruins and have been cleaned and put on display. There is also a gift shop (book store in Italy) and a cafeteria where I bought my pizza and beer and an ice cream bar. The pizza was not so great and the beer was a Scottish 9% version called Tennants Extra Strong I think. It was decent. The ice cream bar was a Togo classic which had very thick chocolate on the outside and vanilla ice cream inside. I liked it. There is also a section that displays some of the various marbles that were excavated and where they were from and what they were used for. It was interesting to see so many versions. I really know little about geology. This sorted of helped to point that out. Rock is rock, right?
When I was finally on my way out I was interested in seeing about the castle on the edge of town. It is in your face as soon as you get off the train basically so I hoped it was something I could visit. Walking around the wall to the square I found there was a small church and the entrance. It was closed but not locked and some people in cleaning uniforms were heading in at the same time. It turns out that the place would open for a tour at 3pm and it was just a bit past 2. While finding this out I met a woman from Canada named Kate who had just arrived in Rome today and was also curious to see the castle. Since we had near an hour to kill we decided to see if we could find a coffee and to chat. Her husband is a pilot (second woman married to a pilot I have met) for Air Canada. She was going to be going on a major Mediterranean cruise in the next couple days it sounded. We chatted about travel and killed the hour fairly easily. She has been to a lot of the place I have been to except many years before I went to them. We compared notes on how they were then to now. It was very interesting.
After finishing our coffees we headed back to the castle and were allowed to come in for the tour which amounted to a woman walking us to various rooms and waiting for us to be done looking. There were about 4 Italians and 2 Spanish people aside from us. The guide did not speak English at all. According to the Spanish people she was not really giving any history or the like, just taking people in to the rooms. I had already read on the signs outside the castle it was initially built in the 9th century and then redone in the 15th century and of course was almost entirely Christian based. There was some theory it might have been built on older ruins but it is speculation. In any event the castle was very nice and they were restoring some ceiling frescos. It has an outer wall and an inner keep with a tower. We got to the top room of the tower but it is enclosed. They have some artifacts in cases in the various rooms. I think the tour took maybe half an hour or so. I wasn’t fully watching the time. The unfortunate thing was that they didn’t allow pictures inside. I would have liked to take a few. Still for free it was definitely worth it.
When we had finished the tour both Kate and I were heading into Rome, her to a stop before mine so we rode the metro back together. It was much nicer train that announced next stops and the like but there were no seats available so we had to stand. In any event we talked until her stop then wished each other safe and enjoyable travels. When I got off the train I had to walk back to the hotel about 45 minutes or so and the I took a few minutes to start writing this because it was before dinner time being just a few minutes before 5pm. Most of the time it is easier to write while it is still fresh in my head and I haven’t clouded myself with too much beer or wine. All in all it was a very fine day. One of the best days I have had in Italy. Granted I had the whole drama of having the GPS stolen that really set me off for a while, the driving the car was a bit of an issue too, and I really didn’t like the cleanliness or visit value of Palermo but overall it has really been an enjoyable trip. That might be lost somewhat in the mix of my issues with my arrival in Sicily along with a couple of days of sort of crummy weather, but it has not really been a bad time at all. Those were blips that I eventually dealt with and moved on. Still today was pleasant and something very much in line with what I enjoy seeing and doing. And it is always great to meet nice people to chat with here and there. That obviously has happened more in Rome than in Sicily and I am grateful for it.
After the brief stop I walked the block really quickly to decide where to eat and ended up at the Trattoria Elektra which was right downstairs from my hotel. I had spaghetti aglia a olio a peperoncini for a primi and grilled sea bass for the secondi (not able to give the Italian name sorry). The pasta was decent but I make this at home on occasion and I believe mine is better. The sea bass was a whole fish presentation. I managed to get the vast majority of the meat but I had to fight through a few bones in the process. I accompanied this with a very gigantic beer (I didn’t think large meant keg sized) and followed everything up with a vanilla ice cream and coffee sauce dessert. This was by far my most expensive meal in Italy and though the food was good I won’t go back there. The service was reasonable but the prices are a touch high for my tastes. I realize I ate a lot of food but all the same I don’t think the bill amounted to what I did eat in the long run. If you accept the whole fish was the same cost as the fish I had at other restaurants then it really seems disproportionate. I suppose I could have made it cheaper by trying a tourist menu but I wanted what I ordered rather than what was on the tourist menu. As I said, the food was reasonably good but not for the prices.
