Rome (Roma) Again for the First Time

I descended from the sky and landed in Rome (Roma in Italian) this morning.  Fortunately, I was a passenger in a plane at the time. <*insert rimshot drum sound*>

Today is not my first time here. But it is the first time since starting this travel journal. Hence the cryptic title of this post.

I can’t tell you how often I’ve visited Rome. Sorry. That sounded like I’ve been here so frequently that I’d need a surgeon to graft several more fingers, thumbs, and toes on me before I could count that high. Luckily, that’s not the case. I already look weird enough with the standard issue of digits. The problem is I don’t trust my memory.

This is at least my fourth trip to Rome. But I have a nagging feeling that I’ve forgotten about, at most, one or two other visits. (I hate it when my feelings nag me. I’m old. Leave me be.) So, but for my powers of recall or, rather, lack thereof, I almost certainly could count my Roman holidays to date on one or, at most, two normally-configured hands. And if two, I’d probably have four fingers left over with which to do as I please.

(I’m in Italy. I’ve been told that Italians start with their thumbs when counting. However, I prefer to think that baristas are giving me a thumbs up as an all-round nice guy rather than confirming that I want only one espresso. Or possibly only a single-shot espresso. I take what I get in those situations.)

Because I’ve been here a few times already, and I’ve seen a lot of the city’s sights, I won’t spend as much time in Rome on this trip as I might have if this were my virginal visit, so to speak. I plan to tour the ankle and stiletto heel of Italy. I considered not stopping in Rome at all. But I can get non-stop flights from Toronto (my home) to Rome, but to no Italian city south of here. So Rome, which is on Italy’s shin, is a convenient place to start and end a visit to the ankle and heel.

And Rome is such a beautiful city, steeped in history and ancient architecture and artifacts, that to pass through without spending at least some time here would be a crime. I don’t think anyone has been convicted of, and likely not even charged with that offence. But, my luck, the authorities would make an example of me. There’s that, plus the wonderful thing about having a poor memory is I can revisit places as if it were the first time.

I’ll be in Rome for four nights on the front end of this adventure and another night before I catch my flight back home.

With that introduction out of the way, let’s get Ro(a)ming.

Leonardo Not Express

Well, not quite right away. Rome’s airport isn’t in Rome. It’s in Fiumicino.

Not to worry. There’s a fast, nonstop train that goes right from the airport to Rome’s central train station, Termini. The Leonardo Express, as it’s called, leaves frequently and takes just over 30 minutes to make the trip. And, according to Google Maps, my hotel is less than a 15-minute walk from Termini.

Beautiful, right?

Not so fast. It would be a great way to get to my hotel if there weren’t a train strike on. Does anyone want to guess which day they decided to hold a one-day train strike? Anyone? Anyone? That’s right. Today.

The airport train station is on the airport property, but not in the airport terminals. It requires a long walk involving some moving sidewalks and some hallways without moving sidewalks. On the way, I didn’t see any signs regarding the strike.

At the station, all of the ticket machines had signs, in Italian, taped to their screens, making them unusable. But the ticket window was open and staffed. Of course, there was a long line. I queued and was told about the strike only when I got to the front of the line. On the bright side, the long line moved quickly. Not selling tickets tends to speed up the process.

I asked the person at the ticketless window how to get into the city. A bus. It’s downstairs. Back at the terminal.

I walked back to the terminal and couldn’t see any signs for the bus. I walked around, found an information counter, and asked how to get to the bus.

You walk all the way to the end of the terminal, take the escalator down, go outside by the only exit, and then walk on the sidewalk all the way back to this end of the terminal.

I did that. The line for bus tickets was horrendous. I think I might have been able to get into the city faster if I waited for the trains to start running again tomorrow.

Instead, I pulled out my Uber app. At Fiumicino Airport Uber books regular taxis. But it’s a predetermined fare and I can pay through the app. That’s what I did. I got a cab quickly and arrived at my hotel about 45 minutes later and 45 euros poorer.

And after checking into my hotel, it was indeed time to roam Rome.

Rome Crowd-Favourites

I’m jet lagged so I decided to stick to a small number of crowd favourites that I’ve seen a few times in past visits. How do I know they’re crowd favourites? The crowds gave it away.

And I do mean crowds. They packed streets and sights in the tourist areas I went to such that it was difficult to move without sucking in my stomach.

Maybe Palm Sunday, which the calendar tells me is today, is not the best time to be in Rome. What the heck do I know about Palm Sunday? I figured that as long as I came to Rome after Purim and before Pesach I’d beat the crowds.

Obviously, I’m kidding about that, but I did honestly think that getting out of Rome before Good Friday and staying away from the Vatican entirely during this period on the Christian calendar would stand me in good stead as far as crowds go. After all, were it not for Easter, late March,—i.e., now—would not be the high season in Rome.

How was I to know that Easter festivities spread out over more than a week? I mean, it’s as if it’s Chanukah or Pesach.

But I braved the oppressive crowds and saw some stuff.

Trevi Fountain

There’s not a lot I can say about Trevi Fountain that you don’t already know. And in the case of at least one reader, I probably can’t tell you even one-tenth of what you already know about it.

