Rome – Part 2

Thursday, July 14

We checked out of our hotel and got coffees and pastries from our favorite corner cafe again. Just as we were headed out we asked the front desk guy where the nearest taxi stand is so we could get one to the bus station. “Oh no no no!” he said, “there is a taxi strike! Don’t take a taxi.” We freaked out for a second before he told us there is a light rail next to the train station that would take us directly to the bus station.

It was one of the easiest things. We bought tickets at a little stand and the light rail came almost immediately. It was a quick ride out into the country side and then we found ourselves at the bus station an hour before our scheduled bus.

So we got a sandwich and hung out in the air conditioning. The bus came right on time. The bus ride to Rome was smooth and went by quick. One man stunk so bad of stale cigarettes I thought I might be sick and another man was sniffing snot back into his head so loudly and aggressively that I thought he was going to be sick. Luckily we were driving through beautiful Tuscany and I noticed many of the fields were completely full of giant sunflowers.

As we neared the Rome bus station I started a text conversation with our Airbnb host. He said there were also taxi protests in Rome and that the police had blocked off several major streets which would affect our ability to take the bus. He gave us new instructions: take the metro line A and then one of three potential buses.

We got the metro, found the bus stops, got on one of them. Immediately it had to veer off its scheduled course because of street closures. We watched our location on google maps as we went the wrong way for several blocks and then the driver corrected and we went back toward our stop. Hurray! We got out and walked through a maze of really old streets to our Airbnb, right in the middle of the Jewish Ghetto. The street is filled with Jewish-style Italian restaurants that we couldn’t wait to try.

We met our host and he showed us the four keys needed to open the four doors to the apartment (two for the front, two for the apartment). He also showed us that the AC is broken but that if you drain off the water (which only takes five minutes) it works fine. He didn’t mention that this draining needed to happen about every hour, which we found out pretty quickly.

We found the nearest grocery store and stocked up with dinner, breakfast, and cocktail supplies. We went ahead and bought a bottle of Prosecco and Aperol because we were having so many Aperol spritzes we might as well make them ourselves and save some euros.

We made a nice Italian dinner of ravioli and sausages. While we were cooking the door buzzer went off and wouldn’t stop buzzing. I ran outside to see if someone was pressing the button, but no one was there. It buzzed sporadically whenever someone entered the building. Then, for no apparent reason, it turned on and stayed on and it was SO LOUD. I messaged our host and he had no idea what was wrong. Thankfully, it finally stopped.

After dinner we went to the Campo de’ Fiori to meet our guide for a ghost tour! There was a good group of people on the tour: two younger Californian girls, a family of four from Belgium, two women from The Netherlands, and two couples from England that admitted they arrived in Rome earlier that afternoon and had been drinking since.

Our guide did not immediately tell us where she was from but later revealed that she was from Peru but her dad worked in Italy in the Brazilian embassy. This personal story was revealed because the Brazilian embassy building is one of the prettiest in Rome, a former palace. Our guide told a story of the woman that used to live in the palace and how she still haunts the embassy to this day.

We also learned about poor Giordano Bruno, who was tortured and killed by the Catholic Church because he believed the earth was not the center of the universe. They burned him slowly at the stake in 1600 in Campo de’ Fiori, right where we stood. This plaza is now filled with restaurants and bars and is one of the only squares in Rome where you can’t see a church.

Our guide led us along and told a range of stories about ghosts, prisons, “witches”, executioners and trash. We stopped at one spot where she read a sign in Latin that said ‘do not dump your trash here’ under which was a big pile of trash. Even funnier, while we stood there the garbage truck came and they loaded the bags in because that was a designated garbage spot!

Sadly, the thing we had wanted to see most was a church full of bone sculptures that is under renovation (and apparently has been for a while). Still, we could look at the outside and the cool carved poster that says “today I die, tomorrow, you” and has a slot under it for donations. The church was used by a group of monks who took on the task of collecting the city’s dead during the plague years. With so many body parts and the river overflowing all the time (so burying was tricky) they repurposed bones to make chandeliers, crosses, and other churchy objects.

We ended at Ponte (bridge) Sant’Angelo which crosses the Tiber River to Castel Sant’Angelo. Our guide explained that the woman that haunts the Brazilian embassy is sometimes seen escaping over this bridge in her chariot, late at night. The bridge also goes into the neighborhood of Trastevere, where tons of bars and clubs are. Drunks are typically better attuned to seeing ghosts, so this tracks.

