Leaving Roma

When I had awoke this day I was sad. Italy rocks, full stop. Tossing our keys at the front door man who seems to always be there off to grab our last breakfast and coffee in Rome.

What to do during our last hours before we jump on the bus back to the airport. First we had to find the place the bus would pick us up from. The thing is that when we got off the bus there was so much to see we didn`t even make note of where the pick up point was. After asking several people who just pointed us in general directions from the Termini station we finally found it. Time to relax for a bit with a bag of chips ugh I mean crisps. Next thing I knew it was time for lunch!!

Danny had to have one last pizza in the hope that it wouldn`t be boring and mundane. He ordered the 4 cheese and was not disappointed. I ordered the ravioli since I didn`t have any on this trip as of yet. YUM! I ate it all so quickly. They even gave up free grapefruit juice.

Now to the airport, after standing in what seemed like a non moving queue we stepped outside to make friends with another kitty.

We love you Roma.

Yay, kitty sleeping sitting up!

Rambling through the remains of Roma

Out of the Vatican to see what was left of Rome, we took the funky graffiti metro back to the Piazza del Popolo. Or rather, we almost did. Note to possible visitors: turn right out of the metro exit. We went left and wandered a couple of blocks too far before realising we were going the wrong way. Getting lost did mean that we made the acquaintance of some local kitties, so all in all it turned out okay. Eventually, we did make it to the Piazza, where we were just in time to miss a street band. 

The reason we had come here was to check out an exhibit called 'The Genius of Leonardo Da Vinci', a small museum that hosts life-size working reproductions of some of the crazy machinery Italian's premier smart guy scribbled about in his notebooks. 5 Euro entry with our Roma pass was great value to see some interesting motion-based machinery, as well as some cooler stuff like a paraglider, a helicopter, waterskis, action-packed ball-bearing devices and the bicycle, which the plaques informed us was invented by da Vinci 300 years before the rest of the world figured it out - the two-page spread that contained the blueprints was split up after Leonardo's death and only put back together after everyone else had already caught on. Jen's personal favourite was a portable piano, sadly the recreation was not a fully functional instrument. Bit of a cop-out.

We hopped back on the Metro to the Piazza di Spagna, which was much easier to locate out of the station exit. The Spanish Steps were a bustling tourist spot at this time, with the sunset coming on and Rome's eternal romance in the air. Even the interjections of street sellers trying to offload their roses onto unsuspecting tourists couldn't ruin the atmosphere.


The Spanish Steps have a very practical reason for existing; the people of Rome wanted to connect the monastery at the top with the square at the bottom. We found it amusing that they had stemmed from this pragmatic origin to become a major romantic tourist hotspot. 

So many people!

Our bellies were complaining after our rather uninspired lunch at the Vatican, so we set off to find some food. From the Spanish Steps we followed a very thin road full of designer shops down to the river's edge. We followed the Tevere south for a little bit before cutting back into the historical district to return to Piazza Navona. We were searching for a place to eat that had been recommended to us, and through casually wandering through the windy sidestreets, we found it.

Fancy building by the river, no idea what it was.

Navona Notte is the place. We had a lasagne and a four cheese gnocchi, the latter of which Jen aptly described as 'little potato orgasms with cheese on top'. It was literally the best meal of both our lives. We followed it up with excellent coffee. The prices were good and the staff were very nice, the greeter not pushing us to eat there like the greeter at almost every other restaurant in Rome, and even turned a heater on for us (we didn't need it since the weather was still pleasantly warm after the sun had gone down, but the gesture was appreciated).

Busy windy side streets

Mmm, gnocchi..

Leaving Navona Notte with very happy bellies, we decided to invest in some gelato, Italian ice cream which the country is known for and which lots of people had told us we should try. For anywhere from 3-6 Euros you can get a biig pile of one of many, many flavours.

We had the cappuccino. It was good.

As it was now late into our second day, we braved the crazy bus station once more to return to the Termini station. En route we discovered that if you try to beep your Roma pass against the machine more than once, it does not respond happily. Since as we mentioned before no-one really seems to pay for the bus or anything, it didn't really matter that our passes didn't seem to want to work.


From Termini, we bought some smokes and returned to our hotel, exhausted once more.

Veni, vidi, vici.

I came, I saw, I conquered.(something Julius Ceaser said...lol)  Seemed very fitting for today's post.

