Eastern Mediterranean Tour - Italy- Rome

Eastern Mediterranean Tour - Italy- Rome

Map of Rome with our routes

Day 14: Tuesday 25^th  December 2012 Rome (Cathy) blue

Again at Rome airport we are dealt with quickly and efficiently and start to look for the shuttle bus. One man tries to coerce us to buy bus tickets for 14 Euros and we decline knowing that there is a much cheaper service. He growls and mutters to us – ‘well if you want the cheap service …’ too right we do! Terravision offers a perfectly good service for 5 Euros a head. The bus deposits us at the Terminali part of Rome after driving past two of the 15 Egyptian obelisks that adorn Rome. Both trains and buses terminate here, a bit like Victoria in London and like Victoria the area is full of hotels. We can walk quite easily to our hotel at number 66 Via Nationale the Hotel Espositione. We are right opposite the opera house so it will be difficult to get lost! The lift is a bit antiquated and very small and we struggle to reception on the 3^rd floor only to find that we will be housed in the building next door and have to struggle down again and back up in the next building. We are on the 4^th floor with a wonderful view of the street and the opera house. Our room is great, really big with a high, elaborately painted ceiling and everything that we need. The biggest boon being the space. The kids take showers and change to freshen up and then armed with a guide book we set off into the streets of Rome, merry Christmas!

We are within easy walking distance of everything, beautifully positioned. All of the museums are of course closed today it being Christmas so we take in some outdoor sights. We navigate through the little winding streets behind the via Nationale to the Trevi Fountain. It’s crowded with tourists but we get to the front of the crowd and throw in our Namibia dollars and wish to return to Rome. Chris buys the kids gelato, Italian ice-cream is, supposed to be the best in the world, Beatrice finds Nutella flavour – yum! Then we keep on strolling, through little winding streets decorated with Christmas lights and full of restaurants and gift shops. It is so delightful to walk around in a place where every angle is interesting and entertaining if not beautiful, what a joy! I buy some roast chestnuts, they are for sale on nearly every street corner, lovely taste, reminds me of childhood. We pass the Pantheon, closed of course but definitely on the visiting list and move on to the Piazza Navona where a Christmas market complete with a worrying number of Father Christmases is taking place. The kids are worried that the children will be confused! The Piazza is packed mostly with Italians which is nice, the atmosphere is lively and friendly and at last we start to have a Christmassy feeling which has been elusive up ‘til now. We must have passed another four obelisks on our walk, no wonder the Egyptians are unhappy. The Romans have added extra embellishments to them including added ornamentation on the pyramid at the top. On our travels we pass a big church, the Basilica of Saint Andreas. I see people coming out and think why not investigate, it had a real ‘wow!’ effect. A typical baroque church, large but quite sparsely decorated outside but inside encrusted with gold leaf, murals and paintings everywhere, soaring columns supporting a high domed ceiling, equally decorated, the tiled floor was also full of decoration – gosh! As we came in we were greeted with a large nativity scene, giving us more Christmassy feeling. The kids were very impressed with the church although it only warrants a couple of sentences in the guide book. Imagine if this church were elsewhere in the world, it would really be celebrated. But in Rome, where every second building is a historical treasure it is relegated to an also ran. We tell the kids to wait for the Sistine chapel!

We move back into the little streets and find a bistro to have supper, they offer reduced menus for tourists and so we order two tourist menus and one pizza to share between us. The pasta starters are very tasty the pizza also, the main meals are only ok but the pudding, tira-mi-su, is delicious. By this time we are quite tired and so Alex, who is proving to be a good navigator, leads us back to the hotel. As I write this all three of them are collapsed, fast asleep, only Beatrice is actually in bed.

I am still full of the splendours of Egypt, after all we only left there today and so far the splendours of Rome don’t quite have the same impact, it’s hard to top the pyramids of Giza. Hopefully tomorrow our visit to the Roman forum and the Colosseum will be splendid enough for all of us. Alex has a computer game that uses ancient Rome as its battle ground so he recognises all of the land marks !

Day 15: Wednesday 26^th  December 2012 Rome (Alex) red

Our first proper day in Rome. We had a real lie in today, well for us that has become about 8:30, the mere mention of this time to me in Namibia, would send me running to the hills in horror, yet here it seems normal. We weren’t sure exactly what we were going to eat, either the Hotel’s breakfast for 3€, which my father didn’t trust, or a Café, which would be quite expensive. In the end after much thought we didn’t go for either, we went for the option Beatrice came up with and that was that we buy things from Spar and then eat them in the hotel room. So off Beatrice and my father went all the way back to the station, for this was the only Spar we knew of at this point, while my mother and I stayed in the hotel as it has become the norm to update the blog and finish writing the diary. This took up most of the morning and at about 10am, about 50 mins after they had left, Beatrice and my father returned with the essentials for breakfast.