From the end of dinner it was up to the room to watch some odd European sports channels then call it a night.
To get to Ostia Antica you really need to take a metro train from Rome. The best place for me was to walk to the Piramide station (right near the Pyramid of Sestia) and to get on there for the ride to Ostia Antica which is about half an hour. I could have taken the metro the whole way I assume but I like the walking and all that so rather than get in a dark crowded stuffy underground I would prefer to walk the 45 minutes or so to the train I needed to take. Vacations are supposed to be about relaxing and walking is a way I relax so it makes sense for me anyway.
I woke up at 7 and had breakfast at the hotel at 7:30 and was on my way to the train station. Armed with a lot more knowledge of how to get around the city it was probably less than 45 minutes to get to Piramide station. First I used a self cleaning bathroom which looked like the self cleaning part wasn’t working so well, and that for .50 Euro. Inside I bought a day pass metro ticket and then found myself confused as to which train to take. It says this way to Lido line but then the Lido line just says the name of the stop Porta St. Paolo. So I had to ask if it was the train I needed to take. It took a few minutes to get through this process but I boarded a train that departed at 8:45 or so. The train ride was about a half an hour. This train was not very clean and very shabby looking and didn’t have any announcements or anything so I just had to keep track of the stops myself which I guess wasn’t too difficult.
Arriving in Ostia you get out of the station and do a flyover walkway over the autostrada towards the site. On the way you see a castle wall and then as you get there you turn into Ostia Antica. The site costs 6.50 Euro to get in if I recall. I think it was highly worth it. The city of Ostia is all ancient Roman ruins without the various transformation that Christianity brought on in Italy. There is one Christian basilica ruin but that was from 400 AD or so. I realize that most all of it has fallen down and many of the buildings would be much taller than they are now but it is still amazing to think how people actually used to live there well over 2000 years ago.
The site is gigantic. I need to point that out. Getting there at about 9:15 or so I was inside the actual grounds until about 2pm, including only a few minutes for a pizza and beer lunch. It is the remains of a complete city that used to live on the banks of the Tiber. The problem is in the 15th century the river flooded and the course of the river changed so the site is no longer on the river but that might actually be for the best. There is still a fair amount of excavation and restoration going on but even then there is an unbelievable number of buildings to see and may different varieties whether they be warehouses, housing, hot baths, temples, stores or whatever. I would have to assume there are some liberties taken with some of the placements of statues and the like but overall it looks like they mainly have tried to dig up what they have found. Another cool thing is that there are a very large number of areas that are free reign to walk about. I mean there are more places you can go than can’t. It was neat to get inside some of the buildings and even into some more underground stuff. I am not sure if they are dug completely down to the original ground level. I suspect some buildings may have had cellars based on stairways and the like. In the common living areas it is obvious that the living quarters were overall very small. I am sure the wealthy had more to live in but still if the book I bought is accurate most of the buildings were made of non-flammable materials in an effort to reduce fires. They also had a fair amount of water collection and deposit to help deal with fires. It is believed due to their regulations they had a lot fewer fires than the city of Rome did in similar time.
Something that is found all over Ostia is mosaic floors. Whether in the mercantile area or in the baths or whatnot there are tons of black and white mosaics. I am sure most of what has been found is restored and according to their information boards they have had to recover from problems caused by poor restoration techniques in the 20th century. In many cases they had to go back to original photos in order to more accurately reproduce the corrupted versions that were created during initial restoration. Still there are tons of them all over the place and many of them are quite nice. It was not really predictable where you might find one so it meant a lot of zig-zagging through various parts of the ruins to see every nook and cranny to make sure you don’t miss anything. I think it was worth it though. It was a lot of walking and even a fair bit of climbing steps and the like but I enjoyed every minute of it. It helped that the weather was all sun with a maybe 75F day an no real wind, though I think a touch of wind may have helped for cooling this off a bit at times.
