Category: 2019_02 Rome

June 25

We left our Country House just before 8am as we wanted to get to our first stop at 0830 when it opened to (a) beat the tour busses and (b) beat the heat. We succeeded on both counts. We were the first ones at the Villa d’Este which is a 16th century villa in Tivoli. The villa was beautiful but it is most famous for its Italian Renaissance garden. This is the 3rd Italian garden we’ve seen and while there are some flowers, the garden is mostly terraced evergreens. Very different from an English garden which is loaded with flowers.

The villa is an Italian State Museum and is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site. It was first commissioned in the early 16th century by a local cardinal (Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este) who was a patron of the arts. The villa is gigantic but only 7 or 8 rooms are open to the public. Every square inch of the walls and ceiling are covered in frescos which, given that they are 450 years old, are in amazing condition.

Here’s also a video I took of this last room.

https://youtu.be/uYWB6LCcjwM Villa

After touring the villa, we went out to the gardens. It is terraced on 4 or 5 levels and has a beautiful view of the surrounding area.

The garden includes fifty-one fountains and nymphaeums, 398 spouts, 364 water jets, 64 waterfalls, and 220 basins. It is fed by 875 meters of canals, channels and cascades, and all working entirely by the force of gravity, without pumps. Not all of the fountains and spouts are working but there was still a lot of water flying around. Here are a few pictures but the best way to experience it is through video. So, I did several of those as well.

https://youtu.be/PFt3Y4qzKiY Garden Part 1

https://youtu.be/VjVUJeqBCvo Garden Part 2

https://youtu.be/i38MLc_8zxE Garden Part 3

https://youtu.be/0bJkhzkTPaI Garden Part 4

https://youtu.be/t1OnJ7pqatg Garden Part 5

We had the garden to ourselves for a good portion of our visit before 2 other couples who showed up after about 20 minutes. Once we were heading back up the terraces to leave, the tour groups had started to arrive so we were glad we had come early.

Then it was a 20-minute drive to Villa Adriana or Hadrian’s Villa in English. The villa was constructed over 10-20 years in the 2nd Century AD by Emperor Hadrian as a summer palace. It is also a UNESCO World Heritage site. While a little more crowded than the Villa d’Este, it was a huge area so it wasn’t bad at all.

The ruins are in amazing condition, especially the area around the pool.

https://youtu.be/6C5S6f-0ouk Model of the Villa Adriana; it must have been amazing.

We didn’t actually see the entire area as we were getting tired and it was very hot, almost 90 at around noon. So we slowly walked back to the car for the 50-minute drive to the Hilton Garden Inn at Fiumicino airport. We dropped off the bags then dropped of the car. It was a bit frustrating as we had trouble finding gas at the airport, but we finally got the tank filled and turned the car in.

We originally planned to go into Rome for the rest of the afternoon for a final dinner and gelato but we decided against it. It would have cost about $70 round trip on the train but the bigger reason was that by mid afternoon it was in the upper 90s and we just didn’t feel like dealing with the crowds in Rome in that heat. So….we ate lunch at the airport but couldn’t find any gelato. But, we had some delicious gelato on Sunday in Volterra so that’s okay. For dinner we’ll just have something at the hotel. We’re hot and tired so it will be nice to just relax tonight. We have a long day tomorrow, including a 10 1/2 hour flight, so an early night is in order.

So….our 2nd Italian Adventure is pretty much over. We covered a lot of territory, putting over 5600 km (3400 miles) on the car. Here’s the route we traveled but I couldn’t get it all on one map. The route mostly includes the places we stopped for the night. The route is a lot bigger if you add all the stops and day trips.

Including the 18,000 steps we walked today, our total step count is about 600,000 with our biggest day being Day 1 in Rome (when we were totally jet lagged and my ankle was killing me) with just under 25,000 steps. What does this mean in miles….254 miles. To put that in perspective, we walked from Chicago to Louisville KY on this trip which is a 5-hour drive. And for the last 3 weeks we’ve been walking in 90 degree temperatures so that made it even more difficult.

Even though this trip was physically a little harder on both of us, we did very well. I didn’t have to buy a cane and or call ahead to make an ortho appointment so we’re way ahead of last year. While we didn’t see everything we planned (Malta was too expensive, about $750 for 3 days, so that got crossed off the list fairly early in the trip) but neither of us is disappointed. We met some wonderful people including an Australian couple who are now Peter’s friends on Facebook and another Aussie couple today who are on day 7 of a 14-week trip. Yikes!!