So breakfast was a bit rudimentary, but boy it was tasty, just bread, salami, tomatoes, cheese and pesto, simple but one of the best brunches I’ve had all holiday.

Then we decided that we were going to go to the Colosseum first for this I was dying to go see having heard and read so much about it. We thus set off with me as the guide and my mother with the knowledge, walking down the Via Nazionale to the Pizzia Venezia. From here we could already see the Colosseum, but at first there was the victory monument of Emanuele the second, a massive monument all white, Trajan’s Column, also big and fancy with a detailed depiction of the emperors victories. Then we walked along the Foro di Traino/Imperiali, basically the shopping mall of the time, with columns of course, heading ever closer to the grand Colosseum. The street had been closed to cars today so it was absolutely brilliant for taking pictures and walking, on the way we saw many people being human statues and other crazy things.

We hadn’t brought our passports with us so we decided not to go into the Colesseum, because if you can prove that you are a EU citizen youths between 18-26 only have to pay 7,5€ and under 18 for free, so the moral of the story is always have your passport on you at all times if visiting national monuments. But we still took loads of pictures and walked once around it, for me this is all so cool because I know all the monuments, maybe not by name, but I know the best way to climb it and know what other monuments are close by, this of course is all thanks to the computer game:  “Assasin’s Creed”.

We visited the Arco di Constantino, and had lovely pictures of the Colesseum and the Arc together.

We then walked down to Circo Massimo, a huge area where plays and fights were hosted during the Roman time, actually not very spectacular though, but in a nice surrounding and view of the Palatino ( I can’t explain everything).

Then we walked down to the river Tiber and then over a bridge and then over again, quickly having a look at the Isola Tiberina, aka the Island in the Tiber. The Tiber isn’t like the Seine or the Thames, because it isn’t used, no traffic and its banks are filled with rubbish, quite sad but also interesting, for this river is one of the reasons Rome was even founded at this location.

We then decided to go to the Spanish steps, which was a bit of a way off, but nothing is too far for the Brocks and so off we went. We did have to stop off in a little park for a break and drink, but then it was nonstop walking. For me it is quite hard to walk with my parents, because I walk far faster than them and don’t realise it until I turn around and have to jump to find them and since I’m the guide it is quite difficult for them to follow as well.

We then went past the Pantheon again, but this closes at 1pm already on a public holiday. Then we walked down the Via del Corso, a shopping street with loads of big name stores such as Prada and many others of that genre. We then reached the Steps and discovered that there was going to be a show on, so we waited and only really heard the sound check of the singers, but this wasn’t very spectacular and thus after 15mins we climbed up the steps and then went back down again. And had tea at Babingtons tea shop, the most expensive tea is available here and so only mother had tea, because she was really craving tea. Here my mother forgot/lost her guide book and when we returned to find it, it had disappeared.

Then comes that fun part of the visit to a city and that is locating and going to the Hard Rock Café to buy me, Alex, a pin. It wasn’t hard at all to find it and thus we did as we set out to do and found a cool Café on the way called ‘Alex’!

Once we had reached Via Nazionale again, we had thoughts on dinner, but instead of having to walk all the way to the station again, I located a Spar which is far closer to our Hotel than the other and a bakery, both of which my father and sister must have walked by blindly this morning. Then we had dinner in the hotel room again, with a salad and then chilled and did organizational things. And that wraps up our day.
By the way we have seen about 11 of the 16 Egyptian Obelisks in Rome.

Day 16: Thursday  27^th  December 2012 Rome (Christof) green

A nice relaxed morning again, breakfast in the room … only Cathy is suffering the absence of hot tea. Funny how the hotel rooms in Dubai, Egypt and Italy do not have the basic amenity of a kettle and the wherewithal to make coffee and tea in the room. Even a very basic room in southern Africa has that.

It has been raining in the night, Alex says he saw lightning, this morning there is an icy sun shining with bits of low mist chucked in. We take the bus no. 64 straight from in front of the hotel to the Vatican: St. Peter’s Basilica. Most imposing in the low morning mist, the initial photos have the cupola/dome still shrouded. The queues look formidable and the tour guides (feel like touts), who have licence to skip the queues with their extorted clients, look temptingly appealing. But we steel ourselves and stoically embrace the queue (and think of England!). In fact, it does not take all that long really and we’re inside the biggest church ever built (?).

The basilica was only started to be built (on the much older Vatican campus) in the mid 14^th century by Pope Nicolas V and took 176 years to complete, including towards the end, Michelangelo who did the cupola.  The pietà, Madonna and Jesus, sculpted from white marble by him is probably the greatest attraction … but the whole place is overwhelming, everywhere you look would be a most treasured piece of art anywhere, but here there is over-kill. Cathy and Alex still spend an additional small fortune to visit the Vatican treasury (the richest and most corrupt outfit in the world).