Lazy morning, a slow start. Another cup of wonderful coffee to start the day, damn! The Italians make heart-lifting coffee. The mission for the day was to see all the things that we missed yesterday, starting with the Vatican. En route, we got distracted: on the first day that we arrived in Rome I saw this bag with a map on it, I saw it again and again. This antique map designer looking bag which now that I have looking on Google for it realized that it has been made by Alviero Martini. By this point of my trip I wanted it but I couldn't find one that fitted me like the old lady purses, luggage and mini bags. When walking towards St.Peter's we passed a stand that had a courier bag just like I wanted, 20 Euros instead of whatever the designer price was for it. *smiles* Enough about bags.

As we got nearer to the Vatican we got heckled by tour guides left right and centre, most of them were really friendly then again they are meant to be. They were a pushy and avoiding them seemed nearly impossible. For 40 Euros they would provide tickets into the Vatican Museum & Sistine Chapel with a guide for two hours. Since Danny and I didn't have enough money to get into a line we needed directions to the bank machine which was the local post office.

ARGH! My bank card didn't work. Danny had to take out money for the both of us, maybe I shouldn't have bought that purse after all. Naw.  Fending off more tour guides, we decided to join the long queue snaking across Piazza San Pietro. This queue, which most of the nearby guides had been using the ability to skip as their main selling point, actually moved super fast and got us in and out of St. Peter's Basilica in 45 minutes. 

The scale of the place is really quite something.

Official Vatican guards in their fancy uniforms.

Bemused but grateful of the anti-climactic time spent standing in line, we decided to find the entrance to the museum proper, under the assumption that the really awful line must be there. When we found said entrance, there was absolutely nobody waiting and we were able to waltz straight in. Moral of the story; don't let the guides trick you into paying them money unless you actually want to hear what they have to say, because - unless we were just lucky - there aren't any lines worth skipping. Still, we did find out from them that I could get a concession ticket with my ancient student card, so that was nice.


The Vatican Museum is crazy big and also includes the Sistine Chapel and free access to the Vatican gardens, which are nice on a sunny day - it's well worth the 15 / 8 conc. Euro price tag. Having successfully entered, we took some time to get kinda boring pizza from the cafeteria, to replenish our energy for the long trek ahead.

Aboriginal carving of Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent deity. After all those Roman sculptures it was nice to see something a bit different.

Ancient picnic Bento!

The School of Athens - a famous fresco of the Greek philosophers, with Plato and Aristotle in the centre.

Dali tries his hand at religious imagery.

Many hundreds of rooms and thousands of miles later, after passing lots and lots of extravagant wall hangings, a room full of massive maps of Italy, tonnes of sculptures, a bronze globe, a Bento box and a collection of Pope-based stamps, we arrived in the Sistine Chapel, which is decorated from floor to ceiling with a mind-blowing amount of art courtesy of Michaelangelo. Like the Pantheon yesterday, the visitors were constantly being shushed as the chapel is a sacred place (also like the Pantheon, it didn't do much good). The artistic assault on the senses from all directions was quite foreboding, although the effect was lessened slightly as the room was packed with tourists. Taking pictures was forbidden, but we sneakily took one anyway.

On the left is the Creation of Adam, the most well-known of the chapel's many images. 

Overall our time in the Vatican taught us one thing; that the place is built on excess. Just like most of Rome in general, there are very few areas that aren't lavishly decorated. Time to make an exit.

Roaming around Part III

Now walking back past Piazza Venezia we realized that the massive palace was open to the public, noticing the small people at the top looking down on us, well probably not us in particular but I thought that the view would be nice to see. I was dead tired by this point but nonetheless powered through and climbed the stairs. There was a picture of the building in my first post of Rome of the huge white building here is a picture of me on the stairs getting ready to climb up. (Whilst researching for this post we discovered that the entire palace complex is in fact a singular monument, possibly the most excessive one ever built, that honours the first king of a unified Italy. It is the Altare della Patria, Rome's best lesson in overdoing it shy of the Vatican itself.)

Inside there were a few exhibits, when we got around to the top I noticed that there were still people above us. Around the corner there was a lift that you had to pay to go up in for 7 Euros to ascend up another 100 metres. We didn't go up, I don't believe it is really worth it but then again I didn't go. There are just a lot of other places in the city of you trek up a hill you can get one magnificent free view.