They have a small museum with some relics that were taken out of the ruins and have been cleaned and put on display. There is also a gift shop (book store in Italy) and a cafeteria where I bought my pizza and beer and an ice cream bar. The pizza was not so great and the beer was a Scottish 9% version called Tennants Extra Strong I think. It was decent. The ice cream bar was a Togo classic which had very thick chocolate on the outside and vanilla ice cream inside. I liked it. There is also a section that displays some of the various marbles that were excavated and where they were from and what they were used for. It was interesting to see so many versions. I really know little about geology. This sorted of helped to point that out. Rock is rock, right?
When I was finally on my way out I was interested in seeing about the castle on the edge of town. It is in your face as soon as you get off the train basically so I hoped it was something I could visit. Walking around the wall to the square I found there was a small church and the entrance. It was closed but not locked and some people in cleaning uniforms were heading in at the same time. It turns out that the place would open for a tour at 3pm and it was just a bit past 2. While finding this out I met a woman from Canada named Kate who had just arrived in Rome today and was also curious to see the castle. Since we had near an hour to kill we decided to see if we could find a coffee and to chat. Her husband is a pilot (second woman married to a pilot I have met) for Air Canada. She was going to be going on a major Mediterranean cruise in the next couple days it sounded. We chatted about travel and killed the hour fairly easily. She has been to a lot of the place I have been to except many years before I went to them. We compared notes on how they were then to now. It was very interesting.
After finishing our coffees we headed back to the castle and were allowed to come in for the tour which amounted to a woman walking us to various rooms and waiting for us to be done looking. There were about 4 Italians and 2 Spanish people aside from us. The guide did not speak English at all. According to the Spanish people she was not really giving any history or the like, just taking people in to the rooms. I had already read on the signs outside the castle it was initially built in the 9th century and then redone in the 15th century and of course was almost entirely Christian based. There was some theory it might have been built on older ruins but it is speculation. In any event the castle was very nice and they were restoring some ceiling frescos. It has an outer wall and an inner keep with a tower. We got to the top room of the tower but it is enclosed. They have some artifacts in cases in the various rooms. I think the tour took maybe half an hour or so. I wasn’t fully watching the time. The unfortunate thing was that they didn’t allow pictures inside. I would have liked to take a few. Still for free it was definitely worth it.
When we had finished the tour both Kate and I were heading into Rome, her to a stop before mine so we rode the metro back together. It was much nicer train that announced next stops and the like but there were no seats available so we had to stand. In any event we talked until her stop then wished each other safe and enjoyable travels. When I got off the train I had to walk back to the hotel about 45 minutes or so and the I took a few minutes to start writing this because it was before dinner time being just a few minutes before 5pm. Most of the time it is easier to write while it is still fresh in my head and I haven’t clouded myself with too much beer or wine. All in all it was a very fine day. One of the best days I have had in Italy. Granted I had the whole drama of having the GPS stolen that really set me off for a while, the driving the car was a bit of an issue too, and I really didn’t like the cleanliness or visit value of Palermo but overall it has really been an enjoyable trip. That might be lost somewhat in the mix of my issues with my arrival in Sicily along with a couple of days of sort of crummy weather, but it has not really been a bad time at all. Those were blips that I eventually dealt with and moved on. Still today was pleasant and something very much in line with what I enjoy seeing and doing. And it is always great to meet nice people to chat with here and there. That obviously has happened more in Rome than in Sicily and I am grateful for it.
After the brief stop I walked the block really quickly to decide where to eat and ended up at the Trattoria Elektra which was right downstairs from my hotel. I had spaghetti aglia a olio a peperoncini for a primi and grilled sea bass for the secondi (not able to give the Italian name sorry). The pasta was decent but I make this at home on occasion and I believe mine is better. The sea bass was a whole fish presentation. I managed to get the vast majority of the meat but I had to fight through a few bones in the process. I accompanied this with a very gigantic beer (I didn’t think large meant keg sized) and followed everything up with a vanilla ice cream and coffee sauce dessert. This was by far my most expensive meal in Italy and though the food was good I won’t go back there. The service was reasonable but the prices are a touch high for my tastes. I realize I ate a lot of food but all the same I don’t think the bill amounted to what I did eat in the long run. If you accept the whole fish was the same cost as the fish I had at other restaurants then it really seems disproportionate. I suppose I could have made it cheaper by trying a tourist menu but I wanted what I ordered rather than what was on the tourist menu. As I said, the food was reasonably good but not for the prices.
