For more Rome recaps:

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3 time!

On Monday we had advance tickets to go see the Vatican Museums. Unfortunately Louie’s mom woke up and wasn’t feeling well at all, so she ended up having to stay behind in the hotel. We hated leaving her but she insisted, and we had some cell phones that worked, so we headed out. We took the metro from the Spanish Steps to the Vatican (unlike the Paris metro, the metro in Rome doesn’t go nearly as many places, but occasionally we found it useful.)

One of the things you really have to be prepared for in Rome is all the vendors and people trying to “help” you. Once we started walking from the metro stop to the Vatican people kept asking us if we needed a guide, or tickets, or selfie sticks, and wanting to give us directions, and who knows what else. I’m really good at simply ignoring people because I assume they are up to no good, but we actually followed the advice of one person on directions and it turned out to be more correct than what we were planning, so who knows. Maybe some of the people are trying to be actually helpful! Perhaps they are the good guides! Since we had advance tickets we got to bypass the longest line outside the museum and get in the door quickly. We thought, well, that was easy, and then we realized we had more lines to wait in and the lobby was jampacked with people. I suppose Monday is probably a bad day to go because many of Rome’s other sights and museums are closed.

Anyway, once we entered the museum proper, it was a little overwhelming. I did a little consulting of my Rick Steves Guidebook, but I didn’t want to be too bossy or tell people what to do, and I honestly didn’t really care what we saw. What I didn’t realize is that if you go right up the stairs you get to casually look at some exhibits, but if you go left, you are going on basically a slow march to the Sistine Chapel. It takes hours, and goes by thousands of fascinating pieces of artwork, but the closer you get the more crowded it is, and you start to feel like you are the only people there who are interested in seeing anything OTHER than the Sistine Chapel. The crowds were overwhelming at points, annoying at others, personally intrusive sometimes, and ever present. The museum (museums?) were full of so many amazing pieces of art, frescoes, and more, and it was just an overwhelming experience. I’d like to go again having more background of some of it, and perhaps somehow on a day when less people are there, if that exists? I bet during other times of year than summer.

Julian found an error in one of the signs in one of the sections with the mummies, where the sign said BC instead of AD.

And at one point we got stuck in the Etruscan Exhibit—the normal exit had closed so we headed back where we came from, only to find a roped off exit on that end. Panicked, we snuck under the rope to find a guard wildly motioning and lecturing us in Italian while we tried to explain—we ducked BACK under the rope just in time for the guard from the other end to lead some people out. We left the two guards blaming each other for the mixup. It was a little scary at the time (I imagined us being stuck in the exhibit for hours, unable to explain our predicament, or getting arrested) but really hilarious in retrospect.

We stopped for lunch and espresso at the cafe, which was overpriced and terrible, but desperately needed. After that it was time to swim through the final crowds to the Sistine Chapel.

And the Sistine Chapel…there were so many people. We found a place to stand for a bit and crane our necks. The guards kept announcing that people needed to stop talking and to be silent, that it was a place of prayer and contemplation. But they were basically yelling it at us, and mostly people were just whispering, and it kind of made the mood worse. Then again, if they hadn’t kept saying to be quiet, who knows how loud it would have gotten? We looked at the ceiling for awhile and then moved down to another area. I found a chair along the wall at that point, and we all stared some more. It was pretty phenomenal, and to imagine the work, the creativity, the inspiration, and the true challenge to pain all of that ON THE CEILING…just insane. People are amazing aren’t they?

(To explain the lack of pictures: none allowed in the Chapel itself, and then in museums, I usually don’t bother taking many because I figure the works of art are usually available in picture form elsewhere, plus I like to just appreciate the art, and my pictures inside usually look bad!)

We finally left the chapel and then continued along a long path, far less crowded, to leave the Museum. There was more art to see, and we did glance at things as we went by, but we were pretty beat and wanted to get back to the hotel to check on Louie’s Mom.

She wasn’t feeling great, but marginally better than the morning. After we all rested a bit we walked with her to get some gelato (!!!) and then the three of us went to dinner near the hotel to a place called La Rampa. It was pretty touristy but not bad—it was more in the line with what you think of as Italian food from here, very saucy, very cheesy, and a little overpriced, but we had gorgonzola gnocchi and eggplant parmesan and a decent wine so I was pretty happy with the meal.

