When In Rome...

Back from Italy today and had a wonderful time. It was quite an adventure for my two friends, Lauren and Maddy, and I to go to a foreign country on vacation without our families for the first time. Anyway, here are notes on my journey through Italia that I have broken down by city. Will post the other two cities tomorrow. Enjoy!

Saturday:
We began our journey by taking the Tube out of the city to London Heathrow airport to start our Italian adventure in Rome. My memory on Rome is slightly fuzzy, but I will do the best I can to remember all I can. The flight was fine, despite severe ear popping, but they served a “light snack” in the form of a delicious sandwich. Just FYI, British Airways has good food. Not yet brave enough to figure out Rome’s transportation system, we split a cab to our Hostel Alessandro in the middle of the city.

Our hostel was definitely meant for youths, as most people were our age and eager socialize. There were eight beds in a room with lockers to store stuff (that’s basically how hostels nowadays work—just dorm style living with limited amenities). Our hostel was also kind of a party hostel, with pub-crawls offered and a bar right inside the place. The bed was uncomfortable, so it was probably my least favorite hostel, but it was nice enough.

By this point, it was already late in the day and we were getting exhausted, but that didn’t stop us from exploring the area by going to a nearby piazza with a fountain for dinner. We found a cute little place and ate the first pasta dish of what would be many over the week. We did discover, much to our dismay and annoyance over our week, that Italian restaurants do not offer any type of free tap water. If you want water, its mineral water and it costs money. And, like Paris, all other soft drinks are very overpriced. We ended up buying water bottles that we continually filled up and carried everywhere. Anyway, we explored the piazza and went back to our hostel where we talked to this other girl traveling in Rome and then went to sleep.

Also interesting about Italy in general was that nearly everyone spoke English. It was similar to Paris, but English seemed just as predominant as Italian, even in the small city of Florence. It was convenient for us, but is kind of sad because they’ve adapted to English because of the huge tourist value of the place.

Sunday:
Our first day in Italy began with us taking advantage of the complimentary breakfast at the hostel. It was pretty disgusting—hard-as-a-rock bread, warm milk and cereal and bad coffee.

We decided to hit up the major touristy things first, so we explored the transportation system in Rome (much like any other subway system, but not nearly as smooth or easy to use as the Tube) and went to the Coliseum. The Coliseum was something that I guess had to be seen and it was kind of cool, but not a highlight of the trip. However, our ticket to the Coliseum came with entrance to the Roman forum, which was definitely a highlight of Rome for me. It was, to me at least, just a huge, ancient park that was so sprawled out and beautiful. I loved it. It was then that a few drops of rain began to fall. It was no big deal. What’s a few drops of rain? None did we know that this would be the first few drops of rain that would not stop for four days! We made our way through Italy defying the rain, but it did make the trip uncomfortable and was an inconvenience. More on that later I am sure.

Anyway, we went to lunch at Piazza Novana. Rome has some beautiful piazzas and fountains, but besides a few notable places, Rome was kind of just another city complete with all that cities have to offer—graffiti, pick-picketers, etc.

All the cities, but Rome especially, is filled with men trying to take money from unsuspecting tourists through the weirdest methods, like by offering women flowers for free, but then following them demanding money. We were warned of this early on, so we avoided it, but it was hard to watch others get tricked. Paris was even more like this, but it was hard to see in Rome. What they say about Roman men is true, if you were wondering.

Anyway, Piazza Novana was very pretty and close to the Pantheon, which was much less impressive than one would imagine. We actually walked in it just thinking it was another church before leaving then realizing it was the Pantheon. The Trevi fountain was nearby so we went there and all threw coins in the water and swore we would one day return. The fountain was not my style at all—much too flamboyant for my taste, but it was pretty spectacular. We took the subway to the Spanish steps, where we climbed every step and went into the church at the top in order to dry off a bit, although it didn’t help much. It is still pouring rain at this point, and had been all day.

Piazzas are kind of hard to judge in Rome because some of them were full of activity and things to do, but others were just squares with literally nothing in them but open space. We went to Piazza del Popollo, where there was nothing there, before heading to the Galleria Nazionale d’arte antica, or the National gallery of Ancient Art. I particularly loved the ceilings of all of them, which were covered in beautiful works. If you’re ever in Italy, wherever you go, you cannot forget to always look up wherever you are. We ate dinner at a cute little restaurant on a side street near the Trevi fountain before taking the Metro home soaking wet.

Monday:
Because of my good Catholic friend Maddy, we decided to explore Vatican City for the morning. I’m sure I was the only Jew to ever to go Vatican City. It was nice. I would have never gone there on my own, but I guess it was good to go to. The square was pretty and we went into St. Peter’s basilica, which was cool. To go to the Sistine Chapel we had to buy a ticket to the Museo Vatica (Vatican Museum) and walk through the entire museum to get to the Chapel. It was quite a scam in my opinion to make all of us walk through so many rooms just to see one room in particular. It was the walk that would never end, but I guess the Sistine Chapel was worth it, although it was kind of anticlimactic to be in there. It was pretty, but different than I imagined it to be. We got stuck in a tourist trap by eating at the Vatican Café across from the museum, which was terribly overpriced for just a sandwich and gelato.

We decided to take a nice long stroll, partly in the still pouring rain, to the Castel Sant’Angelo, which was a gorgeous medieval castle. Unfortunately, the museum part of it was closed, but the walk around it and through the park was lovely. The Fiume Tevere River, which runs through Rome, was near there so we decided to take a walk along the River to our final destination of the day. We crossed the Isola Bridge, which had a little island in the middle of it and got terribly lost (again). We actually didn’t need to cross the bridge to get the place we were trying to go, so we took a huge detour, but we saw some cool architecture, so it was okay. We eventually got to the Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele II where we were told a very cool panoramic view of Rome was. The view was quite beautiful. It was a great overview of Rome that was breathtaking. It was worth getting lost for.

Unsure of what to do next, we walked in the direction of the Trevi fountain because we wanted to see it all lit up at night. We ended up getting caught in the rain, so we stopped somewhere that we thought had dinner food, but didn’t, so we just had drinks and appetizers there. I had wanted to try Limoncello, which is an Italian lemon liquor, since I got to Italy because I love lemon. It was not very good and very strong. However, due to my terrible hand-eye coordination I proceeded to spill the entire 4-euro drink all over our complimentary, and delicious, bread and the table. It was awful, but I think it was meant to be.

We then had, in my opinion, the best meal of the trip. We ate at this little restaurant on the side street that seemed to be family-run. There was a little old man in the back with a younger guy watching over us—his only customers at the time. A lady came in at one point, apparently bringing in a dish she had just made. It was the perfect atmosphere for a nice, peaceful dinner in Rome. We ordered the meal deal, which many restaurants have, so it’s basically a pre-set menu with some choices for each course. I had white wine, spicy spaghetti (a current favorite of mine), veal with potatoes and salad. The veal was delicious, but I had veal again in Venice that wasn’t quite as good. The meal came with a fruit salad, which we were not too excited about. To our delight, the older man came over and told us that the fruit salad was “no more” and would we like tiramisu. We immediately said yes, and that was music to our ears as we ate the best tiramisu I’d ever had.

It was a great meal. The nice old man asked us about ourselves and we told him we were going to Florence and Venice next. He proceeded to say, in a very Italian way, “Venice is wonderful in June, July, August, not now.” It was hilarious. We said goodbye to Rome by waiving goodbye to the Trevi fountain and going to bed at our hostel for one last night.