One of the locations on the map was a museum that sounded really cool, when we arrived at the Palazzo Caffarelli Clementino there was a huge opening. Next the Musei Capiolini I was a bit disinterested since it was parchments, letters and scroll written for the Vatican and every piece has a very long read next to it. Having to muscle through the masses to get to it wasn't really my thing, after several rooms of this we were lead into an area with more Roman statues that have been decapitated or cut in half at the torso. Something we both had already seen a lot of today. So we side stepped the rest of it to get our fill at the Dali museum.

Romulus and Remus - this story is very rad.

When we arrived for the Dali exhibit the line was uber long, like really long. Our Roma Passes didn't let us skip the queue so we would have to stand around and wait like everyone else, if my legs already hadn't been giving out by this point after the climb up many stairs I might have waited. Until next time Salvador Dali we will meet again.

While walking across town to our next unknown destination we came across the Circus Maximus, I couldn't even begin to tell you all about this area. After reading the whole wiki page on this area a lot more than Roman races were held here.

The sun is about to set we need to find a nice place to watch the sunset, Italian romantics should be flocking to these areas by now. Got a little lost for direction (since there are absolutely no signposts we just followed the incline of the land until we ended up in the right area) but eventually we made it to the top of Aventine Hill.

The beginning of the sunset on Aventine Hill.

We somehow got around to the back streets coming down the hill and saw a queue for a door that doesn't open, now what are these people doing? (Apparently it's a keyhole you can look through for a miniaturised view of Rome, sounds highly thrilling and given that there was a queue we decided to skip this particular attraction.)


Instead, we got ourselves lost in the fancy residential district that makes up the rest of Aventine Hill, finally making it back down to ground level with rumbling bellies. We tried our luck in a local pizzeria but their menu was distinctly underwhelming, so had our first foray onto the Roman bus system instead, catching a ride back to the Colosseum district (the bus system is crazy and no-one ever seems to buy tickets from the auto-machines on every vehicle). Finally back in a nightlife centre we found a place that sold Gnocchi, which Jen was after. This particular gnocchi was doused in pesto and quite tasty, albeit not the best one we would have whilst in Rome.

The Colosseum is even more impressive by night.

Bellies full and feet tired, we hopped on the metro and made our way home for the night.

Props to the Roman Metro people for not painting over this instantly.

Roaming around Part II

North to Piazza Navona city centre! A great fountain and an unlimited amount of art vendors surround by restaurants and colourful gelato.

The fountain at Navona, if you google this fountain you will find yourself staring at the  very eccentric statues that take residence within this area.

After mooing around the mecca of art stalls, we found ourselves thinking of what to do next. The excellent thing about Italy is the fact that it seems like there is a never ending amount of things to do, see and learn about. Whipped out our Roma map that we got with our very handy Roma Pass that has a list and number of all the touristy locations, mapped out our route  (through the windy back streets) to the Pantheon.

We literally walked around the corner and there it was. This massive building right in front of us.

Inside the Patheon. There is lots to say about this place, but lucky for us it was open when we arrived. Danny had read online I believe it was trip advisor that you can't trust the opening times in Rome and they were right since this place was suppose to be closed. (Also if you're wondering what they do about the rain, given that there's a big hole in the roof, then the floor directly below it is roped off and has drains built into it. Smart guys, those Romans.)

The thirst was driving Danny a bit mad (hey, I thought it was time to take a moment with some Italian beer, it's not like Peroni is really popular or anything), we wanted to give our feet a rest since we hadn't sat down in what felt like ages. Achy and very dehydrated we tried to find a patio to sit and people watch, to no avail since there were table charges and a beer was gonna cost us 6 Euros each. The weather was nice enough so off to a corner store to pick up some drinks and take a nice stroll over to the Trevi Fountain. (It's very nice that you can get a take out beer and wander around with it in the middle of the day, and no-one really cares.) Such a beautiful location in Rome, one of my favourites for sure. We sat down enjoyed our drinks and did a sketch of the fountain. A place that I definitely recommend visiting.

The guy on the left is totally punching the horse, whilst the guy on the right is leading his horse whilst enjoying a delicious Italian croissant. The guy in the middle is just chillin' inside his giant clamshell. Who wouldn't?

Wow we did a lot this day, read on PART III! (No wonder we needed to sit down.)

Roaming around!

Our morning began with a free breakfast from the bar a couple streets away from the hotel, I guess that they just don't have the area to feed everyone in the hotel. Grabbed a croissant and one the most delicious coffee I have ever tasted. Those Italians sure know how to make one excellent cup of coffee.

