Here we are. The last blog post about my trip to Italy in May. It’s the end of an era, and then you’ll just have to hear about my regular life again, at least until our road trip in August.

Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will I blog about it in one day

The Appian Way

The Vatican Museum is just one long line to see the Sistine Chapel

The Colosseum

All sorts of good things

Skulls and Femurs and Tibias, oh my?

Onward and Upward to Orvieto

We woke up in Orvieto. Unlike our previous hotel, this one didn’t do breakfast in the room, but they had a nice spread in a room off the lobby. They had a cappuccino machine, which weren’t as good as our previous morning cappuccinos. They also had a weird little machine that would hard boil eggs, but we didn’t try that. Evidently it took about 15 minutes! I had some pastries which were pretty excellent though.

We wanted to get food for our lunch, but we also wanted more espresso…we averaged 3-4 espresso shots per day and they were always good, with the exception of the espresso at the Vatican.

We split up again because Julian, Louie and I wanted to go to the Orvieto Underground tour, which would tour some of the caves and tunnels under the city.

The holes in the wall were for pigeons to nest. The Orvietans learned that you could just provide a place for them to nest and you wouldn’t have to feed them…and then you could eat them. Kind of mean, but cheaper than chickens. I wonder what the pigeons thought of all of this. I guess they kept coming back anyway.

We learned about the caves, and how some of them were originally used by the Etruscans who were the original founders of the town, and then they were expanded in the Middle Ages when more “modern” people built on top. They dug out the rock to build houses on top, and often used the caves for wine cellars or to make olive oil in a temperature controlled place, or to raise pigeons, or simply to store extra junk like a basement.

The tour was interesting and definitely worthwhile.

Back on top at Piazza del Duomo.

We met up with the others and decided to have our picnic back near the edge of town in a nice little park area. There were several stray cats around who were very cute and wanted food—well mostly cute. One of them had a sad eye problem happening.

We enjoyed some porchetta sandwiches we’d gotten at the market earlier…until I noticed an ant, and then another, and then realized we were surrounded by giant ants! They say you can’t have a picnic without ants, and indeed this was true.

After lunch we had a little more time to wander around before needed to get the funicular down the hill to catch our train. We were headed to Fiumicino which was a coastal town right near the airport.

It was downhill to the funicular, and we made quite a loud group each rolling a suitcase on the cobblestones. It was a bit embarrassing but we had no other real option as the bus didn’t run for several hours in the afternoon.

The weight of the train car going down powers the one going up, and halfway through they have a double track so they can switch places. I found it a little nervewracking!

We didn’t have assigned seats on the train like we did on the opposite route—this time we had a few more stops getting into Rome than before. We were taking the train to the airport actually and then had plans to get a cab to our hotel.

It turns out that taking a cab from the airport to a nearby hotel is nearly as expensive as taking the cab into Rome. I suppose after the taxi driver waits in the taxi line, they don’t want a cheap fare, so they just charge a minimum so it’s worth their wait. It was annoying but I found it understandable enough.

We stayed at the Hotel Tiber which was nice and had a lot of orange. It overlooked the sea (according to the map it is the Tyrennian sea) and was clean and modern. We wandered around the pier area for a short while before choosing a seafood restaurant for dinner.

There were dozens of fisherman out when were walking around.

We ate dinner at a nearby restaurant called Il Moro. It was packed and felt hectic, but the food was delicious and in huge quantities. We totally overordered and left feeling a little sick from overeating. I ordered a dish that was supposed to be fried local seafood. It included what looked like entire small fishes. I thought local would be the best thing to order but I’m not so sure!

We went to bed after dinner, and then woke up to find out that our flight was delayed. After a breakfast on the rooftop floor of the hotel (which was an odd mix of Italian and American breakfast foods), we headed to the airport anyway to check in in case things went back to non delayed, but we ended up taking off at least 1 1/2 hours late.  That meant it would be incredibly tight for our connecting flight. The person at check in said there was a later flight that had space so we didn’t worry.

We should have.

Louie and I watched nearly the entire season of Downton Abbey on the plane ride home. We’d watched one episode on the way out, then 7 on the way home, leaving only one! We just ran out of time. Like on the flight out we’d ordered the Asian vegetarian food, which again was a curry and then some random things later like a vegetable sandwich.

