After arriving at the main train station in Rome we went to a “tourist information booth” and were told what I can only imagine translates to: “Fuck off!” Welcome to Rome.
Our friends who live in Italy (one born there) admitted the country has an antagonistic attitude toward tourists. Can’t live with them (tourists are everywhere and trampling all over your history), can’t live without them (the Italian economy is essentially clothes and tourists at this point after the recession hollowed out traditional labor industries). The resentment is palpable, but also understandable. It’s a striking contrast to the enormous warmth of the Swiss we experienced a few days earlier. Sam and I started a running contest after Milan to find someone in Italy that would interact with us in an authentically nice way. It would take us until our second day in Rome, talking to a bored Vatican souvenir shop cashier to find that, and it vanished again until dinner in Venice (more on that later).
Eventually, we found our own way to the standing room only sweaty sardine can (only sardines don’t have cigarette breath) without air conditioning that Rome calls a public bus. We got off at the closest stop, but still had fifteen minutes of rolling our luggage over the hard cobblestone streets (I swore I’d be a Samsonite customer for life if my wheels survived) to reach our hotel by (and named after) the bridge over the river Tiber.
We discovered the hard way that, unlike Switzerland, the public transportation systems are designed for the use of regular Italians (going to work away from the historic core), not tourists. One would think getting a hop-on, hop-off bus ticket would be a good idea, but the Italians are smarter than that: to get a hop-on ticket you’re required to purchase a regular metro pass too!
However, the truth is that in Rome (as in most Italian cities) the tourist spots are all very close together, as they were all built at a time when the fastest transportation system was a horse, and most people didn’t own one. If nothing else, Italian cities are effortlessly walkable. Well, except for the effort of walking on those stone streets. Over the next few days, I developed a blister the size of a sixth toe from walking in the heat.
Sam picked a locally famous restaurant for dinner. Like many other exclusive eateries in Italy, this one opened at 7pm. Arriving early, we decided to walk to the nearby castle of Saint Angelo.
When we came back, we joined a line of diners and received the penultimate last table in the tiny restaurant. It was so tiny, in fact, that there were no two-seat tables. We shared a table, elbow to elbow, with a retired couple from Boston.
The food wasn’t the best, but the wine was cheap and plentiful. We spent the next 2.5 hours sharing drunken stories of dangerous travels (our stories of Iceland and their’s of bears in Alaska) while a line of jealous onlookers glared from the doorway (our table abutted the open door).
We had planned to walk the Janiculum, across the river from our hotel, that first night, but leaving the restaurant late and inebriated left us little to do but stumble home.
Friday we slept in to chase away hangovers before heading to the total clusterfuck (yes, this post has cursing – because Rome has cursing, and somewhat deserves cursing) of the Vatican Museum. After waiting in line for our reserved “skip the line” tickets we were herded through the antiquities elbow to elbow with all the other tourists.
Our experience had already been soiled by the process by which Vatican City passes out information on-site. Instead of docents, rangers, police, or any other kind of public official, the Vatican is teeming with private “tour guides” who masquerade as public information resources but really are only interested in you to sell an unnecessary (personal audio tour machines are available inside) and overpriced tour. We did notice, however, that once you show them you already have tickets and need to know where to go they are (I’m guessing legally) obligated to tell you. Their smiles turn upside down upon realizing they won’t get a sale. Some don’t even waste words anymore and just point. The actual entrance to the Vatican Museum is a far walk, halfway around Vatican City, from that famous plaza you see on TV.
We were most surprised to find the food inside is worse than 7-11’s version of Italian and the staff is somehow even more annoyed to be “at work today.” We made sure to trudge through the entire museum (Sam enjoyed this quite a bit more than I) and visited the Sistine Chapel twice before going around the corner to wait an hour and a half in the sun to see St. Peter’s Basilica.
While the museum felt like a slog, the beautiful church was (as it was designed to be) awe-inspiring. To boot, it had far fewer visitors despite all of them being free to walk (with a few exceptions) the vast ornate chamber.
Eventually, we made our way to the dome ticket office and took a leisurely hike up to enjoy a nice breeze at the top. There’s even a little restaurant up there, bathrooms, and water fountains just behind the famous statues of the saints on the front facade of St. Peter’s.
Back on the ground we walked through the crypt and discovered it ends with even more things inside St. Peter’s we didn’t see on the first walk-through with general admission.
As the sun dropped over the dome we ended our visit to Vatican City with pasta and pizza. However, again we were disappointed with the quality.
In the long light of evening, we hiked up and through the tree-lined city overlooking monuments of the Janiculum.
We took a turn downward at the Tempietto and went in search of Trastevere for gelato, but ended up finding a lot more.
Wandering Trastevere is a bit like wandering Venice Beach; a tight clutch of young bohemian night crawlers searching for cheap drinks and even cheaper entertainment. We finally found the authentic beating heart of bohemian Rome. We saw merchants selling art, spices, and trinkets.
We salivated in shop windows at gorgeous pizza and sandwiches, wishing we hadn’t eaten earlier.
We watched the ends of two different fire twirling acts within blocks if each other.
Somewhat ironically this hip area ends at the Ponte Sisto, immediately across the river from our hotel. This information would have been more useful 24 hours prior and would be useless the next (last) night as we had already scheduled dinner with friends.
Back at the hotel, I saw that the blister forming on my toe had swelled to nearly equal its host in size. Mitigating this monster would be a constant concern for the next week. Using the tools at hand (hotel sewing kit) we popped and bandaged it. Band-aids and alcohol would be on the to-do list tomorrow.
On Saturday, we rose a bit earlier to try and beat the weekend crowds to the Colosseum. This time our skip the line tickets really did let us do that and we walked through the Colosseum much easier than the Vatican.
Even though our tickets included the ruins we decided to skip it as we were hungry (and tired already even before noon) and the entrance queue was backing up down to the colosseum. After all, you can see the ruins without actually going down into them.
We chose to eat at a place adjacent to the Altar of the Fatherland and were, again, disappointed in the quality. Minutes later we were at the top of the Altar.
It was hot. The sky was gray not from rain but unmoving humidity. A ghost of the sky hung over Rome, making its inhabitants wet not from precipitation but from osmosis.
The Pantheon was at least cooler inside but packed with tourists.
We walked to the adjacent Piazza Navona before seeking out what Sam would declare her favorite gelateria of the trip: Frigidarium. What this literal hole-in-the-wall gelateria does differently is dip your gelato in liquid chocolate with a cookie and wait for it to harden before handing it back. The result is delicious but messy. Everyone walks away with hands dripping uncontrollably and nowhere to sit down to mitigate the damage. However, as with most neighborhoods in Rome, there is a public water spigot not far away you can drink from or wash your hands in.
Our legs were too tired to continue walking so we took a bus to Trevi Fountain. Even more than the Vatican Museum, Trevi Fountain was overflowing with tourists to the point where it was more interesting to photograph the spectacle of crushed humanity fighting for selfie space than the famous water sculpture.
We took another bus to St. Maggiore.
After roaming under high ceilings for a bit we decided to skip our last destination (a city gate) and head back to the hotel for a much-needed shower.
Days before our visit Sam had coordinated with her friend who splits her residence between Rome and Bangkok for a dinner visit. We ate the best (and most plentiful) plates we would have in Rome and then proceeded to another gelateria. They first tried to tell us we would walk there, just to see the looks of horror on our faces. Instead, we (both women brought their young sons) poured into a tiny Volkswagen and whipped us around the city on the ancient bumpy streets.
Sunday morning we had bad pizza (you’re seeing the theme by now, right?) outside the train station before boarding a high-speed train to Venice.
