When in Rome... Day 2

Sooo... day two dawned bright and early and we dragged our backsides out of bed at stupid o'clock. Mostly because we couldn't sleep because either the window was shut and it was quiet but we couldn't breath in the oven. I mean room. Or the window was open and the room was cool, but sounded like a bus was driving through every 30 seconds.

Somehow Lyn navigated the shower without incident. I, however, was not so lucky. I managed to flood the place.

The Romans may have invented indoor plumbing, but they still need to figure out a thing or two. If they can manage to stick a bidet in the corner, surely they can handle the proper mounting of a shower head? Yeah. Right.

Normal people put shower heads at the narrow end of the tub so that one may stand under the spray and wash oneself in a leisurely fashion. Apparently, this is a concept completely foreign to the denizens of Rome. The shower headed is mounted dead in the middle of the lengthwise wall of the tub. For those of you who can't imagine how this could be a problem, let me also inform you that rather than a proper shower curtain/door, there is only a small shower screen at the head of the tub covering about 1/4 the length of the tub. This means that if one points the shower head even vaguely in the direction of the tub, the water hits the shower screen, sloshes gently under the shower screen, streams down the side of the tub in a lovely fountain, and flows across the floor and under the door until one's roommate starts shrieking that one is flooding the place.

The hotel provided a rather odd assortment of delicacies for breakfast. There was tea of the English variety, coffee of the mediocre variety, and two kinds of juice of the goodness-knows-what variety. Seriously, I couldn't tell by taste. One was bright orange and one was bright yellow. I think the orangish one might have involved mango, but I couldn't swear to it. There were several kinds of fruit, mostly whole. I stuck with the pineapple and melon as they were the only items that were peeled and sliced. I have to admit, they were lovely. There was yogurt, a selection of cereals and enough cakes and tortes to put a person into a sugar induced coma. There were also four kinds of croissants: plain, jam filled, custard filled, and nutella filled. I highly recommend the custard filled. There were also eggs and bacon, but I managed to miss those on day two. More about that on day three.

After breaking our fast, we struck out for the Coloseum, once again heading IN THE COMPLETELY WRONG DIRECTION. Apparently Lyn had the map upside down. Or rather, the pictures of famous things on the map were all facing toward the map reader, regardless of their actual placement in reality, which created a vast amount of confusion. On the map it appeared that one walked out the front door and turned left, when in reality the bloody building was facing an entirely different direction.

In any case, we managed to un-befuddle (is that a word?) ourselves and get headed in the correct direction. Our first view of the Coloseum was truly breathtaking, I have to say. It also, unfortunately, led to our first fleecing.

Now we are not stupid women. We are well aware that the hordes of rather ancient men dressed in somewhat cheesy galdiator gear are there for the sole purpose of liberating tourists of their hard earned cash. We weren't aware, however, of just how fleeced we would be as two of the more ancient gladiators approached us, wanting to take pictures with us. We agreed, figuring for a couple euros, it would be quite the gag. The joke was on us.

Gladiator one got us standing with him in front of the Coloseum while gladiator two took my camera and snapped off shots. Gladiator one groped Lyn's bum and poked her in the boob with his short, duct tape wrapped sword. Fortunately I remained unmolested. Gladiator two finished his Ansel Adams impression and handed back my camera while gladiator one fleeced Lyn out of... get this... TEN EUROS. Five for each of them. To stand there and take pictures with MY OWN CAMERA!!!!!!!!!! They weren't even good pictures and there were only two. Heaven only knows why it took him so long.

Off to Palatine Hill. Should you ever go to Rome, get your ticket not at the Coloseum, but at Palatine Hill. It's good for both (and the Forum), but there is almost no queue, while the Coloseum queue stretches 'round the block. But I digress.


Palantine Hill was truly amazing. The ruins are beautifully preserved and surrounded by nature, offset by the thriving city and bustling streets all around. The guidebooks recommend bringing a picnic lunch and eating there, but we were there too early for lunch. Instead we wandered around, snapping shots of everything (OK, I was snapping shots of everything.) and generally oohing and ahhing. At one point we peered over the edge of the hill to see school children having sports day on the Circus Maximus. The CIRCUS MAXIMUS!!!!!!!! Can you imagine?

"What did you do today Johnny?"

"Oh, we went to Buckingham Palace/The White House and played frisbee in the drawing room/Oval Office."

Yeah. 'Cause THAT happens every day.

It must be amazing to be a kid in Rome. But I doubt they appreciate it.

After Palatine Hill we wandered down to the Forum and then back up into the gardens. There were still oranges on the trees. Can you believe? I didn't try one, but apparently plenty of visitors do as there were peels all over the place.

By this time it was gone 12 and we were getting a mite bit peckish. Here's another handy hint: restaurants anywhere in the vicinity of something even vaguely famous jack their prices through the roof just for kicks and giggles. Don't say I didn't warn you!

We did find a bizarre little place a little way up the street. The walls were plastered with (mostly) American music icons: Elvis, the Blues Brothers, Steven Tyler. No rhyme or reason. It was a weird attempt at the Hard Rock Cafe, but the food was good and relatively cheap. I had pasta with Italian sausage (YUM!) and Lyn had another enormous pizza with what looked like thinly sliced hot dogs on top. I think it was supposed to be ham.