Anyway, we got off the plane and started booking it through customs. We got our bags without too much trouble and then had to take a little train to the right concourse. We had about five minutes until the plane left, but we hoped they would wait on us, and we started running. We got there with two minutes to spare, and the gate was empty. The door was closed and no one was there. After a few minutes a person came out and said she tried to get them to wait on us but that they didn’t believe we would make it in time so they left…basically early. We went to rebook, and only Elliot (alphabetical order) could be rebooked on the next flight. The rest of us were booked through Chicago (from Detroit) to St Louis and would arrive home around midnight. That meant that we’d been up since around 7 am Italian time and would be basically 24 hours of traveling. We were pretty angry at the airlines, and especially at the gate agent in the morning who could have gone ahead and booked us on the next flight home which would have saved us a flight and about 4 hours of traveling. What can you do though!

We had a few drinks and a snack ($50 for four drinks and a sweet potato fries…tuna is very rare here) and then flew to O’Hare, the armpit of America. Well, unless you consider LaGuardia. I hate O’Hare though.

Finally we got on our last flight. I was so tired I felt nauseous, and I tried to sleep on the flight but it was very bright and cold and uncomfortable, and they kept making announcements. Honestly, Delta, don’t make noise on an 11 pm flight! Do like Southwest and dim the lights and SHUT UP. And if you are delaying people for 4- 5 hours I think that drink tickets are in order, but I don’t run an airline. I’m a decent human being.

We got a cab home.

And there you have it. 8 blog posts. 9 days. Italy with my boyfriend’s family. It was a once in a lifetime trip and I’m so grateful and lucky!

People ask, what was my favorite thing? It’s hard to say. I love traveling internationally. I love seeing places that are unlike where I live. I love the history of Europe—I think my favorite thing is seeing how stuff is built on top of other stuff. I loved seeing Orvieto, though I grew up in a small town and I imagine that small town Italy is much like small town anywhere, but with more pasta. I loved the energy of Rome. I loved wandering around. I loved the cheese and pasta and cheap wine. I didn’t love all the people trying to sell stuff on the streets, or how the men are aggressively flirtatious, or all the throngs of people. I loved the espresso and the pastries…

Traveling just makes me want to travel more. The older I’ve gotten the more I appreciate beautiful landscapes, architecture, good local food, and just soaking up the experience of being somewhere else. I take it for granted a bit less than I did in the past, and I can’t wait to get out into the world again! I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my trip blog posts as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them 🙂

Our last day in Rome. (There’s more to the trip though, can you believe it? This is a truly epic recap series, I do believe.)

We decided to split up the group for the morning. Louie, his brother Julian, and I wanted to go to the Capuchin Crypt, which was very near our hotel. This place is NOT for the faint of heart. It is described by Frommer’s as “one of the most horrifying images in all of Christendom.” I’d read about it ahead of time, and thought it sounded fascinating, amazing, and awful.

Basically you pay a few euros, go through a little museum telling you all about the Capuchin monks and all about their lives and backgrounds, lots of the funny monk haircuts (called tonsure), tons of gory Christ images and lots of hard times. Then comes the real treat: the crypt. There are six crypts, each with a different theme. All but one contains the bones of more than 4000 friars who died between 1528 and 1870…artfully arranged on the walls and ceilings. No photography was allowed but you can find plenty of pictures online.

It was pretty unique, to say the least. I’d never seen art made with bones. The Capuchins claim that they don’t even know who made the displays or why. I say claim because it just seems like it had to have taken a very long time to catalog all the bones (they are arranged mostly by sort of bone, for instance, skulls, or vertebrae, or tibia), organize them, plan the art, and then actually do it..and how could they have done all of that without people noticing or keeping a record? But who knows.

After spending more time in the crypts than any of our fellow museum-goers seemed to (we started to really get interesting in the anatomy, and some of the mummification we saw)…we headed out into the sunlight to continue sightseeing. We headed to the Piazza Barberini with plans to walk down the Via XX Settembre to the Piazza Quirinale, and then to see the inside of the Pantheon.

We saw approximately one church per block. In fact, this was the day that Louie became obsessed with going into as many churches as possible. There was an earlier day in the trip where he had said he was “churched out” but on our last day in Rome he got a “second church wind” and probably nearly converted to Catholicism.

I didn’t even really know what these churches were when I took the pictures, so I’m not too concerned about trying to look them up. Is that horrible?

