Impossible Roma

Flying high to Rome

My flight from Paris to Rome was on the economy airline Veuling.  You can’t argue with the price at all but the seats were so close together.  My knees were in the back of the seat in front of me for the entire plane flight.  This wasn’t like your normal cramped flight.  This was seats that were insanely close together.  I spent the entire flight with my knees in the back of the seat in front of me.  You can't argue with the price though which was insanely cheap.  My three flights were $300 total.

Room at Hilton Garden Inn Airport Rome

I arrived in Rome and made it through customs at around midnight.  By that time I tried to call the hotel several times in order to find out if they had a shuttle and where it picked up from but the phone number on the website was wrong.  In the end I ended up with my first case of being ripped off overseas.  First, there were the people who operated a shuttle that wanted to charge me €30 in order to get a ride.  I recognized that as a bunch of BS and soldiered on.  I looked for a cab and I got tricked by the oldest trick in the book.  The old I’m not going to turn the meter on I’m just going to charge you €15.  It was like a €5 cab ride as well.  Not to mention the fact that we passed by the shuttle on the way to the hotel.   Ah well I didn’t do too badly for being in a foreign country where I don’t speak the language around midnight with a dying cell phone.

Random sight from the taxi while in traffic

I stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn that night.  I checked in and it was rather annoying because you had to use a key in order to access the elevators, a feature that makes some feel safer but to me is just another bit of annoyance between me and getting to my room.  I made it up to my room alright and it was very comfortable.  I soon discovered that I ended up leaving my laptop power cord along with the crazy new adapter I bought behind in Paris.  It was the biggest goof I made of the trip.  On the plus side, I did have an extra cord at home, and my laptop would be good for limited use until I made it back to the US.

Inside the Vatican

I started off my morning with breakfast in the hotel as I had done every day on the trip I woke up early enough to do so.  One of the things I really missed about the US is the way that bacon was cooked.  The bacon in the UK wasn’t cooked to that nice crispiness that I get back at home.  Breakfast in particular was one of the dishes that made me miss home.

I took a shuttle to the airport to take a train into Rome.  When I got there I only had moments before the train left.  I didn’t get to buy a ticket before the train left and I would have to wait thirty minutes.  I totally thought that there was only one train and I definitely took the wrong one.  It was an episode of me blatantly not paying attention.  I got out of the train and took a taxi the rest of the way for €20.  I had lost patience at that point.

Hilton Garden Inn Rome City Center

I checked into the Hilton Garden Inn Rome.   It was a nice hotel in the center of the city.  The one thing that was apparent was that the elevators were absurdly small.  There was just enough room for me and my bags inside of the elevator and my head was inches from the ceiling.  The great thing about the hotel was that they gave you directions to all of the sights that you might want to see on the trip.

Rome is not that difficult of a city to navigate because every time you wonder where you are you can look up and in you’re like oh that’s the coliseum, I need to go that way.  The historical landmarks really help you to gain your bearing.  I unfortunately made the mistake of getting on the tram in the wrong direction the first time I rode it.  It cost me quite a bit of time, but I took a bunch of pictures of the city along the way.

One of a few hundred pictures I took in Vatican Musem

As I walked towards the Vatican, I reached peak hunger and quickly stopped in a pizzeria along the way.  The pizza in Rome has a very thin crust that I find delightful.  It is pretty crisp and light but somehow has enough strength to support an abundance of cheese and toppings.  My particular piece of pizza had mushrooms and sausage.  They had to be some of the best mushrooms I’ve ever tasted before.  I wish I would have taken note of the place, but I was kind of in a hurry and I just walked in grabbed a slice and walked out.  It was a great value for only €5.  There are plenty of pizzerias along the way to the Vatican though.

I finally made it to the Vatican Museum and made it through the line relatively quickly.  I only waited to get in for about 15 minutes which is really shorter than how long that I heard that it would take to get in.  The amount of artwork that is in the museum is amazing and it is pretty massive.  I spent about 3 hours walking around and taking tons of pictures.   The unfortunate part was that you could not take pictures inside the Sistine Chapel.   That doesn’t take away from the fact that it is very awe inspiring to be inside of it and I took quite some time looking at the detail of the artwork.  Yeah you pass through many similarly painted rooms, but there is something about the Sistine Chapel that just takes your breath away the moment you walk in.

I left and walked around to try and make my way into Vatican city, but as I was wandering aimlessly, I was told by a couple of cops that I was walking somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be walking despite the fact that I didn’t see any signs or anything blocking my path.  I obliged their yelling at me to hurry along and that’s when I found out that everyone was waiting for the Pope to make his appearance.

Awesome sandwich at Fa Bio

Not being Catholic or otherwise having a huge interest in seeing the Pope, I decided to go get a sandwich instead.  It was an awesome decision.  I went to one of the places from my guide book and ended up heading to Fa Bio.  It is a small little sandwich shop.  I chatted it up with the guy making my sandwich that worked there and he had spent some time in California, which explained his really good English.

 My meal was simple and cheap at the same time.  It was also fresh and very tasty.  I got a sandwich with salami and capicola, some cheese and an olive spread.  The lettuce was dressed in a little bit of olive oil as well.  The simple things are the easiest to mess up, but it would be hard to fail with the quality of the ingredients that were in this sandwich.  When It was initially served to me I thought that the ratio of the thick sliced bread to the very thinly sliced Italian meats would be the downfall of this sandwich as it would fall into the classic sandwich mistake of having too much bread, but one bite taught me differently.  The chewy bread went perfectly with the salty olive tapenade and the little offering of meat was just enough to be satisfying.  I had a tasty Pink Grapefruit soda to wash it down with.