From the end of dinner it was up to the room to watch some odd European sports channels then call it a night.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Italy Day 12
Today I again started with a quick breakfast in the hotel and then on to the Castel St. Angelo. Of course I started out early and I didn’t stop as much to take pictures along the way so I ended up getting there at 8:30 and the place doesn’t open until 9am. So I opted to walk further up the river to the Piazza del Popoli. I think it took me about 20 minutes each way to get there. It is basically a square with an Egyptian obelisk and some fountains and the like. After the quick visit there I turned right around and visited the Castel. It is in truth a giant monument that had been used as a prison, residence of a pope and a few other things over time. I think the original foundation is Roman or maybe earlier and then it was modified and added to and rebuilt and the like until it is what it is today. It has an outer wall and you can get to the top terrace as well so there is a fair amount to do even though it is not really that big of a place. I stayed there for just a bit under two hours before moving on. The entry was 8 Euros but overall I think it was worth it. I am sure I took a fair number of pictures.
After leaving the Castel I moved on to see if I could visit the Mausoleum of Augustus but it is blatantly obvious that the location has been closed for quite some time and they do not appear to be renovating it currently. I do hope they intend to at some point. It has a high fence around it which made it tough to get any pictures of anything and it was all really overgrown inside with weeds and other plants that showed it hasn’t been open for the duration. This is the second of this type of monument I have run into that does not appear to be open. In any event I walked around it then onto the Via del Corso where I walked back up the Piazza del Popoli and then back downwards again where my goal was the Fountain of Trevi. It is obvious that the Via del Corso is one of the shopping streets in Rome. I basically rushed through it.
The Fountain was fully overrun with people. As with other places of interest there were at least a half a dozen walking tours eating up all the space and making it generally overcrowded. I took a few pictures. It really is a beautiful fountain but it would be much nicer without hundreds of people crawling all over it and intentionally getting in the way of your photos and the like. Since it was close to lunch time and I was near a McDonald’s I decided to not go Italian for lunch. I figured the crummy burger would give me some protein I have been skipping throughout most of my lunches in Italy and I could compare it off to the US version. I had a McBacon something. It was basically a bacon double cheeseburger with something like Russian dressing on it. It was ok. Very similar to the US. I think the fries are better in the US. The packaging claimed the burger was 100% Italian beef. In any event it was something to kill a bit of time and to fill my stomach and overall I was not disgusted with it.
After lunch I moved on and found the Pantheon. This was under some renovation on the outside so one half is all scaffolding which is of course disappointing. The outside obviously looks very Roman and old. It is free to get in. You can buy an audio guide but I rarely do that. It is a very large dome and it is very crowded again with walking tours and other people and at times is tough to move around in. The inside has been of course Christianized, what else would the Italians do. It is a bit disappointing because I would prefer the Roman stuff stay non-Christian but I guess that is a bit too much to ask for. It is in incredible condition on the inside and is very beautiful I will give it that. Really very nice for a free visit. I was overall happy with the monument though I would like to have seen what it looked like on the outside just a bit better without the scaffolding. You can’t have everything of course.
Next along the course was the Piazza Navona. It is a square with another obelisk built into a fountain and two other fountains on it. There are a ton of people selling cheesy artwork all over the square and the place was overrun with statue mimes as well which is a bit annoying. Still it was less crowded than the Fountain or the Pantheon was. I bought a coffee gelato here that was much better than the crema gelato I had the day before outside the basilica. I spent a few minutes wandering the square eating it then I moved back on my way.