We passed by a very busy intersection with the four fountains, the Via delle Quattro Fontane. Rick Steves tells us that it was a very big deal for the poor 16th-century pilgrims coming into town. They didn’t have guidebooks like us, but instead would navigate the city by using various obelisks and domes. I suppose we do similar things today as well, but we didn’t drink from the fountains. The intersection didn’t give much room for pedestrian traffic though, so pictures were challenging. In fact, without any cars, it would definitely be easier to take these outdoor pictures…

I snuck into an old guard tower right near a new guard tower. The guard tried to pretend that we didn’t look like crazy tourists while taking this picture, but he didn’t succeed.

The Obelisk outside of the Palazzo del Quirinale, where the president of Italy stays. There is a flag outside that indicates if he is there, which he wasn’t when we walked by. Too bad.

I always liked seeing parts of buildings that were obviously older than other parts of the same building. I love the idea that they just build around or repair things rather than tearing down and beginning new.

We were heading downhill the whole time to the Pantheon, which was nice. Going back to the hotel would be more difficult, but we’d let our future selves worry about that!

We made it inside the Pantheon. The Pantheon is overwhelming to think about. It was built in 27 BC originally but there were a few fires and the structure was completely rebuilt (wait, what did I just say earlier) by the emperor Hadrian around AD 120. Some say he helped design it. I suppose others say he didn’t. It is the most influential building in art history: its dome was the model for the Florence cathedral dome, which basically started the Renaissance. Basically it was the dome that inspired all later domes! And all done without machines or computers or any of the helpful stuff we have today! (flush toilets, coca-cola, you name it!)

Another fascinating thing about Rome that you definitely noticed with the Pantheon is that it is lower than street level. Over the 2000 years, the streets have gotten higher and higher, and the older buildings just seem to get lower and lower.

We were hungry by then so we decided to eat lunch at a restaurant on the square. We had mediocre pizza but a great view!

Then naturally it was espresso time. We went to Tazzo d’Oro which was recommended by my sister Leslie and by Rick Steves. The espresso did not disappoint and indeed we had more than one before moving on.

We next decided to walk towards the Jewish Ghetto.

We walked around the Jewish Ghetto, which definitely makes you start doubting mankind, and then wandered even further, with Louie getting excited about every ruin and church and honestly, his infectious enthusiasm was a bit contagious, even though I was getting exhausted and I think Julian was too. We knew we needed to start heading back to meet up with their parents for dinner soon, though, so after a few more random ruins, we headed back towards the hotel.

The lens smudge definitely takes something away from my photos…sorry about that!

That reminds me, I don’t think I mentioned the bird outside my hotel room window. Every morning, and by morning I mean the wee hours of the morning, there was this cry that sounded like a crazy baby—crying and screaming. It woke me up on many occasions. I finally decided it was a deranged seagull, or perhaps an evil deranged seagull, or a seagull that was stealing babies, or perhaps had the soul of a bunch of babies, because it really sounded like one! I should have recorded the sound to share with you because I’m sure you don’t believe me.

We finally got back to the hotel to rest and freshen up for our last dinner in Rome. Just so you know, people eat dinner in Rome on the late side—8 pm is early for them. This is a nice contrast to St Louis where often when I finish teaching between 8 and 9 there are only a handful of options left for dinner. I imagine though, that the violin teachers in Rome actually have to teach until 10 or 11 pm and have the same issue.

We headed for a vegetarian restaurant called Il Margutta Restaurante. Since Julian had been somewhat deprived of all the delicious food we’d been enjoying all week, we felt it was fair. Well, nobody was deprived tonight either! I had a delicious salad and a wonderful cheese filled ravioli…topped with cheese, with more cheese on the side. (It had a lot of vegan options, but I wasn’t going to avoid cheese unless absolutely necessary!)

After dinner it was time to hit the hay. The next morning we had a train to Orvieto to catch. We asked the guy working at the front desk of the hotel about getting a subway or taxi to the Termini train station, and he informed us that probably neither would be easy…because there was a metro strike planned. Which meant that the metro (subway) wouldn’t be running and that taxis would be few and far between! Luckily the train station was “only” a 20-30 minute walk away so we could do that. I say “only” because while that isn’t a terribly long walk, it is an annoying walk with luggage. We all had smaller bags with wheels, and since we would likely have no other option (unless they canceled the strike, which SPOILER ALERT, they didn’t…).

Anyway, that was our last day in Rome. I was sad to be leaving, but looking forward to the train ride and seeing a small hill-town in Italy the next day. The week was flying by, but we saw and did (and ate) so much that it definitely felt like we were there for awhile, if that makes sense.