We headed back toward the Coloseum pausing only to enjoy some chocolate gelatto (Well, I imbibed. Lyn refrained.) and to poke our noses into a couple of tacky tourist shops. I have to say it was pretty darn cool passing up the entire (and rather lengthy) queue and getting straight into the Coloseum. I'm fairly certain we were looked on with extreme envy. All we needed was a red carpet.

The Coloseum was, in a word, AMAZING. You've seen the pictures. They don't half do it justice. Unfortunately, it's also rather crowded. Even in November. Thankfully we didn't go in summer. I can't imagine the hell hole it must be then. The American tourists are actually fairly polite, despite the strongly held stereotype of the "ugly American". It's the darn French tourists you gotta watch out for. Rude doesn't cover it.

It was growing dark and we were both starting to feel the lack of sleep and the copious amounts of walking, so we decided to go have some coffee and a nice pastry before heading back to our hotel for a little R & R before dinner. Strangely, there wasn't a lot on offer. We finally found one place that had a limited selection of pastries on offer. We selected apple tarts to go with our coffee. The coffee was good and the tarts tasty, but nothing overly exceptional. The bill, however, was enough to take our collective breaths away. 16 euros for two coffees and two little pastries? (And I do mean little.) Talk about highway robbery. Naturally, there were no prices listed anywhere so one couldn't tell beforehand what the cost would be, and for all we know, he over charged us because we were obviously tourists (It was clearly a hangout for locals.). Remember what I said about restaurants near famous places? Yeah, I mean it.

We made it back to our hotel exhausted, in sticker shock, but in one piece. The television in our room had 12 channels. None of them in English or even subtitled. (Ok, they did show half an hour of BBC news in English.) Seriously, you'd think a hotel catering to tourists and foreign business people would have at least one channel in English.

We decided to have dinner at a little bar/deli across the street. BIG mistake. The food was VILE. Apparently they didn't get the memo that Italian food is supposed to be good. We were charged 18 euros for two drinks, one sandwich and one bowl of soup. The sandwich was parma ham and provalone on foccacia bread. The parma looked like it had seen better days and the provalone tasted like rubber. The soup was no better. It was supposed to be minestrone, but it was green. I am not kidding. Green.

We choked down a few bites, but just couldn't finish, it was that bad. Still hungry, we headed back to our favorite spot from the night before for some seriously delish pasta to fill the gaping holes left in our tummies before hitting the hay for a much better night's sleep in preparation for the final leg in our Roman adventure.

When In Rome - Day 1

Thanksgiving day arrived not-so-bright and rather early and marked the first day of Lyn and my glorious Roman Adventure. Day One was all about travel.

It really doesn't matter what airport you fly out of, they all take a million years to get to. Technically, Heathrow is closest, but it's easily over an hour by bus. By cab it's a half hour (as long is the traffic isn't chocka), but who can afford a cab? Seriously, people, so far as I can tell money doesn't grow on trees. Ok, maybe it technically grows on trees, but the government sort of frowns on people making their own money.

But I digress. We flew out of Gatwick which involved three tubes, a train and a lot of standing in line doing nothing followed by more standing in line doing nothing. We finally borded the plane a good 15 minutes or so late. Huzzah! Finally on our way!

The flight was uneventful. Unless you count me nearly ripping out the seat in front of me when the plane hit an air pocket. Or three.

We bought tickets on the Leonardo Express which was also uneventful. Well, other than some seriously rude French people who nearly mowed me down. God save anyone standing in the way of them getting the seats they wanted. We switched to the Metro once we hit Termini station and had a crowded, but even more uneventful ride to our station.

We got settled into our room around about 6:30ish local time. It was a nice hotel with a snazzy marble bathroom and uber comfy beds. The manager was friendly and informative and handed us a nice little map on which he proceeded to circle absolutely every site that was even vaguely interesting. Feeling a mite peckish and eager to try some REAL Italian cuisine, we headed out to find a restaurant.

Only we went the wrong way and ended up wandering about for about an hour finding nothing. We managed to loop around and head back toward the hotel and found this incredibly quaint little restaurant that looked like a wine cellar. It was all bricks and stones and terra cotta tiles. The owner was loud and boisterous and greeted everyone exuberantly and said "Prego" a lot. He then left us to the tender ministrations of our waiter.

We ordered funghi pizza (mushroom). I swear they were the biggest pizzas I'd ever seen that were meant for one person. At least up to that point. And they were amazingly tasty. For dessert we moaned over tiramisu coated in a good 1/4 inch of cocoa powder and profiteroles smothered in custard. Divine.


We rolled our way back to the hotel to very comfy beds. Unfortunately the room was quite stuffy (they turn off the aircon for winter despite it being 17C/64F degrees out) so we had to sleep with the window open. It wouldn't have been a problem except for the traffic being so bloody noisy. So we had a rather restless night.

And that, my friends, was our first day in Rome. The adventure, however, had only begun...