We said goodbye to the group and Carl and I crossed the bridge to look at the Castle up close. Our guide had mentioned that it used to be less castle-y and more monument-y but that the popes had erected a secreted passageway out of the Vatican to the castle and had subsequently fortified it.

We walked back toward our Airbnb along the river. All of a sudden we saw something huge and bright orange in the sky. It was the moon!! It was hanging low in the horizon and it was just about as big and as deep orange as we’ve ever seen it. We called it our Aperol moon and took that as a sign to go home and have a spritz.

The door buzzer didn’t go off anymore so we reasoned it must have been ghosts that were appeased by the Aperol and olives we left out for them.

Friday, July 15

Carl made an ‘Italian-American breakfast’ of eggs with Asiago cheese, grilled tomatoes and prosciutto. Yum! Then we walked over to the Pantheon. It was only about 10am and it was already HOT.

When we arrived to the Pantheon I didn’t recognize it because the outside was so drab. Back in its day, it would’ve been covered in bronze and marble. But, these materials have all been pilfered for other buildings such as the bronze altar in the Vatican.

We got audio guides which was a nice change of pace for us. It was a good guide but so heavily focused on all the Christian sculptures and paintings and didn’t delve enough into the symbolic architecture. It did mention how the oculus, the hole in the middle of the dome, let’s in sunlight in accordance with times of the year. For example, at noon on the summer solstice, the beam of light hits the front entrance. During the winter solstice, the beam highlights the high altar.

From the Pantheon it was a short walk to the Trevi Fountain. I had seen pictures of the Trevi Fountain online but did not expect it to be as big and shiny and bright as it was. There were also a million tourists yelling, pushing, and jostling to get a cute photo. It was hot and loud so we quickly took our photos and left.

To cool down we swung over to Il Gelato di San Crispino, where our guide the night before told us the Pope gets his gelato. The gelato was in metal tins with muted colors, unlike the piles of color at other shops. Our guide had told us this was a sign of real gelato. We tried the wild honey and the pistachio, with the honey gelato being some of the best we’ve had in Italy.

Not quite ready to call it quits, we walked over to Piazza Venezia to check out the massive monument sometimes referred to as the ‘typewriter’ which stands almost in the middle of Rome.

It was free entry and the path led us up the steps, through the building, and up to the lookout on the other side. We could see the Colosseum and the Vatican’s dome. There was an option to take an elevator to the top but it was 12 euro and did I mention it was SO HOT?!

It was a short walk back to our Airbnb and we decided to get a big lunch at a Jewish-Italian restaurant. We went to Giggetto, which was recommended to us by Faby (our guide from over a week ago) and our Airbnb host, so we figured it must be good.

We got Jewish-style fried artichoke and fried, anchovie filled zucchini flower, which was weird but good. We split spaghetti carbonara which was very eggy and cheesy, and roast lamb. The lamb was a big ol’ hunk of meat but it was flavorful and good.

Stuffed and hot, we went back to our Airbnb to chill in the AC for a while. I worked on the blog and Carl booked day trips for us for the upcoming weeks. The AC shut off about every hour and Carl had to go turn it off and drain it. Meanwhile, I kept us fully quenched with multiple rounds of Aperol spritzes.

Saturday, July 16

We had booked a looong tour of the Vatican to make sure we saw everything. This meant starting at 7:30am which meant leaving our Airbnb at 6:45am. Despite trying to rest up the day before, I hadn’t slept well and woke up with a sore throat and a headache. I decided to wear a mask and power through.

We met up with our tour group at one of the fountains outside the basilica. Our guide, Sara, asked us to take note of how long the line was because later we would see how the line would lengthen across the courtyard and around with a wait time of over an hour. Getting there at 7:30 meant we could get through faster, and with fewer tourists already inside.

Sara pointed out the Swiss guards, who are guards that were born in Switzerland and specially trained to protect the pope at all costs. They still wear the same red and yellow outfit as was designed in the 1500s to match the house colors of the pope that instated them.

She led us into the plaza and up to the dome climb. There was an elevator for part of it and then a series of winding stairs that followed the curve of the dome, all the way up. From the top we could feel a nice breeze and look out onto all of Rome. At some point Rome declared that no building could be built taller than the Vatican Dome so we really did have the best view of the city from up there.

