May 23
It was another beautiful day in Rome; our warmest yet in the low 70s and sunny. We started the day on the train for the 30-minute ride to Ostia. From the station we walked about 20 minutes (would have taken most people 10) to the archeological site of Ostia Antica. At one time Ostia was the port of Rome. Ostia literally means “mouth” and is where the Tiber River begins (or maybe ends). Over the years the sea became further away so the city’s use as a port ended.
Ostia was founded in the 7th century BC, but the oldest ruin is from the 4th century BC. By the 3rd and 4th century AD, the city population reached its peak of about 100,000 people. By the 9th century it had started to decline in importance.
The area of the ruins was gigantic. We didn’t cover it all as, after a while, it all starts to look alike but we did see most of it.
After Ostia, we headed back to Rome going to the Vodaphone store in the main train station (Termini) to get Italian SIM cards for our phones. We waited until today as the tourist cards are good for 30 days and we wanted to have GPS when we had the car (picking it up tomorrow). It turns out, though, that they were having a promotion of “buy one get one free” so we ended up with 2 cards each. We’ll only use a couple of days of the 2nd cards, but we didn’t pay extra for them so we’re good with that. The guy in the store told us we would get a text message with our phone number which didn’t happen. We got about 5 different messages but none of them had a phone number in it. This plan doesn’t include text (sending or receiving) but we both have WhatsApp so we’re good.
Next, we got back on the Metro to Piazza Popolo where we sat in the sun and ate our sandwiches. The piazza is very large and, luckily, there were benches to sit on. Many of the piazzas don’t have anywhere to sit except the fountain stairs so we felt quite lucky.
After lunch we went to the Leonardo da Vinci Museum right in the piazza. This is the 500th anniversary of Leo’s death (2 May 1519) so they were having a special exhibit. It was actually very cool. There were copies of some of his paintings, but the coolest part were examples of his inventions. Did you know that he developed an early machine gun and tank? Yeah….me neither. He also invented a way for people to walk better in shallow by putting balloon-like things under pieces of wood, but it was deemed impractical. But the concept was later used for cross country skiing. The entire exhibit was quite fascinating.
After the museum we walked to the closest Vodaphone store to figure out what the deal was with our phone numbers. It was an easy walk, but it took us through the Piazza di Spana which was crazy crowded. It was so crowded you could barely walk. There had to have been a thousand people squashed in there.
The Vodaphone clerk looked up our phone numbers and after a couple of false starts, we got them to work. Then it was back towards the Spana metro station, stopping along the way for drink and a snack.
We’re home now relaxing. Once I’m done with the blog my last task for the evening will be to pack everything up as we have a taxi picking us up at 8:30 tomorrow morning. We could take the train to the airport, but we don’t know where the car rental is from there and we really don’t feel like schlepping luggage up and down stairs and all over the airport. We only have 2 carryon size bags and a backpack but it still too much to handle on public transportation.
Once we pick up the car we’re going to head south along the coast. Fingers are crossed the beautiful weather holds.
Love to all.