And of course there were the wonderful Italian people, the food and the gorgeous country. We found several places that we’d like to stay for a while including Lecce, Florence and the lake we saw yesterday. But, just like our other adventures, the absolute best part was experiencing it together. While being joined at the hip for such a long time can have its challenges, for the most part we did very well.

So what’s next? We have a mini-adventure coming up in the fall when we go to Arizona for a month. Of course we’ll stop at as many National Parks as humanly possible….gotta fill up my book with stamps. Our next European adventure is planned for August/September of 2020. This one is super-special as it is our 5th wedding anniversary trip and we’re headed to the UK for a month and then back to France and the Benelux countries for another month. Not quite time to start planning but that will come soon enough.

Thanks again to all our faithful followers for continuing to share in our adventures. It’s great to have you travel with us. Love to you all. Arrivederci, alla prossima volta.

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.

May 22

The day started with a suburban train ride from our hotel two stops to the Roma station in Trastevere (bottom of map). The hotel desk guy told us that the walk from the station to the Basilica of Our Lady in Trastevere was 10 minutes so we figured the way we walk it would be 20 minutes. Well, look at the map. It took us just over an hour as we missed the turn and walked a little further north before turning left. Luckily there was a very nice Piazza with a fountain, and we sat there for at least 20 minutes to rest.

The Basilica was worth the walk though. The nicest part was, that since it’s off the beaten path, there weren’t too many tourists. Every place we visited yesterday was wall-to-wall people, but we spent a good portion of the day on the southwest side of the Tiber which is not as popular. Most people only spend 2-3 days in Rome (especially those doing the “Tourist Triangle: Rome, Florence and Venice) and they’re so busy doing the must-see attractions they don’t make it to anything else.

After the Basilica we headed to the Basilica of Sainte Cecilia, which according to Rick Steves, is one of the most beloved churches in Rome. St. Cecilia lived in the 1st or 2nd century AD and is the patroness of musicians. Compared to many other churches we’ve seen in Europe this one was rather understated but beautiful all the same.

On our way back to the river we popped into the Church of Saint Rita. It just happened to be her festival day, so the tiny church was packed. We only stayed for a moment but were glad we did as it was very pretty.

Then we headed back to the busy side of the Tiber to visit the Piazza del Campidoglio which was designed by Michaelangelo. We had to climb quite a few stairs but the view from the top of Capitoline Hill was worth the climb.

The Piazza is outside the Capitoline Museums, and that was our last stop for the day. It’s the first attraction we went to where we actually had to pay an entrance fee. It had some great stuff in it including pieces of the Temple of Jupiter which was rebuilt in 83BC after the original was destroyed by fire. It was very cool to see.

I needed to rest quite a bit today, sitting down for a few minutes every chance I got. Peter was also pretty tired, so we called it a day fairly early, having a nice dinner shortly after 4:30 pm. Since you can sit in a restaurant forever without anyone bothering you to leave, we stayed for almost an hour before heading home.

The bus and metro were PACKED so it was a long ride home. We’re tired and my foot aches but we very much enjoyed our relatively low-key day. Tomorrow we’re off on a day trip to Ostia Antica, a large archeological site about 30 minutes outside Rome. It’s right on the sea so we’re hoping for a clear, sunny day just like today…it was beautiful. We’ll let you know how it goes.

May 20

Today we spent time roaming around Rome. We got off the Metro at Piazza di Spagna (sorry I couldn’t figure out how to draw on the map; don’t have the pen with me), which is the pretty much dead center of the map. That was the closest Metro stop to Villa Borghese (big green spot at top of the map). It was a pretty long walk, talking about 30 minutes. We walked around for a while then decided to rent a gigantic bike thing. That allowed us to get around the entire area, which actually extends above the map.

We decided to take a pass on the Galleria Borghese which is supposed to have a very nice art collection. We figured there couldn’t be anything at this museum that could come close to the amazing art we’ve seen at the Louvre, Muse d’Orsay, Prada, and the Vatican Museum, which are 4 of the most famous art museums in the world.