Cathy; the treasury was dripping with gold and precious jewels of course, many of the crosses and chalices having being given to various popes as tribute by the kings and nobles of Europe over the years. Some of the older treasures were very beautiful and there was a lovely ivory chalice formed of carved cupped hands from a more recent African donation. We found the reliquaries the most curious; bits of the true cross, bits of various saints, notably St Sebastian’s skull and one of St Peter’s fingers set in a gilded case making a vaguely obscene gesture but without being attached to the rest of St Peter. The names of all of the Popes since St Peter were inscribed in marble at the entrance of the treasury; missing was Chris’ heroine, the one female pope. Interestingly there was a very old papal throne exhibited at the beginning, it had a seat made only from widely spaced leather straps despite the rest of it being ornately decorated and unlike other thrones it was open at the back. Was this the famous chair that candidates for pope were required to sit on when they underwent examination to ensure that they were really male? Oh Pope Joan, what speculation you have provoked!

Chris again; Beatrice posts a couple of postcards to family using the Vatican postal system, not everyone gets a postcard with a Vatican stamp on it! By now it’s almost lunchtime and we’re moving on the long way (the only way) to the right to reach the entrance of the Vatican museum, including the Sistine Chapel. They are very clever with their marketing: because they may not charge for visiting churches, they cannot really charge for visiting the much coveted Sistine chapel, but by including it in the exorbitant entrance fee to the Vatican Museum (€15!), which otherwise very few people would bother to go into, they catch you out. The other 3 go in while I sit in the warming sun outside … I had seen it before in 1974, almost 40 years ago!

Cathy again!; We and it seems 10,000 other people queue to get into the Sistine chapel, OK it is the Christmas holidays but it does lead one to imagine how it must be in the summer when the crowd is overheated as well as squashed! We shuffle in a disorganised column through the galleries of the Vatican museum on our pre-ordained route, passing massive collections of Egyptian, Greek and Roman remains and artefacts. It reminds me of the sultan’s treasure in Istanbul and seems more to be a demonstration of power than anything else. In more distant times many of these treasures were probably tributes from other states who needed to keep the peace with the Holy See. In recent times they were probably more to do with smoothing one’s path to heaven. But of course the Papacy had also commissioned expeditions of its own. We spot a short cut to the Sistine Chapel and scoot down it and are rewarded with a greatly abbreviated queue. The chapel itself is everything I had hoped but I had not anticipated that I would be viewing it chest to chest and back to back with another couple of thousand enthusiasts. The floor of the chapel is a mass of squashed humanity including a couple of babies in push chairs who must be wondering what on earth is going on. All faces are turned upwards probably to breathe more easily but also to admire the ceiling and the higher part of the walls. Vatican staff tasked with stopping people from taking photos move amongst us with difficulty and increasing exasperation. In such a mass of people it is impossible to 

control the cell-phones, cameras and tablets that are being brandished around. The guide book helps us to read the paintings on the ceiling and the altar wall, all Michelangelo’s inspiration and the kids are particularly fascinated by the Last Judgement. The work of the other old masters on the upper walls receives only a cursory mention in the guide book but the paintings by such as Botticelli and Perugino are very beautiful if not quite so dramatically full of energy.

 The lower walls are painted with a drapery effect. Our exit is by a different route to the tour groups and we suddenly find ourselves released into the galleries of the museum and able actually to look at its treasures and admire the patterned surfaces of the walls, floors and ceilings which are covered in decoration; for me as a textile designer it’s quite thrilling. We are particularly taken with the map room and all of the old globes and also with an exhibition of works collected by missionaries from all over the world which is in a modern gallery and exhibited in a more informative and captivating way. We exit the museum via a spiral ramp and of course take pictures of each other at various levels as we descend. Chris is waiting for us at the bottom of the hill once we are out.

Chris; Afterwards we walk the long way via the Fortress San Angelo and the Palazzo di Guistizia behind it, to the Pantheon. This a perfectly circular pre-Christian temple, in perfect shape. Please note: Christianity was only popularised by Caesar Constantine in the mid-300s AD (of course!), before that the fledgling Christians had a terrible time under the Romans (in Rome!).

After that we still go and see a virtual 5-D film show (with moving chairs, rain and wind!) of the 2,750 years of history of Rome, which I find a bit of an anti-climax for the proud entrance fee charged (€12 pp). While we are waiting for the show to start, we have our one gastronomic indulgence of the day: sit-down coffee, hot chocolate, a beer and one pizza shared by us 4.