(my first Rome recap here)

We decided to go to the Old Appian Way (via Appia Antica) on Sunday and walk around and see the sights. Back in the day, the Appian Way was the largest, widest, and fastest road in the world. It was begun in 312 B.C. and connected Rome with Capua which is near Naples. Eventaully the road stretched 430 miles to the port of Brindisi which is where boats sailed for Greece and Egypt. We read that the road was closed to traffic on Sundays but honestly, it didn’t seem like it was. Some places were more busy than others, but still…

I kept thinking of the Pines of Rome. My favorite movement.

The hotel (Hotel Suisse) serves breakfast in the rooms, and you get rolls, your choice of coffee/tea and your choice of orange juice or yogurt, which is totally weird. But the room service is nice, and the first morning the breakfast was a real treat!

After breakfast the four of us ordered a cab and headed to the Appian Way, which is outside the walls of Rome. We started with espressos at a little restaurant, and then headed down the road a bit until we encountered a place called “Capo di Bove” which apparently means the head of a cow.

The thing that I find most surprising and astonishing and amazing about Rome is how OLD everything is. There are ruins over ruins. Under some old building is another old building. It seems like everywhere you look there are old interesting ruins and archeological digs, and places that are 2000 years old. And yet people still live there, and go to work, and cook, and read, and have friends and families, and go for jogs, and do ALL the things we do, just surrounded and on top of thousands of years of history. It’s just amazing.

There were some other sculptures and artwork on the grounds.

Next we headed for the Tomb of Cecilia Metella. We looked around but decided against paying the admission to go in. Tombs and catacombs are out here because no one was allowed to be buried in the city walls. Christians preferred the catacombs because they wanted to be buried, whereas other…wealthy…people built tombs for their loved ones. Cecilia Metella was the daughter-in-law of Crassus, Rome’s richest man in the time of Augustus (around 30 B.C.).

We did go into the Circo and Villa di Massenzio. Admission was free but you needed to get a ticket to enter. It was strange. Anyway, the villa was the suburban home of the emperor Maxentius or Massenzio, who was eventually defeated by Constantine in A.D. 312.

We wandered further down the Old Appian Way and found our way to the Catacombs of San Callisto. We managed to get there right as they were closing for lunch, so we decided to get our own lunch and then head back, as how cool would it be to go down into a catacomb? (Figuratively and literally, as the sun was really beating down on us.)

We found a little cafe to eat lunch in and have espresso. We also purchased our bus tickets to get back home, since that seemed easy enough…

After lunch we headed back to San Callisto to tour the catacombs. We had to wait around a little bit but it wasn’t too bad. There were no pictures allowed on the tour so I don’t have any but it was very interesting! It was lovely and cool in the catacombs, and the tour guide was very informative. The only drawback was that since we seemed to be the first tour after lunch (tours were offered in various languages and we were in the first English one) it was a giant group and sometimes was hard to all fit in the same room as the guide. Evidently 9 popes from the 3rd century were buried in these catacombs, along with a variety of martyrs, including St Cecilia, the patron saint of music.

Anyway, after we finished up at the catacombs, we caught a bus to get to the metro to take it to the Spanish Steps. This did not go as smoothly as we might have hoped. First, the bus didn’t seem to go to the same place that the guidebook told us it would, so we needed to get off at an earlier stop. Then, the bus driver stopped even earlier and insisted that we and some other people get off the bus, that it was indeed the stop we wanted, even though we were really quite sure she was wrong…she refused to move the bus until we exited, so we did. We managed to find the metro station then, and THAT was our next adventure. We transferred at the Termini metro station, and our train was kind of like that train you might have seen on Youtube that’s in Japan (I think)…there are policemen using sticks to push the doors shut and cram the people in. For whatever reason it was super crowded, but we all managed to push and shove our way onto the train. So that worked well until we go to the metro station and then we went to the wrong exit—that was evidently my fault and was another series of unfortunate events and miscommunications. BUT we finally made it home and were able to rest up a bit before dinner!

