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lillibetWe got up and out of the hotel at 7:30, sure that would give us enough time to walk to the vaporetto stop and make it to the train station for our 8:33am train. We were almost wrong. We docked as Jason's clock (which he'd set to the station's) said 8:30am and he ran ahead, with me coming as fast as I could under the weight of my pack. The train was there, ready to leave and he just stood in the doorway. Two staff people were on the platform waving for him to get on, get on, but he just pointed at me and they signaled the engineer to wait. The moment my foot was off the platform, the train started to move.
After that exciting beginning to our morning, the rest of the trip was uneventful. I worked on trip reports and read and we chatted a bit. Stopping in Florence we had a moment of nostalgia, feeling like we were back in "known" territory and it was almost tempting to get off again. But we stayed on until Rome, arriving just after 1:30pm. We grabbed a bite of lunch in the station and called our booking agent to meet us at our flat. She was on the doorstep when our cab pulled up.
Via Rasella 55 was an excellent flat for a few days. It was on the fourth floor (third European) floor, but there was a lift from the second floor to the fourth. It was so small that Jason had to go up with our bags while I hoofed it, but without luggage the two of us could just fit. The flat consisted of an entryway, a small living room with a dinette and a balcony overlooking the alley below, an alley kitchen complete with microwave, a tiny bedroom with a built-in double bed, and a bathroom with shower. The whole place was tiled in what I think was travertine...some kind of hard, polished stone. One of the funny things was that there was a huge amount of storage space, all in the form of cupboards that started about six feet off the ground and went up to the twelve-foot ceilings. Hard to imagine how they could really be used effectively. One of my favorite aspects of the place were the completely opaque shades that ran on tracks down the bedroom windows and fastened at the bottom, so it was possible to get the bedroom completely dark. There was only one towel and the shower was slightly too small, but generally it worked out very well for us.
The location was excellent. Via Rasella is a small street, but not without a story: in 1944 it was the site of an ambush of Nazi troops that led to a retaliatory massacre of 35 innocent Romans in a cave outside of town. It's just outside of Piazza Barberini, which is a bustling square at one end of the Via Veneto. The piazza has a metro stop and is a major bus hub, making public transportation very convenient. Plus, we were only two blocks from the Trevi Fountain and its coterie of restaurants and shops.
After dropping our bags and giving my sister, Beckie, a call to give her our phone number, we headed out to get started on the city. We walked over to the Trevi Fountain, an enormous Baroque marble work designed by Nicolas Salvi and built onto the backside of a Renaissance palace, which it appears to be taking over. From there we walked past the Palazzo Colonna, which houses an art gallery none of our guides recommended. We would our way through a maze of little streets until suddenly the space before us opened out and we were stunned by the sight of the glorious "Altar of the Nation," a memorial to commemorate Italian Unification and the life of King Vittorio Emanuele II. Given a chance to consider it, the monument is certainly overdone, but with its gleaming white marble topped by bronze horse-drawn chariots, it's breathtaking at first sight.
After pausing to admire Emperor Trajan's column, we walked up through the Vittoriano and then had to turn and come back down, because you can't actually get through to the sites behind it, as the map would indicate. We walked past the Fori Imperiali (built by various emperors as the original forum became too small for the public work of an empire) to the Foro Romano. That is an amazing place, a forest of the ruins of columns, arches, temples and meeting-places. Imagine the Mall in Washington, crammed into a much smaller space and abandoned for a couple millennia and you'll begin to get the picture. The most surprising thing, to me, was that the forum wasn't excavated until this century, mostly during the 30's. It was used as a quarry throughout the medieval and renaissance periods, with a few churches actually being built within the remains of temples.
From the forum, we wandered up onto the Palatine hill. We get our word "palace" from this hill, which was the site of the imperial palaces. Things to see there today include the ruins of the Domus Flavia and Domus Augustus, as well as the site of excavation of an Iron Age village that could be the first settlement of Rome and a small museum housing artifacts and statuary from all of these. The last stop on the hill is the Farnese Gardens, built over earlier ruins in the 16th century. There we found a wonderful fountain, with the water dripping from an enormous mound of moss into a pool beneath.
Descending the hill once more, we walked out of the Forum to the Colosseum. We had just missed the last entry time and so were taunted by the sight of people walking around inside, while we had to make do with the exterior view before turning back. We wound our way along the Via dei Serpenti and past the Qurinale Gardens. Jason's feet were very tired, so he went up to rest them while I explored the immediate neighborhood and found a little shop just around the corner where I could get cereal and yogurt for our breakfast. While I was on that errand, Jason figured out where we should eat, from a book of Italian trattorias that Trish had given us as an anniversary present.
La Colline Emiliane--two blocks from our flat-- specializes in the cuisine of the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, which lies between Tuscany (where Florence is) and the Veneto (where Venice is). The book had praised their mortadella, their fresh pasta and their boiled meats, so we made sure to try all of those. We started with plates of salami and mortadella and the latter was very tasty and a far cry from Oscar-Meyer's bologna. For primi, Jason had the tagliatelle with meat sauce, which was very light and tasty. The highlight of the whole meal, however, was my plate of meat tortellini in chicken broth. It was a classic case of a simple dish done perfectly: the lightest pasta ever made, filled with freshly ground meat, in a simple broth. Jason bravely chose the boiled beef with green sauce (manzo lesso con salsa verde), two slices of fairly dry pot roast with a parsley pesto to moisten it. My breaded veal topped with ham & cheese was tasty, but the cheese sauce was sharp enough to overwhelm the taste of the meat. Having walked through the kitchen while they were preparing the desserts, I couldn't resist trying their zabaione (which made it onto other menus as "zabaglione"), a light custard with Marsala wine, served with ladyfingers. Without the cookies it was too eggy, but with them to balance the flavors, it was a very light and tasty end to a long day.