We spent about 2 hours at Villa Borghese before heading back to Piazza di Spagna where we rested on the Spanish Steps for a while. A bit of trivia. Do you know why they’re called the Spanish Steps? Well….at the top of the stairs you’ll see a church. Originally that building was the Spanish Embassy to Italy. When the embassy moved, the names stuck…. Spanish Steps and the Plaza of Spain.

Our next stop was Piazza Navona (lower left corner of the map). This also was quite a hike. We found a couple of interesting things along the way, though. First, we stumbled into a Museum about Napoleon. What it’s doing in Rome, I’m not sure but it was quite nice. It was also free which was even nicer. It also gave me a chance to sit and rest a little.

Across the street from that museum was a bridge crossing the Tiber with a beautiful view of St. Peter’s Basilica.

Not too far from the bridge was Piazza Navona. It’s tucked away off the main street so it’s easy to miss. Peter is the one who noticed the small street leading to it. The Piazza was originally built in the 1st century AD to hold “games”. It’s quite large and was, of course, very crowded. If you’ve seen the movie Angels and Demons, you’ll recognize the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi (Fountain of the Four Rivers) by Bernini. SPOILER ALERT: It’s where the bad guy tries to drown the 4th Cardinal, but our hero saves him, and he ends up becoming Pope.

From Piazza Navona it was a short walk to the Pantheon (just to the southeast of Piazza Navona on the map). On the way we stopped at the Church of St. Louis of France. It’s a small, but beautiful church and its pews were yet another place to rest my ankle for a few minutes.

The Pantheon was built as a Roman Temple and is one of the best preserved ancient Roman buildings. It’s still in use as an active Catholic Church.

Until now we hadn’t had too much trouble finding what we were looking for. Unfortunately, that ended when we tried to go from the Pantheon to the Trevi Fountain (northeast of the Pantheon on the map). We got turned around on the small, angled streets and ended up heading back toward the Pantheon.

After asking directions several times we got back on track. By this time, though, we were starting to get very tired and hungry. We hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and it was a little after 4pm. We found a restaurant and enjoyed an early dinner at an outside table. It also gave me a chance to rest for almost an hour, which gave me enough energy (not to mention ankle power) to finish the day.

We finally did make it to the Trevi Fountain where Peter threw the coin over his right shoulder. I did it last time and it worked (we’re back in Rome). So, Peter did it this time which means we’ll be back at least one more time.

After the fountain we completed the giant circle, we’d walked by heading back to the Spanish Steps. We finished off the day with our first gelato before catching the Metro back to the hotel.

As you can tell from the pictures, it was pretty cloudy all day, but luckily it didn’t rain. By the time we left the Spanish Steps for home, the clouds were gone and the sun was shining.

All in all, my ankle held up quite nicely. By mid-day it was starting to ache but never really started to hurt. I rested as often as possible as getting off of it for even a few minutes helped. According to the app on my phone we walked 24,000 steps today which is just over 10 miles. Hopefully I didn’t stress it too badly today which could lead to problems tomorrow. Fingers are crossed that it’s okay in the morning.

Tomorrow the plan is to head to the Trastevere area on the other side of the Tiber River. We’ve not visited there before but we saw a Rick Steves episode about it, and it looks interesting. We’ll let you know tomorrow.

Night.

The last 2 days were typical traveling to Europe days. We got to the airport around 4:45 for our 7:20 flight. I had arranged for wheelchair transport to get me through all the airports as I didn’t want to put too much stress on my ankle so early in the trip. But at O’Hare the w/c waiting zone was very crowded and there was nowhere to sit. After about 15 minutes none of us had budged and there were no w/c in sight so we decided we might actually move faster just walking through security instead of standing around waiting, and since we have pre-check, we thought it would be quick. Wrong….we found out that there is no pre-check in Terminal 5 (International Terminal). The line was super long (about 20 minutes) and the only bow to the pre-checkers was that we didn’t have to take off our shoes, which was actually a good thing as my right foot was just a little swollen and it could have been difficult to get my shoe back on if I had to take it off.

Once finally through security, we stopped for a bite to eat before using pre-board to early board the plane, I pulled out my cane to add authenticity; but foot really was hurting, and I was limping a bit, so it really was legit. We settled into our seats which were directly next to the lavs. As expected, we had many visitors during the 7 1/2-hour flight, but it wasn’t as loud as I expected. After pushing back from the gate about 15 minutes late and sitting in a traffic jam on the runway, we finally took off about 8:15pm.