I basically knew where I was and I opted to just do a couple side street dives to see if I could turn up anything interesting but really it just kept bringing me back to places I was familiar with. I ended up coming up to the side of the Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele II which is the very large white building with 2 chariot statues on either side of it. It is a very large building. What I found is that you can get up on the top through this side entrance. They have a small cafeteria and you can walk around the majority of the lower roof and take pictures of the Roman skyline. They also have a paid attraction which gets you up to the top of the building basically where the two statues are. The lift ride costs 7 Euro and I paid it to get up there. I should point out the weather was absolutely beautiful at about 76F or so and with minimal clouds. The rain feared from the day before never came to pass then and the rest of the week is supposed to be clear and warm (to me). The morning started off in the low 50sF but I didn’t bother with the sweatshirt as it would only be extra weight for me. You can tell the true northern non-European tourists around here because they don’t have coats. The rest are all bundled up like it is mid-winter at the north pole in this 75F+ weather. Ah well. The top of the monument might be the highest place you can get in Rome except the dome of the basilica. Of course that was mobbed and this was a lot less crowded so I liked it a lot. It probably helped that I hadn’t climbed thousands of stairs in sweltering heat before getting to the top. In any event it gives a great view of the Roman landscape and you can see pretty much to the mountains when the weather is this clear. I was very happy that I paid the 7 Euros even if it probably is a bit of a rip off considering how far from the edges the safety railings are set. It does make it a bit tough to get some of the better pictures I would have liked to get but all in all I managed with what I was looking for.
After returning to ground level and leaving the monument I decided to head in to the hotel to rest for a few minutes. It was still only about 3pm but I had to do some research and I wasn’t sure if places I wanted to go would be places to just look at or to go inside. I figured I could use the pit stop and get a few minutes of rest and to look at email and the like. The Hotel Milo does indeed have a wireless internet connection but I have to be sitting on my toilet to reach it which is sort of awkward. Anyway I stayed for less than an hour and armed myself with a few places to look towards for tomorrow. I walked down to the Quirinale which is the home of the Italian president after being a papal residence in the past. It is not very far from the hotel but involved directions I had not yet walked so I figured it would kill some time to find my way there then to work my way back because it was still very early for dinner. Of course the weather was still perfect so that wasn’t a problem at all. I was hoping that by the time I returned to the area of the hotel it would be getting dark and then I could find some food.
The building of the Quirinale is very large and I was unable to actually circumnavigate it because the roads don’t seem to follow around it correctly. Nonetheless I tried and found myself turned into some odd locations for a bit. I had a basic idea of where I was so I was not too concerned with being lost. Aside from that while Rome is a moderately large city I have managed to figure out the main streets well enough that I can find my way back to the hotel with relative ease. It helps that certain landmarks are taller than any of the buildings out there. I would assume that the city has building ordinances keeping any structures from getting too tall that weren’t some form of monument already. It makes for a nicer looking city after all. It also helps to make certain monuments more visible from different points of the city. Using that I walked my way back to around the Palantine (which was not a really efficient direction but I was still trying to kill time.
When I got back to the region of the hotel it was just a bit past 5pm. Early by Italian standards when it comes to dinner but I was ready to eat. Still I did a bit of a loop around to see what I wanted to eat though I think I had already made up my mind earlier in the day that I was going to have Chinese food for dinner, probably about the time I chose to have McDonald’s for lunch. Today became my food vacation from my vacation in that sense I guess. The restaurant was just starting collect guests though the largest table was Chinese. I bet they got better food than I got. In any event, I ordered a beer and chicken with green peppers, which was listed as spicy, along with a bowl of white rice. The food was not the best Chinese food I have ever had but it was not the worst either. The spicy chicken had a bit of spice to it. More than any of the all’arrabiatas I have had here so far so that was sort of nice. It did have some odd jelly-like black mushrooms that had little flavor and a very chewy texture. I ate those first to get them out of the way. There was also red and green bell peppers and peanuts in it. I ate the whole thing so either I was very hungry or I liked it. Not totally sure but I guess I probably liked it more than anything.
After dinner I walked back towards the hotel and found a market where I bought a beer and a bottle of water for the room. I had to use my house key to open the beer bottle because I don’t have an opener with me but I have gotten reasonably good at that trick. The key I have is perfect for pulling out the lips on the cap so it will bend and loosen. The beer was a special Moretti called Baffo D’oro and while at first it smelled like it was going to be skunked actually tasted decent. I had that while I wrote this before getting to my wireless point to post it.