We went to dinner at a restaurant Louie’s brother Julian found that had a lot of vegan friendly options called “Origano.” Julian is vegan and that was a bit of a challenge for him in Italy, but he was a trooper and ate lots of bread and grilled vegetables. The meal was quite good, though a little more casual than the night before. We ate caprese salad, pizza, and a delicious fish appetizer with raw fish and very thinly sliced lemons. After dinner Louie and I went out on our own to wander around a bit at night and found a place to have a glass of wine, before heading to bed.

(The Spanish Steps at night are amazing!).

I sat down to write this thinking I’d do more than one day, but I think one day at a time is enough, isn’t it? So many other things happening in my life now, which I’ll fill you in on soon (nutshell: I’m going to be in a play, playing violin, but as a character, and we are planning a road trip to various National Parks in August, and I’m back to playing violin soon, with a wedding tomorrow actually…) but I want to write about my trip before I forget! It’s amazing how the pictures jog one’s memory though 🙂

I’ve been wanting to get started on some blog recaps of my trip to Rome but haven’t been quite sure how to go about it. Like most writing, the best way is probably just to sit down and get started!

We left on a Friday for Rome. This was a family trip with Louie’s family: his mom, stepdad, brother, and us.  We all got to the airport to check in for our flight, first to Detroit, then to Rome, and found out that Louie’s stepdad wasn’t going to be allowed to go. PSA: make sure your passport expires more than 3 months after your trip to Italy. Otherwise you have to fly to a one-day passport center, get your passport, and then meet your family later. With the weekend, that meant that he wasn’t going to be able to join us until Tuesday at the earliest, which was a huge bummer and got the vacation off on the wrong foot.  We were terribly sad to leave him behind, but there wasn’t a better option.

)

The flight was noneventful after that. We landed in Detroit and made an easy connection with the international leg of the trip. Louie and I were sitting together and tried to sleep mostly, but mostly failed at that. Oh, one of the good things we did on the airplane was request an “asian vegetarian” meal on the Delta Flight. It ended up being really tasty compared to what the regular meal looked like (and what I recall airplane food being.)

We landed in Rome in the morning. It’s odd after flying all night and trying to sleep and then feeling like it’s the middle of the night, when it IS, but it’s also the morning. All that to say, jet lag is no joke.

After clearing customs, and struggling to find out way out of the airport: welcome to Italy and all the signs for the exits point to exits that are closed…we made it to the cab line and took a cab to our hotel (we determined this was cost effective versus the train for four people).

We were spending the first portion of our trip at the Hotel Suisse at the top of the Spanish Steps. We arrived too early to check into our rooms but we were able to drop off our luggage and go sightseeing. And by sightseeing I mean, in desperate search of espresso.

We arrived on a beautiful Saturday and I believe everybody in Rome was out and about plus all the tourists that had just arrived. We walked around to a variety of different piazzas and every one was just jammed with people.

We walked up to the Villa Borghese then. (At some point we had gone back to the rooms to take a short nap and then headed out again. I had been so exhausted I thought I was going to throw up so this was very necessary for me. I felt slightly better after a nap and shower so was managing to hang on for more walking and dinner…)

Anyway, after wandering all over the city, it was time for dinner. The first night we had a wonderful meal at a restaurant called Colline Emiliane. They make their own pasta and it was just wonderful. In retrospect this was actually one of my favorite meals! I didn’t take pictures of my food on this trip because it seemed tacky, so you won’t have that, but I had spinach and sausage stuffed ravioli, veal, lots of bread and a delicious Pinot Nero wine, among other things that I can’t recall. Italian food is just the best, isn’t it?

After dinner we went back to the hotel and crashed.

So that’s where I’ll end my first recap of the trip. I hope you’ll forgive me if I have decided to draw this out a little bit. I know that later I will enjoy looking back on my blog and reading them so this is the best way to do it! I might cover more than a day next time, who knows. It’s my blog and I’ll do what I want to 😉 and hopefully you will enjoy reading about my trip! There are three parts to traveling as far as I’m concerned: planning the trip, actually traveling, and then writing about it and looking at pictures afterwards.