Destination: Rome, Second Stop: Vatican City
With Ashley reflecting on her summer in Europe we chose the best location we could think of to draw her trip to a close. The heart of the once-boundless Roman Empire, ruled by the likes of Ceasar Augustus, and the setting of several Shakespearian plays, the city that literally birthed the entire civilized world: Rome.
After several long boring train rides, we decided to fly into Rome. The biggest bonus was that RyanAir has straight flights directly from Valencia (where I can take the metro to/from the airport) to Rome, which is simply incredible. Travel time is still significant because of all the waiting you have to do, but it’s much more interesting and fun to wait around in an airport than a train car.
Arriving at the Rome, Ciampino airport (a small town outside of Rome proper) we were greeted by Bob – the steward of the hostel we were to stay in. It was quite worry-free to simply land and be picked up and carried off to the hostel. This was by far the best experience with accommodations I’ve had all summer. The room had a comfortable bed, a glorious private bath, efficient air conditioning, and a very quiet, peaceful atmosphere. It was the most relaxing place I slept all summer. They even made breakfast in the morning.
The process of brewing coffee in Italy is a little different than other methods I’ve seen. The brewing devices come in two pieces: the water reservoir at the bottom and the coffee reservoir at the top. In between these two sits a stainless steel filter that holds the coffee. After filling the water reservoir and screwing the top on (with the coffee in between) you set the whole thing on the stove and wait for the water to evaporate up through the coffee and land in the top reservoir. It’s really quite cool. If you’ve ever been camping you might have used a similar device. I saw a 6-cup pot in a store for 5 Euros, so I bought one so I can feel Italian all year long!
Anyway, back to the story. Ashley found a pretty good deal on a hop-on/hop-off bus (we usually try to avoid such blatantly touristic machinations, but it was a good deal), so after a little foray trying to find our hostel in Rome proper and lunch we initiated our 24-hour tickets at 1pm on Friday afternoon. The open-top bus was completely worth the extra cost – we were able to witness the beauty of Rome in its true form without having to walk all over the place. We saw several plazas with awesome statues, but not worth spending 30-45 minutes walking to get to.
Our first stop was in Piazza Venezia at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The corpse of the Unknown Soldier from the Italian military was transferred here in a great act of unifying the nation. Due to its relatively recent construction, this was the grandest monument in all of Rome. The incredible size and beautiful white marble providing a foundation for the large and impressive statues of bronze and copper was like nothing I have never seen before. The enormous presence of craftsmanship and passion was overwhelming – words simply cannot describe it I’ve posted pictures and hopefully that will help portray my ideas.
Stopping for a break under a neighboring tower build in 103 AD, we took a moment to catch our breath from all that we had witnessed so far. The entire city of Rome has an uncanny presence of power. Knowing that some of the greatest rulers, conquerors, scholars, and even the Son of God himself has walked the same paths you are walking is a very intense feeling.
Walking down the street of the ruins of Ancient Rome’s Forums, we headed towards the Coliseum We made a point to stop at the ruins of the forum of Ceasar Augustus to take it all in. Arriving at the Coliseum was another breathtaking moment. The sheer size and elaborate construction of this building is impressive in itself, but to know that it was built like this 2000 years ago from the sweat and blood of slaves with the most rudimentary equipment compounds the magnitude. We took a guided tour of the building and learned all about the lives of Gladiators, the proceedings of the games, and the details of the building. Before the earthquake which destroyed ¾ of the outer wall, the building was equipped with an elaborate system of sails over the roof that could be adjusted depending on the time of day and the condition of the wind to offer shade to the Romans and to provide theatrical lighting to the center of the stage, where the action took place. Underneath the stage was where the wild animals and Gladiators were kept. During the games wild animals such as bears, goats, lions, alligators, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, tigers, and others would be hoisted from beneath to the surface of the stage by a system of elevators. On top of all this, a complex system of lead pipes ran throughout the entire building to offer fresh spring water through water fountains throughout the entire stadium.
The aqueduct system is still in use today, and it serves more than just the Coliseum. Actually, it runs throughtou the entire city. All of the fountains throughout Rome are operated from siphons of natural spring water. There are continually running spouts of water sprinkled through the city that you can operate with your hand to drink straight from the spout, or fill up your water bottle with fresh, cold spring water. This water system is ingenious and undeniably convenient. I can’t get over how awesome this feat of engineering is.
After the Coliseum and a full loop on the HopOn/Off bus, we headed to find some cheap dinner near the hostel. We were falling asleep on the bus, so we decided to call it an early night.
We got up early enough to make it to the first bus that left in the morning and headed to Vatican City. We bought a tourist-style (read: expensive and horrible) omelette when we got there and ate it in the courtyard of St. Peter’s Basilica. It was a nice little breakfast in an incredible surrounding. The courtyard for St. Peter’s basilica has two fountains in the center and then the walls of the courtyard are crowned with the presences of previous popes. It was amazing.
You always hear about the horrible lines to get into the Vatican City during high tourist season, but it really wasn’t that long of a wait. Ashley had to put another shirt on over her dress because you can’t enter the church with exposed knees or shoulders. There were several people standing there that had been denied entry and several people bought some scarves from a nearby street vendor and used pins and such to fashion a covering. Upon arriving at the gate, we weren’t exactly sure what was what since everything was in Italian, and neither of us had done enough research beforehand. So, we went through the tombs of Popes and looked at all of the tombs. I had heard of a few of them before, but not being Catholic I didn’t know much about the men. There was a small crowd gathered around the most recently dead pope offering prayers, pictures of their families, and notes. There was also the tomb of St. Peter, which was very fancy with a grand staircase coming in from above on the ground floor, and gold and velvet covering everything.