Even if you’ve never been to Trevi Fountain, and maybe never even set foot in Rome, you’ve no doubt seen many pictures of it or seen it in films.

So you already know it consists of big, bold, stone statues hanging off a wall and sitting on rocks, with a small waterfall flowing through the scene into a pool at its base. It’s one of those world-iconic scenes that you should probably visit if you have a chance. Seriously, all of the rest of the world was there today. Where were you? We missed you.

Oh, for your information, I didn’t count, nor did I get close enough to the pool at the base of Trevi Fountain that I could have counted if I were so inclined, but I am entirely confident that there are more than three coins in the fountain.

Rome’s Pantheon

The Pantheon in Rome—not to be confused with the Pantheon in Paris, and definitely not to be confused with the Parthenon in Athens—is an amazing building. The perfectly formed, stark, high, dome roof, looms above a beautiful tiled floor. Sculptures, paintings, and tombs adorn the walls.

Tombs adorning the walls? Yes. Yes, indeed. There are some famous dead Italians buried there, including a couple of kings of Italy, a queen, and Raphael, an artist dude from the Renaissance*. Fortunately for living people, to the best of my knowledge, there are none of them entombed in the Pantheon. Although, with the size of the crowds today, it came close.

(*I’m always nervous about mentioning the Renaissance here because I know little to nothing about it. If I’m wrong about Raphael being a Renaissance artist, I’m confident that my error will be quickly corrected in the comments below.)

The dome has a circular hole in it. Hey, Rome’s Pantheon is old. Really, really old. It’s bound to develop a few holes. But that’s not what this is. The Pantheon’s roof hole is intentional. It’s an oculus. There are no windows elsewhere in the Pantheon. The oculus is the only source of natural light when the front door is closed.

What I find incredible is that Rome’s Pantheon was built circa 120 CE. There were no mechanized cranes or other self-powered machines then. They clearly had some good building materials, but not as good as the ones we have today. And yet here’s this tall building with a perfect dome that was built about 1,900 years ago. I have trouble assembling IKEA furniture, but they constructed this. Amazing.

Piazza Navona

Piazza Navona is a large, rectangular public square, to use an oxymoronic phrase. On the other side of the streets bordering it are handsome, four-or-so-storey buildings. Many have restaurants on the ground floor. There are three statued fountains in the piazza.

The centre fountain dominates. It has larger-than-life statues of heroic figures and a horse. A tall obelisk rises from the centre of the fountain. It’s also the most famous as it is by Bernini.

Two “lesser” fountains with statues sit on either end of the rectangle. I put “lesser” in quotes because one of them is my favourite. Its sculptures are much more playful figures than the ones in the other two fountains, particularly the centre one. The waggish and/or grotesque figures spit in a continuous stream to create the fountains.

Spanish Steps

The Spanish Steps, which climb up one of Rome’s hills, is a set of wide stone steps at its base, but it splits off in two directions and then folds back on itself further up.

I climbed the steps and, in doing so, I confirmed something about myself. I’m not as young as I used to be. Yes, I know. Chronologically, that’s pretty much a truism. But I mean it physically too. I couldn’t climb those steps—or any steps for that matter—as quickly as I used to be able to do. Sigh.

If you walk up and take the branch of the steps off to the left, you get to a road. If you follow that road in the same direction you’re heading when you finish your climb, after a short walk you come to a vista point that looks down on old Rome, which spreads out before you. There was a bit of haze when I was up there today, so the picture I took isn’t great. But that’s it at the top of this post.

Gardens of the Villa Borghese

The Gardens of the Villa Borghese sit a little piece back from the top of the Spanish Steps. It is a large, charming park with ponds, trees, junk food trucks, a cafeteria, activities (like rowboats in the pond and two- and four-seat pedal carts you can rent to pedal around the park) and some museums.

If memories of my previous trips serve, the Gardens of the Villa Borghese is even more beautiful when it isn’t stuffed with people and when a chunk of one of its sections isn’t closed and fenced off for, I think, replanting, as was the case today.

That having been said, there is a nicely treed, stately area close to the main museum in the park, the Borghese Gallery, that wasn’t at all crowded today. It was quite peaceful.

The Borghese Gallery is a major art gallery. I didn’t go in. The exterior was mostly enclosed in scaffolding, and some sort of material covered the outside of the scaffolding. But the entrance was free of scaffolding and protective material and the gallery was open when I was there. So that’s not why I didn’t go in.

There were two reasons for that. For one, it was getting late in the afternoon when I was there. For another, as I mentioned above, I just arrived this morning on an overnight flight. By the time I walked by the Borghese Gallery, I was almost totally zonked out. It usually takes a minimum of twenty minutes and sometimes as much as an hour of wandering around inside a gallery before I reach that state. I worried that if I started that way I’d be in a coma after a few minutes inside.

I don’t know if I’ll get back there before I leave Rome this time. I’m not doing much planning for my time here on this trip. We’ll see.

And that brings me to the end of my first day of this trip. So, once I finish the aside below, it’s time for me to try to get rid of this jet lag.