When we got back down we were given a chance to look at the inside of the Basilica which was covered in every direction with gold. We also saw Michelangelo’s sculpture, Pietà, which depicts Mary holding Jesus. In the 1970s a man attacked the sculpture and broke off Mary’s nose and fingers. The sculpture was restored, but now sits behind bullet-proof glass.

Sara led us down into the crypts where we could see the original church’s foundations and columns and the tombs of popes that did not make it to be Saints, and so could not be buried in the basilica itself. We went back outside and were led to a cafe to buy coffees and snacks before the next part of the tour.

Sara led us around to the museum entrance. Some people left our group and some new people joined. There was a family of four that joined and seemed to be having a melt down from the start.

Sara told us that if we spent one second looking at every artifact in the Vatican museums we would be there for a whole year. We didn’t believe her until she led us through a maze of rooms filled with items. There were sculptures, tapestries, pantings, pottery, jewelry, etc. The museum consists of items collected by popes since the 16th century.

As she led us around she mentioned a story about one time a tour participant asked where the emergency exits are. They asked, “what happens when there’s a fire?” Well, the building was built hundreds of years before the idea of building codes were invented. Plus, the Vatican has their own fire fighters who are the ones responsible for building a new stove every time a new pope is chosen. So, if there is a fire? You have to pray your way out.

Among our favorite sections were the map gallery which shows maps painted in 1580 of Italy and the world as seen from the pope’s perspective (so southern Italy is upside down).

Also the Raphael rooms which are four rooms painted by Raphael in early 1500s and intended for apartment rooms for Pope Julius II. The frescoes take up all of the visual space of the walls and ceiling. The most famous and interesting fresco was The School of Athens which depicts famous people like Aristotle, Plato, Euclid, and Ptolemy just hanging out and chatting to each other.

Finally, it was time to see the Sistine Chapel and the massive ceiling and wall frescoes done by Michelangelo within which is the famous, The Creation of Adam. By this point in the tour, several participants had dropped off like flies, including that poor family with two whiny kids. Before the chapel Sara said goodbye and we were left to see it for ourselves and find the exit.

She didn’t accompany us into the chapel because it is considered a holy place of worship and you are not supposed to talk (or take pictures). But imagine telling hundreds of people not to talk as they pile into an enclosed room the length and width of a high school gym and strain their necks to look at famous works of art above them. The guards had a microphone and kept asking people to be silent, but it was useless.

Carl and I tried to whisper to each other what we thought each of the paintings were depicting (and later found we were mostly correct) and to point out interesting features. Carl pointed out an image of a cat and dog fighting at the base of the table in a painting of the Last Supper. As if we were in high school, I said the dog looked just like a possum and we started uncontrollably laughing under our breath at the thought that Michelangelo thought it was important to show a cat and possum fighting during the last supper.

We exited the chapel and tried to find the exit from the Vatican but we were looped around another maze of rooms. We went through more museum rooms, a food court, the gardens, and several gift shops before being spat out in front of the museum entrance. From there we walked all the way around the Vatican and back across the Tiber river to our Airbnb.

It was 2pm and it was so hot and we felt exhausted. We took a nap and shower and recovered ourselves by dinner time.

For dinner we decided to try one of the famous restaurants we’d heard about in Trastevere, the hip neighborhood just across the river from us. We found the first place on our list, Trattoria de Enzo, and the line outside of it stretched down the whole block. Several people had Aperol spritzes in hand, suggesting they had prepared for the wait they were about to endure.

We didn’t have that much patience so we went to place number two, Nannarella, and were able to get a table for two inside just before a big line formed. We ordered the bruschetta sampler, Nanarella noodles with eggplant, olives, capers, tomatoes, and the meatballs in oxtail sauce. We also got a bottle of the house red wine which came in a very stained Chianti bottle.

We stuffed ourselves and it didn’t help that the water was sparkling, not still, so we were the most full we had felt in a long time. We waddled back to our Airbnb and vowed to not eat so much next time.

Sunday, July 17

We didn’t have set plans for the day, having already done all of our bucket list items for Rome. I woke up feeling more sick, and I think Carl’s sickness crept up on him as the day wore on.