Now we have to grab our Roma pass, something I recommend for anyone going to Rome. This covered your first two tourist attractions free of charge plus queue skip, free metro and public bus for 3 days and discounts at all the other tourist attractions in the guide. I really liked the fact that they give you a free wifi password and it all comes with a map and a nice read passport looking book for only 30 Euros.

The first place we wanted to visit was, of course, the Colosseum, but walking to it we passed a number of exciting places, discovering the fact that no matter where you go in Rome, there is always something fancy to see. We walked past a piazza (square) with a fountain, down past a massive palace, and a long street's length of interesting ruins before finally making it to the Colosseum area. We also stabbed a Centurion on the way.

Colessum- it is much bigger than I had imagined it to be walking up towards it (seconded - I actually found it much more impressive on the approach, once you're inside the effect is kind of diminished) sure was mind blowing ruins and trees everywhere. 

I love these trees!!! (clear blue skies all day 17C) This picture was taken within Palantine Hill / Roman Forum pretty much  a whole bunch of really important government buildings and palaces back in the day that have been turned into ruins. A very pleasant walk through. Also, with the Roma Pass entry into the Colosseum and this place, which is pretty expansive, only counts as one of your free entries. Plus the queues here are super long, skipping them is nice.

From there it lead us to Argentina Square, after we exited strolled over to the streets to Campo de' Fiori to check out some vendors, pasta stands, tourist junk and all manner of ristorantes. Here we bought lunch our first meal, since the restaurants were all packed we grabbed some pizza sandwiches and a sprite which costed us less than 10 Euros.

Our lunch!

A clown that went around causing a ruckus, squirting children and dogs with his water gun,  holding hands with ladies that are walking by with their boyfriends. Of course afterwards he went around and asked for money.

Pasta vendor galore.

When in doubt go to Rome

I just decided that I could swap some shifts around at work and the next thing I knew I had 5 days off coming up. What should I do with these 5 days off? After work I rushed on home on pay day and thought it is time to get back on a plane and see more of the world. Lets buy some tickets, there was thought on Wales, Venice and even Amsterdam....Rome was the one that strummed the right chords.

After some hilarious antics, tickets are now booked!

First stop, Sky Bus trip to East Midlands airport. I didn't think that there could be an airport smaller than Edmonton's but I have found it here right in the UK. 12Pounds a family ticket got both of us a return ticket from Derby [40 minutes one way] and back, not a bad deal. (Apparently to buy two adult return tickets to the airport would have costed us 12.50Pounds, I like helpful bus drivers.) Off to a good start!

Since I do not hold a UK passport I had to go find the visa check counter, which was very much ust a counter. We had shown up in advance just in case there was a huge line up, instead it took all of 10 seconds. i assume that not very many people that holds a non-UK passport come through here.

We bought our tickets through RyanAir now the website itself states that tickets are relatively cheap but with     all the airport fees it pretty much doubles or triples the price of the ticket. either way, I didn't like the fact that you would have to pay extra for checked luggage. there were no allocated seats and if you didn't have a printed boarding pass on an A4 sheet of paper it would cost you 60pounds to get it printed off at the airport. On the better side of things, if you like first come first serve seats this is an excellent airline to fight your way onto the plane. I personally don't like to have to  line up in a rush at the boarding gate.

2.5 hours later we arrived at Ciampiano airport. From the airport we caught a bus (another 40 minutes) into Roma, conveniently they sold bus tickets return airport shuttle for 8 Euros.

Arrived at Termini station {this place is pretty darn big} the hub for tourist and tour guides. We wandered around for awhile looking for our hotel and hitting up our first tabacci store. Our hotel was hidden away since we were looking for a huge neon sign like all other hotels but it was on the smallest plaque on the side of a huge hotel near the buzzer saying that it was on the third floor. To only find out that we weren't at the correct one and was escorted over to another hotel since they have three hotels within a 3 block radius. Christina Hotel was advertised on hostel bookers as a featured hotel since their regular prices are 60-100 Euros per night and we got it for 20 Euros/per night!

Our double private room had carvings on the ceiling and nicely pattered blankets and wallpaper with a reading chair, a very small TV, mini fridge and a kettle. Much nicer than I had expected, the only things was the fact the walls are a bit thin.

Now we are ready for our first day in Roma.