Yummy Cheap Gelato

I went for value again when it came to ordering desert.  I wanted to have gelato, and I went for the gelato.  There is a place right outside of the Vatican, Old Bridge, that had a huge line.  It moved very quickly and I stood in it.  It was well worth the wait.  The price was unbelievable, €2 for a cup that was overflowing with yummy gelato.  I ended up getting pistachio and caramel.  I don’t eat sweets much and I anticipated having a bit left over, but it was so rich and had that perfect balance that was not over sweetened and I end up finishing it all.

For dinner I didn’t want to venture far so I went right next door to the hotel at Il Martello.  They didn’t speak good English there which made for a bit of an interesting time, but I understand Italian food well enough to get my point across and know what I wanted to eat.  I would get a glass of wine that was so huge that it was more like a half bottle almost. 

More Vatican

I decided to go with the bruschetta sampler to start with.  I enjoyed the one that had the olive tapenade the most.  There was also one with tomatoes and garlic.  The tomatoes were so sweet and tasted so much like a real pure tomato.  It was phenomenal.  There was even one that was just bread with extra virgin olive oil.   As simple as it was it was great and didn’t need anything else.  I wanted the gnocchi for an entrée, but they ran out so I went with pasta with clams.  The pasta was very good and cooked perfectly, but I didn’t care for the sauce that much.

Perfect Cappuccino and Pastry

The next morning I wanted to get out to an early start, but it was rainy so I had no problem setting the alarm back a bit and staying inside for a while.  I had a tour scheduled for later in the day, and I had breakfast at the hotel.  I got on the tram for a little bit and ended up getting coffee at Grand Caffe Santos.  The second best value of the trip would have to be all of the coffee shops I visited.  Drinks that were amazingly better than my $4-5 drink at Starbucks came in at about €1.  It almost felt like stealing.

I took the tram to by the Coliseum, I actually got off a stop late.  I wasn’t paying attention really because I thought it would be the last stop and I looked up to see it just as we were passing it.  It worked out in my favor because I got to get a good vantage point to take a really good picture of the Coliseum.  I meet up with the tour group a little bit later. The tour I bought online ahead of time through Real Rome Tours.  Our tour guide was extremely knowledgeable.  It only makes sense because he was an archaeologist who spent his dissertation digging around the Coliseum.  This made for a tour where I got a wealth of interesting information, much of which I have since forgotten.

Colleseo

There was a lot of walking along the way of the tour, the main advantage though was that there was absolutely no waiting in line.  I think it is one of the scams of European sightseeing, if you don’t want to wait in line pay a tour guide a lot of money.  This tour was well worth it though.  We got a chance to go into the upper and lower levels of the Coliseum as well as see some of the other ancient Roman sites like the Roman forum.

The most valuable piece of information that he ended up providing was where to eat dinner.  Nearly everyone from the tour headed over to Massenzio.  It was a pretty good value there as a three course meal was €20.  My only legitimate complaint could be that they were a little slow with their service.  That was a recurring theme throughout nearly every place I visited in Europe though.

Would be brilliant white stone without vehicle pollution

My appetizer there was a plate of spaghetti Bolognese.  This rescued my somewhat diminished opinion of food in Rome.  Our guide said that food in Italy gets better the further south you go.  This spaghetti was so good, that if that was the case I would guess it came from the very tip of the boot.  The deliciousness of the dish was matched only by it’s simplicity.  That perfect taste of the sweet tomatoes combined with the meatiness of the sausage and that awesome pasta that was a perfect al dente.

Next up I had the Veal Saltimbocca. One of my favorite herbs is sage.  Combining sage with the salty prosciutto and tender veal and you’ve got a winner.  I often make a saltimbocca at home completely omitting the cheese from the equation but with this it worked.  Especially since the prosciutto was perfect and didn’t render the dish overwhelmingly salty.

Attack of the bikers

I was a little delayed in getting back to the tram because on the way I ran into a bunch of bikers.  No not the burly dudes on Harley's kind but a bunch of people on bicycles.  There were tons of them everywhere.  I wasn't sure if it was some type of protest or anything but I've never seen that many people on bicycles in my life.  I was walking along and then all of a sudden there were a couple of thousand people on bicycles.  Some of them were really cool too but I wasn't fast enough with my camera.  Damn those cyclists.

I took the tram back to the hotel to pick up my bags and I made the decision to catch the bus to the train station in order to get back to the airport.  It would save me €40 and it wasn’t a huge hassle.  I did get on the bus going the wrong way at first.  It was at this time that I finally figured out that the signs have all of the stops on both sides of the street.  You have to look for which one has your stop coming up the fastest.

Catacombs, insert wild animals, slaves and gladiators ~2000
years ago

The train ride was pretty quick and I had the added benefit of having an outlet available to me on the train.   It was pretty empty at 10 pm, and it didn’t take me long to get back to the Hilton Airport Hotel to crash.  If I was going to Rome again, I would probably use that hotel since it was easier to access, being connected to the airport itself.  Good 5 minute walk from the train and I was there.  The rooms were also larger than at the Hilton Garden Inn.