After leaving the Castel I moved on to see if I could visit the Mausoleum of Augustus but it is blatantly obvious that the location has been closed for quite some time and they do not appear to be renovating it currently. I do hope they intend to at some point. It has a high fence around it which made it tough to get any pictures of anything and it was all really overgrown inside with weeds and other plants that showed it hasn’t been open for the duration. This is the second of this type of monument I have run into that does not appear to be open. In any event I walked around it then onto the Via del Corso where I walked back up the Piazza del Popoli and then back downwards again where my goal was the Fountain of Trevi. It is obvious that the Via del Corso is one of the shopping streets in Rome. I basically rushed through it.
The Fountain was fully overrun with people. As with other places of interest there were at least a half a dozen walking tours eating up all the space and making it generally overcrowded. I took a few pictures. It really is a beautiful fountain but it would be much nicer without hundreds of people crawling all over it and intentionally getting in the way of your photos and the like. Since it was close to lunch time and I was near a McDonald’s I decided to not go Italian for lunch. I figured the crummy burger would give me some protein I have been skipping throughout most of my lunches in Italy and I could compare it off to the US version. I had a McBacon something. It was basically a bacon double cheeseburger with something like Russian dressing on it. It was ok. Very similar to the US. I think the fries are better in the US. The packaging claimed the burger was 100% Italian beef. In any event it was something to kill a bit of time and to fill my stomach and overall I was not disgusted with it.
After lunch I moved on and found the Pantheon. This was under some renovation on the outside so one half is all scaffolding which is of course disappointing. The outside obviously looks very Roman and old. It is free to get in. You can buy an audio guide but I rarely do that. It is a very large dome and it is very crowded again with walking tours and other people and at times is tough to move around in. The inside has been of course Christianized, what else would the Italians do. It is a bit disappointing because I would prefer the Roman stuff stay non-Christian but I guess that is a bit too much to ask for. It is in incredible condition on the inside and is very beautiful I will give it that. Really very nice for a free visit. I was overall happy with the monument though I would like to have seen what it looked like on the outside just a bit better without the scaffolding. You can’t have everything of course.
Next along the course was the Piazza Navona. It is a square with another obelisk built into a fountain and two other fountains on it. There are a ton of people selling cheesy artwork all over the square and the place was overrun with statue mimes as well which is a bit annoying. Still it was less crowded than the Fountain or the Pantheon was. I bought a coffee gelato here that was much better than the crema gelato I had the day before outside the basilica. I spent a few minutes wandering the square eating it then I moved back on my way.
I basically knew where I was and I opted to just do a couple side street dives to see if I could turn up anything interesting but really it just kept bringing me back to places I was familiar with. I ended up coming up to the side of the Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele II which is the very large white building with 2 chariot statues on either side of it. It is a very large building. What I found is that you can get up on the top through this side entrance. They have a small cafeteria and you can walk around the majority of the lower roof and take pictures of the Roman skyline. They also have a paid attraction which gets you up to the top of the building basically where the two statues are. The lift ride costs 7 Euro and I paid it to get up there. I should point out the weather was absolutely beautiful at about 76F or so and with minimal clouds. The rain feared from the day before never came to pass then and the rest of the week is supposed to be clear and warm (to me). The morning started off in the low 50sF but I didn’t bother with the sweatshirt as it would only be extra weight for me. You can tell the true northern non-European tourists around here because they don’t have coats. The rest are all bundled up like it is mid-winter at the north pole in this 75F+ weather. Ah well. The top of the monument might be the highest place you can get in Rome except the dome of the basilica. Of course that was mobbed and this was a lot less crowded so I liked it a lot. It probably helped that I hadn’t climbed thousands of stairs in sweltering heat before getting to the top. In any event it gives a great view of the Roman landscape and you can see pretty much to the mountains when the weather is this clear. I was very happy that I paid the 7 Euros even if it probably is a bit of a rip off considering how far from the edges the safety railings are set. It does make it a bit tough to get some of the better pictures I would have liked to get but all in all I managed with what I was looking for.