We decided to go see Pope Francis for the Sunday midday blessing and then get lunch and go from there. We walked over to the Vatican and had to go through two different security checks before being allowed to enter the main plaza.

We stood, sweating, in the direct sun, waiting for the Pope to come out from his teeny tiny window. What little shade there was underneath the colonnade was packed shoulder to shoulder with people, and we wouldn’t have been able to see his window from there anyway.

But he came out promptly at noon and spoke, in Italian, for 13 minutes. All around us people were cheering for Pope Francis as if he were a soccer star. At one point they even sung, “Oleeeeeé, olé, olé, olé, Papaaaa, Francis” We couldn’t understand the sermon in Italian but we did here him mention Sri Lanka and the indigenous people in Canada, so we know he was somehow weaving current events into his blessing.

Afterward we walked back toward our Airbnb and went to a restaurant we had spotted before, just on the edge of Campi de Fiori. We got one of the last tables and sat down before realizing we had no idea how expensive the place was. We ordered Aperol Spritzes and two pastas to share. We got gnocchi with tomato sauce and mozzarella and a thick, spaghetti-like noodle with greens and bits of fried pork cheek that was probably the best dish we’ve had in Italy.

Learning our lesson from the day before, we got the remnants of the gnocchi boxed up and went home to nap away the hot hours. To save money and stay cool we decided to have omelettes of leftovers for dinner. Then we finally watched Roman Holiday.

Monday, July 18

We had to check out at 10am but our bus to Naples wasn’t until 3pm. We figured we may as well head to the bus station, where google said there were some cafés, and hang out there versus a café in the city.

When we arrived at the bus station we realized our plan was a mistake. The FlixBus stop had no signs. We recognized where we had been dropped off several days before and this lat/long matched the spot on google maps for FlixBus but other than that there was absolutely no way of knowing that’s where the bus would be. The random spot in the parking lot was fully in the sun with no seating. So we set off to find a café to pass the hours in.

We then realized that all the cafés were across a highway. We crossed underground using the metro path and then walked along the freeway to a place that had eight 5 star reviews. Walking along a busy freeway in 96 degrees, with all our stuff on our backs, and a stuffy nose was a literal hell.

We got to Gusto & Style restaurant and were happy to find it open and staffed with a very nice (Albanian?) family that spoke no English. As we walked in they looked shocked at our appearance and said in Italian “very hot outside!” as they rushed to turn on every fan they owned and point it at us. We got a weird pizza to share (prosciutto, black olive, artichoke hearts, and boiled egg). We took our time eating and were able to kill a couple hours.

Not wanting to overstay (and in need of WiFi) we left and walked back up the hell street to a smaller, greasier looking café called Tex cafe where we got espressos and WiFi.

Too early we walked back to the bus station. There was a flea market type area with EZ ups covering tables piled with clothes selling for 1 Euro or even .5 Euro. Carl got a lightweight long sleeve shirt and I got an iPhone headphones adaptor (because I had just left mine at the Airbnb).

We found an area under a tree that was in the shade, adjacent to a pile of trash, but near where the bus was supposed to come. We joked that we should’ve got some beers to drink out of paper bags to really set the scene. Perhaps even a fire in a metal trash can.

As we stood there, 6 different people came up and asked us where the FlixBus stop was. We said that we could make no guarantees, but we thought it was right there (pointing to the spot of asphalt a couples meters away that was literally sizzling).

One guy with a European accent smiled and replied, “ok, we also pray”. An (Italian?) woman set her stuff down in the dirt, right next to ours, as if we had adopted her. Two guys that asked us then said they would be right back, that they wanted to buy something at the market, and then they never came back.

Right on time the bus pulled up and a confused throng of people came out of bushes and other hiding spots to climb onto the bus. The Italian woman that we had adopted went up to the driver and yelled at him to which he shrugged off quietly, cigarette in mouth, both hands up in the air.

For the record, our bus ticket was 4 Euro per person for the 3 hour journey from Rome to Naples. While it wasn’t a pleasant wait, perhaps that’s what a cheap bus ride wait is all about.

The ride went by fast despite two young Canadian (?) girls talking SO loudly, gossiping terribly about their friends (poor Jules), the time they overdosed (!!), and telling very awful boring stories about Ryan Air flights and lost vape pens. Finally they fell asleep and we rode into Naples…