Afterwards it’s dark and we head back to the hotel via the newly discovered nearby Spar to stock up for our DIY hotel dinner of mainly salad and wine. While the restaurant mark-up for drinks in southern Africa is a comparatively acceptable 100%, here it is more like 4 times the supermarket price. While that might be fine for a once-off special occasion, we must not forget that we are travelling for 36 days and, thus, any pattern needs to be multiplied by 36! Entrance fees (fixed costs) we can do little about: ’take it or leave it’, but the variable costs we need to be careful about, here we can make a real difference.

After a full day’s walking and a filling dinner, with unrestricted budget wine, in a well warmed room, we are suitably tired. The kids remark that it is like camping, going to sleep quite early. So it is, at 21:30 I’m the last one awake, doing the diary for the blog. Tomorrow is another day, the last day in Rome. Tomorrow we need to ‘do’ the laundrette run, with tumble-dryers, we are running out of clean clothes.

On Saturday, it’ll be off to Firenze (one and a half hours by train), where we’ll meet Wilfried and family. Unfortunately Trudie has had to rush back to Namibia to assist one of her brothers who had a serious car accident which tragically cost the life of his 6-year old son. In Florence we will also meet Eckart & Kerstin (we are looking forward to hearing which of his 2, both married, children will allegedly make him a grandfather during the coming year).

Day 17: Friday 28^th  December 2012 Rome (Beatrice) orange

We got up at around 8am and enjoyed the rest of the panettone from yesterday without any stress, yeah right! Today we stressed a considerable amount. First we stressed about the transport from the Turkey airport to our hotel. Then we stressed about getting out of the building soon to have as much daylight as possible and then we stressed about where the launderette was. So you get my point. Once at the launderette (which was very easy to find) we divided our stuff into dark and light and sorted out when to come back. The owner was friendly and said we could collect our stuff anytime before 12pm and proceeded to tell Alex that he is very handsome and that he should marry his daughter. Alex was rather embarrassed but laughed anyway When we left the owner rushed after Alex and said that he should think about his offer.

Once outside we decided that Mummy would go with me to the Vatican to post my cards, Alex and Daddy would go to the bank and that we would all meet up asap at the Colosseum. All went well, Mummy and I got our bus easily and now knew how to operate the ticket machine. Once we had got off we saw an interesting gallery and agreed that Mummy would look around and I would meet her after I had sent the postcards. Why I had to send postcards from the Vatican was because I stupidly had bought the postcards with post stamps in the Vatican, so I could only send them from there since the Vatican is its own country. That was easy enough and after walking around the gallery to find that Mummy was outside looking for me we asked a shop keeper which bus we would have to take to get to the Colosseum. He told us and we merrily went to wait for our bus. Eventually it came and we got in, looked for the machine to buy the ticket and were confused, for there weren’t any. Mummy went to the driver to ask were we could buy some tickets and we were informed that we had to buy a ticket in advance in a tobacco store and so had to get out at the next stop. Rather peeved we got out and looked for a tobacco store. We had to walk a fair way to find one and went inside to find out that they were sold out. Annoyed we walked on to find that every single store was sold out. 

Really frustrated we had to walk all the way to the Colosseum (the fine for driving without a ticket was 50 Euro per person). Mummy worried that the other two might be worrying and so the conversation was minimal. It was a long walk and when we finally did arrive Alex had already got in the area where we couldn’t join him and so we had to stand at the back of the gigantically long line.  It took Alex 1h 15mins to get in an us exactly 1h. Thankfully we had our passports with us this time and so Alex got in with a reduced fee and I got in free. Meanwhile Daddy sat and read in the sun, 

since he had already seen it before. The Colosseum is colossal and really awe inspiring! Even though the amount of people that entered the Colosseum was enormous it did not see at all crowded, since the big arena had been built for 80000 people. There is not very much to write about our experience except that I recommend it to everyone and the view and history is fantastic.

After a few hours we went back out and met up with Daddy. From then on Mummy kindly gave Daddy her ticket and we three went to the Roman forum while Mummy read her Kindle in the sun. It was very interesting history, fabulous ruins and a really pretty garden. We spent quite a while there coming back out when it was starting to get dark.

Before we went home we walked to the Capitoline Museums. I recognised a few of the politically captured people on the posters that were on the walls there but was a bit to tired to notice anything else specifically because walking around all day taking in a lot of new information is very tiring!

Then we decided to stop in a café for 

some warm drinks, which we could not make in the hotel room and needed to warm up - it was really quite cold! On our way we were stopped to let the president’s procession of cars through and we even saw him as he got out even though I did not know which one of the men with suits he was. The warm drink was good and we continued home. Mummy and Alex went via to the launderette and Daddy and I went via the super market. We made a nice salad and ate it with baguette and afterwards Nutella! After that we stressed a bit more about the train for tomorrow to Florence and went to sleep.