After returning to ground level and leaving the monument I decided to head in to the hotel to rest for a few minutes. It was still only about 3pm but I had to do some research and I wasn’t sure if places I wanted to go would be places to just look at or to go inside. I figured I could use the pit stop and get a few minutes of rest and to look at email and the like. The Hotel Milo does indeed have a wireless internet connection but I have to be sitting on my toilet to reach it which is sort of awkward. Anyway I stayed for less than an hour and armed myself with a few places to look towards for tomorrow. I walked down to the Quirinale which is the home of the Italian president after being a papal residence in the past. It is not very far from the hotel but involved directions I had not yet walked so I figured it would kill some time to find my way there then to work my way back because it was still very early for dinner. Of course the weather was still perfect so that wasn’t a problem at all. I was hoping that by the time I returned to the area of the hotel it would be getting dark and then I could find some food.
The building of the Quirinale is very large and I was unable to actually circumnavigate it because the roads don’t seem to follow around it correctly. Nonetheless I tried and found myself turned into some odd locations for a bit. I had a basic idea of where I was so I was not too concerned with being lost. Aside from that while Rome is a moderately large city I have managed to figure out the main streets well enough that I can find my way back to the hotel with relative ease. It helps that certain landmarks are taller than any of the buildings out there. I would assume that the city has building ordinances keeping any structures from getting too tall that weren’t some form of monument already. It makes for a nicer looking city after all. It also helps to make certain monuments more visible from different points of the city. Using that I walked my way back to around the Palantine (which was not a really efficient direction but I was still trying to kill time.
When I got back to the region of the hotel it was just a bit past 5pm. Early by Italian standards when it comes to dinner but I was ready to eat. Still I did a bit of a loop around to see what I wanted to eat though I think I had already made up my mind earlier in the day that I was going to have Chinese food for dinner, probably about the time I chose to have McDonald’s for lunch. Today became my food vacation from my vacation in that sense I guess. The restaurant was just starting collect guests though the largest table was Chinese. I bet they got better food than I got. In any event, I ordered a beer and chicken with green peppers, which was listed as spicy, along with a bowl of white rice. The food was not the best Chinese food I have ever had but it was not the worst either. The spicy chicken had a bit of spice to it. More than any of the all’arrabiatas I have had here so far so that was sort of nice. It did have some odd jelly-like black mushrooms that had little flavor and a very chewy texture. I ate those first to get them out of the way. There was also red and green bell peppers and peanuts in it. I ate the whole thing so either I was very hungry or I liked it. Not totally sure but I guess I probably liked it more than anything.
After dinner I walked back towards the hotel and found a market where I bought a beer and a bottle of water for the room. I had to use my house key to open the beer bottle because I don’t have an opener with me but I have gotten reasonably good at that trick. The key I have is perfect for pulling out the lips on the cap so it will bend and loosen. The beer was a special Moretti called Baffo D’oro and while at first it smelled like it was going to be skunked actually tasted decent. I had that while I wrote this before getting to my wireless point to post it.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Italy Day 10
Day 10 was basically a transit day back to Rome. I got up kind of late at about 7:20 or so because I figured the longer I was awake the more time I would have to kill. I intentionally had not packed the night before so I would have to kill even more time. I was correct that today was an Italian holiday and a lot of the traffic was missing and the gas station I wanted to use was closed. I found this out with a scouting walk after I finished packing. I also found a hardware store where I bought a replacement lock before checking out of the hotel. It was incredibly windy out and stayed so till I was firmly entrenched in the airport.
It was really still too early but I was not sure what time checkout was and I was ready to be done with Palermo by this point anyway. So I made the short detour to the gas station and filled up before the surprisingly short ride to the airport. Even taking my time it was a half an hour or so. Returning the rental car was easy and the wait for the shuttle to the terminal was not long. This meant I had time to kill before I could check in. This flight was with AlItalia and I hoped my bag would make it unscathed. I ended up finishing my book on the wait to check in.
After check in I got lunch which was a slice of pizza and a Danish beer made by Royal. It was 7.7% alcohol by volume and not bad really. After lunch I went through the very easy security and waited still qite a while at the gate for the flight. At least AlItalia has assigned seats. That being said like any other flight to Rome I have taken it was delayed by nearly two hours. I was not really amused as an already long stay at the airport took even longer.