Next, visiting the Pope...
After that exciting beginning to our morning, the rest of the trip was uneventful. I worked on trip reports and read and we chatted a bit. Stopping in Florence we had a moment of nostalgia, feeling like we were back in "known" territory and it was almost tempting to get off again. But we stayed on until Rome, arriving just after 1:30pm. We grabbed a bite of lunch in the station and called our booking agent to meet us at our flat. She was on the doorstep when our cab pulled up.
Via Rasella 55 was an excellent flat for a few days. It was on the fourth floor (third European) floor, but there was a lift from the second floor to the fourth. It was so small that Jason had to go up with our bags while I hoofed it, but without luggage the two of us could just fit. The flat consisted of an entryway, a small living room with a dinette and a balcony overlooking the alley below, an alley kitchen complete with microwave, a tiny bedroom with a built-in double bed, and a bathroom with shower. The whole place was tiled in what I think was travertine...some kind of hard, polished stone. One of the funny things was that there was a huge amount of storage space, all in the form of cupboards that started about six feet off the ground and went up to the twelve-foot ceilings. Hard to imagine how they could really be used effectively. One of my favorite aspects of the place were the completely opaque shades that ran on tracks down the bedroom windows and fastened at the bottom, so it was possible to get the bedroom completely dark. There was only one towel and the shower was slightly too small, but generally it worked out very well for us.
The location was excellent. Via Rasella is a small street, but not without a story: in 1944 it was the site of an ambush of Nazi troops that led to a retaliatory massacre of 35 innocent Romans in a cave outside of town. It's just outside of Piazza Barberini, which is a bustling square at one end of the Via Veneto. The piazza has a metro stop and is a major bus hub, making public transportation very convenient. Plus, we were only two blocks from the Trevi Fountain and its coterie of restaurants and shops.
After dropping our bags and giving my sister, Beckie, a call to give her our phone number, we headed out to get started on the city. We walked over to the Trevi Fountain, an enormous Baroque marble work designed by Nicolas Salvi and built onto the backside of a Renaissance palace, which it appears to be taking over. From there we walked past the Palazzo Colonna, which houses an art gallery none of our guides recommended. We would our way through a maze of little streets until suddenly the space before us opened out and we were stunned by the sight of the glorious "Altar of the Nation," a memorial to commemorate Italian Unification and the life of King Vittorio Emanuele II. Given a chance to consider it, the monument is certainly overdone, but with its gleaming white marble topped by bronze horse-drawn chariots, it's breathtaking at first sight.
After pausing to admire Emperor Trajan's column, we walked up through the Vittoriano and then had to turn and come back down, because you can't actually get through to the sites behind it, as the map would indicate. We walked past the Fori Imperiali (built by various emperors as the original forum became too small for the public work of an empire) to the Foro Romano. That is an amazing place, a forest of the ruins of columns, arches, temples and meeting-places. Imagine the Mall in Washington, crammed into a much smaller space and abandoned for a couple millennia and you'll begin to get the picture. The most surprising thing, to me, was that the forum wasn't excavated until this century, mostly during the 30's. It was used as a quarry throughout the medieval and renaissance periods, with a few churches actually being built within the remains of temples.
From the forum, we wandered up onto the Palatine hill. We get our word "palace" from this hill, which was the site of the imperial palaces. Things to see there today include the ruins of the Domus Flavia and Domus Augustus, as well as the site of excavation of an Iron Age village that could be the first settlement of Rome and a small museum housing artifacts and statuary from all of these. The last stop on the hill is the Farnese Gardens, built over earlier ruins in the 16th century. There we found a wonderful fountain, with the water dripping from an enormous mound of moss into a pool beneath.
Descending the hill once more, we walked out of the Forum to the Colosseum. We had just missed the last entry time and so were taunted by the sight of people walking around inside, while we had to make do with the exterior view before turning back. We wound our way along the Via dei Serpenti and past the Qurinale Gardens. Jason's feet were very tired, so he went up to rest them while I explored the immediate neighborhood and found a little shop just around the corner where I could get cereal and yogurt for our breakfast. While I was on that errand, Jason figured out where we should eat, from a book of Italian trattorias that Trish had given us as an anniversary present.
La Colline Emiliane--two blocks from our flat-- specializes in the cuisine of the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, which lies between Tuscany (where Florence is) and the Veneto (where Venice is). The book had praised their mortadella, their fresh pasta and their boiled meats, so we made sure to try all of those. We started with plates of salami and mortadella and the latter was very tasty and a far cry from Oscar-Meyer's bologna. For primi, Jason had the tagliatelle with meat sauce, which was very light and tasty. The highlight of the whole meal, however, was my plate of meat tortellini in chicken broth. It was a classic case of a simple dish done perfectly: the lightest pasta ever made, filled with freshly ground meat, in a simple broth. Jason bravely chose the boiled beef with green sauce (manzo lesso con salsa verde), two slices of fairly dry pot roast with a parsley pesto to moisten it. My breaded veal topped with ham & cheese was tasty, but the cheese sauce was sharp enough to overwhelm the taste of the meat. Having walked through the kitchen while they were preparing the desserts, I couldn't resist trying their zabaione (which made it onto other menus as "zabaglione"), a light custard with Marsala wine, served with ladyfingers. Without the cookies it was too eggy, but with them to balance the flavors, it was a very light and tasty end to a long day.
Next, visiting the Pope...