The flight was uneventful, which of course is the only kind of flight I want to have. There was a great selection of movies available and while we both dozed a bit during the flight, neither one of us really slept. Once we got to Paris, we had to wait until everyone was off the plane before getting our wheelchair and in this case, we were glad we had help. The schlep from the plane to our connecting flight was crazy long and complicated so we might have had difficulty doing it by ourselves. Since it was already after 11am local time, there was practically no on in immigration hall so in no time at all we were going back through security and on our way to the gate of our Alitalia flight.

The connecting flight ended up being an hour late, but the flight was uneventful. Once we arrived in Rome, we again had a wheelchair arranged but this time the process was different. Rome is one of those airports where you walk downstairs of the plane to waiting transport that takes you to the terminal. I told the flight attendant I could certainly walk down the stairs and take the van but would need the wheelchair if I had a long way to walk to baggage pickup. She said I definitely would need help as it was a long walk through the airport. There was also a w/c bound woman on the flight so we had to wait for an elevator type thing to arrive so we could get off the plane. It took the crew several minutes to transfer her from her seat to the aisle chair and get her into her w/c, which was in the elevator. Once on the ground we transferred us to the handicapped van for the drive to the terminal. It took them about 10 minutes to get this woman secured in place. Now I’m starting to get nervous as we’d already been on the ground for over 40 minutes and the car, we’d hired to take us to our hotel was only going to wait for an hour after our arrival time. When we finally arrived at the terminal, I was told that it could take 15 or so minutes for one of their colleagues to arrive to push the wheelchair so we decided that Peter would pick up the luggage and find our driver while I waited for the w/c pusher. A few minutes later I got a text from Peter saying luggage was very close, so I bailed on the w/c idea and hobbled into the terminal. Seriously, the luggage area was immediately through the doors where the vans from the planes were dropping people off. I could have very easily gotten in the van with everyone else from the plane and not waited 45 minutes for the whole w/c ordeal.

Well…by this time I was in a panic about missing our ride (for which we had already pre-paid) and to make matters worse, we couldn’t find our luggage. It had been so long since our flight landed that our flight wasn’t even listed on the board anymore and our luggage was no where to be found. To make matters worse, we couldn’t find anyone from Alitalia to help. We decided to divide and conquer….I went out to find our driver, while Peter continued to look for our luggage. I exited the arrival area to find our driver, Alessandro, who was in fact texting his boss to tell him we hadn’t arrived. We were within minutes of losing our ride! It took another 20 minutes for Peter to find someone to help us locate our luggage (which had been removed from the carousal and tucked away in a corner) but by about 6:15pm we were finally on our way to the hotel.

It was a 40-minute trip but since we weren’t navigating the rush hour traffic ourselves, we quite enjoyed it. We finally arrived at our hotel just after 7pm (noon Chicago time), about 21 hours after leaving our house for O’Hare on Sunday. It was a very long day, and we were exhausted but it was a little too early to go to bed so after unpacking we decided to head out to get something to eat.

There was a bit of symmetry to our dinner. During our first European Adventure in 2016, we had several hours between getting off the train from Orvieto and catching the train to Civvetivechia for our cruise. We decided to spend the time in the Piazza di Spagno (Spanish Steps) for one last pizza. We found a nice restaurant tucked away on a side street and had a delicious lunch before heading back to the train station.

Well, we found the same restaurant last night and I enjoyed my first pizza since 2016 there. We ate inside as it was a little chilly and it looked like it was going to rain. Dinner was delicious but we could barely hold our heads up so after dinner we headed back to the Metro for the short, 10-minute trip back to our stop. Our hotel is only about a 15-minute walk from the Metro but as we were barely able to put one foot in front of the other, it took a little longer.

Once back at the hotel, we discovered that I had only packed one of Peter’s flip-flops and his computer won’t charge. It’s my old Surface Pro 4, and it which worked fine at home thank you very much, so I have no idea what’s wrong. But those are problems for another day.

Today we’re heading back out to re-explore some of the places in Rome that we saw the last time we were here, but that Peter wants so to see again. But first, he has to wake up. It’s 8am and he’s still snoring away. I’ll cut him some slack this time; just as long as he’s up in time to get our free breakfast.

Talk with you soon.