Boarding and exiting the plane both occurred outside rather than through an actual gate with a bus ride to boot. The flight itself was short and mostly uneventful except for a couple bumps. The passenger next to me was a middle aged man who sort of looked like Dr Rusty Venture if he had hair and it was brown. He did not smell too good and he kept fidgeting with his beard the whole flight. It was extremely annoying. We however did arrive and the new lock still looked secured at baggage claim. I was actually third bag off, which was nice. There was light rain in Rome. I was able to catch the train back to Rome almost exactly. A half hour ride again which meant about 6:45pm. As with theasy train ride into Rome it was already dark and I was cheated out of seeing the surrounding countryside yet again by the late flight.
I managed to get a first floor room (read as second floor in America) at the Hotel Milo this time instead of sixth which was nice. Since it was already so late after check in I opted to just go to La Mensa di Bacco again for dinner because it is right next door. It was very crowded but I ended up talking to a mother and daughter who were visiting Rome for a couple days after a cruise that started from Barcelona. They were extremely nice and it was good to hear a bit of English again. I had a bruschetta aglia i olio and penne all'arribiata. The bruschetta was excellent and the pasta was nice too. It had more spice than the other one I tried but perhaps still a bit tame. I followed up with a coffee and gelato. The daughter is married to a former air force man now Delta pilot and we shared a few travel stories. She was born in Vermont and they lived in Worcester after he got out of the air force for three years so that was the small world bit involved. They live in Utah now and her mom in Arizona. I do really envy her the free flying she gets due to her husband's job. It turned out to be a very nice end to a somewhat annoying day.
Please forgive errors in this post typed on my iPhone.
It was really still too early but I was not sure what time checkout was and I was ready to be done with Palermo by this point anyway. So I made the short detour to the gas station and filled up before the surprisingly short ride to the airport. Even taking my time it was a half an hour or so. Returning the rental car was easy and the wait for the shuttle to the terminal was not long. This meant I had time to kill before I could check in. This flight was with AlItalia and I hoped my bag would make it unscathed. I ended up finishing my book on the wait to check in.
After check in I got lunch which was a slice of pizza and a Danish beer made by Royal. It was 7.7% alcohol by volume and not bad really. After lunch I went through the very easy security and waited still qite a while at the gate for the flight. At least AlItalia has assigned seats. That being said like any other flight to Rome I have taken it was delayed by nearly two hours. I was not really amused as an already long stay at the airport took even longer.
Boarding and exiting the plane both occurred outside rather than through an actual gate with a bus ride to boot. The flight itself was short and mostly uneventful except for a couple bumps. The passenger next to me was a middle aged man who sort of looked like Dr Rusty Venture if he had hair and it was brown. He did not smell too good and he kept fidgeting with his beard the whole flight. It was extremely annoying. We however did arrive and the new lock still looked secured at baggage claim. I was actually third bag off, which was nice. There was light rain in Rome. I was able to catch the train back to Rome almost exactly. A half hour ride again which meant about 6:45pm. As with theasy train ride into Rome it was already dark and I was cheated out of seeing the surrounding countryside yet again by the late flight.
I managed to get a first floor room (read as second floor in America) at the Hotel Milo this time instead of sixth which was nice. Since it was already so late after check in I opted to just go to La Mensa di Bacco again for dinner because it is right next door. It was very crowded but I ended up talking to a mother and daughter who were visiting Rome for a couple days after a cruise that started from Barcelona. They were extremely nice and it was good to hear a bit of English again. I had a bruschetta aglia i olio and penne all'arribiata. The bruschetta was excellent and the pasta was nice too. It had more spice than the other one I tried but perhaps still a bit tame. I followed up with a coffee and gelato. The daughter is married to a former air force man now Delta pilot and we shared a few travel stories. She was born in Vermont and they lived in Worcester after he got out of the air force for three years so that was the small world bit involved. They live in Utah now and her mom in Arizona. I do really envy her the free flying she gets due to her husband's job. It turned out to be a very nice end to a somewhat annoying day.
Please forgive errors in this post typed on my iPhone.
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