After the tombs, we went upstairs to the main basilica and stood in gaping awe for several minutes, reveling in the grandeur of everything. The room was 400 feet tall and every square inch of the interior was covered in ornate carvings inlaid with gold and silver. There were several statues of figures that were important in the history of the church. There was even a baptismal pool that they still use on the weekends to baptize their children. There were huge Latin letters circling near the roof at the base of the dome. There were also several security guards protecting some of the services that were going on. Yes, that’s right, not one, but two services. The one room was big enough to hold thousands of tourists, and still have reasonably peaceful services. There was a blatantly Italian family having a wedding and then a mass. Ashley started filming the mass, and the security guard nearly shot her. Not really, but it was prohibited.
Once we had seen the lower half of the basilica we figured it’d be best to view it from the top, as well. So, we began our journey of climbing all of the 551 steps from the bottom to the top. They had a lift that would eliminate 300 of those steps, but, hey, we’re adventurous. It wasn’t that bad at the beginning because the steps were short and wide, but I started to get dizzy as we made countless circles around the staircase on our way to the top. Once we made it about half way through the stairs broke through to the roof of the building where you could look down at the courtyard and then up at the dome that was to be the final destination. After taking a quick breather, we entered the last set of stairs. This is where things got interesting. The staircase was so small and winding, it was almost like walking through a cave. Luckily the architect had built in several whistle-looking openings into the staircase to make sure that things didn’t get too stifling. The very last staircase was reminiscent of a corkscrew. It had no railings, just a rope hanging down the center of the corkscrew.
Getting to the top, however, was worth every step of the journey. Looking out over the city of the Rome from the top of the Dome of St. Peter’s Basilica is something that cannot be reproduced. We took some pictures of us with Rome in the background, and just meditated on the grandeur and embodiment of so much of our culture’s history we were viewing. After I had a peach purchased earlier that day, we made our way back down the stairs. There was some crazy woman trying to go UP the DOWN stairs, and we witnessed some heightened emotions as she tried to push everyone back up so that she could get through. Quite ridiculous. When we got to the bottom again, we were, needless to say, legs-quivering tired. However, in true traveller’s spirit we headed off towards the Sistine Chapel.
On our walk to the Sistine Chapel, we were greeted by a rather unfortunate message on a somewhat cheery little sign. It was the operating hours of the Sistine Chapel. Maybe I’m just arrogant, but I think the Sistine Chapel, one of the main things we came to Rome to see should be open for more than 4 hours on a Saturday in high tourist season. I mean, why would you want to deprive a large portion of the world from such beautiful works of art? So, the sign said that the chapel was open from 10:30am to 2pm. Looking at the 3pm our watches were telling us was very upsetting. I just don’t understand how this kind of crucial information escaped our recognition before getting all the way to Rome. Ugh.
From the walking and disappointment, we were very hungry by that point. We headed down the road a bit and picked up some pizza and pasta and filled our water bottles with the fresh spring water from one of the public spouts tapped into the aqueduct system. Man, I freakin’ love that. We got a cone of gelato ice cream for dessert and it was great. They stuffed two huge scoops onto these small little cones and it was only 4 Euros for two like that.
We walked through the city towards Plaza Espana, Fountains of Trevi, and the Pantheon. The streets leading up to Plaza Espana were very crowded – apparently this was the place to shop. There were a lot of the famous stores like Louis Vouitton and some others, but I didn’t really take note. Plaza Espana was cool. There was plenty of shade and a cool looking fountain that made it a pretty popular spot. So, we filled up our water bottles again. We walked to the Fountains of Trevi to see an even more grand fountain where several more people were gathered. There was some kind of an event where someone was trying to swim in the fountain, which is strictly prohibited, but an understandable desire. The police whistled and yelled and the guy ran off, but it was an interesting event. Upon reading in my tourist guide book that drinking from the fountain and/or throwing a coin into the fountain would guarantee your return to Rome; we did both.
Ashley bought some artwork from a street vendor, and I took a picture with a still-life drunk guy that painted himself to be the same color as the trash can he was sitting next to. It was funny. Then, we headed back to the hostel to wash up before dinner. The dinner we got at a local Italian was outstanding. It was reasonably priced and simply awesome. You really need to look for restaurants like this when travelling. It makes all the difference in the world.
Sunday was a pretty chill day. We had some time to kill before our planes left, so we walked around the town near the hostel, had breakfast, and I bought my coffee pot. Then we had another great lunch with all the works for a very reasonable price. We had a little bit of trouble figuring out how to take the train from Termini to the Ciampino airport, but we eventually got everything figured out. Ashley and I said our goodbyes for the next few weeks of being apart, and then we went our separate ways.
Of the places I have seen in Europe, I think Rome is my favorite. It’s incredibly touristic, so you should only go if you plan on being a tourist, but the sites, views, and history of that place are just amazing. I would go again in a heartbeat, especially now that I know where to find good food. It’s also weird to see how much technology they utilized 2000 years ago, and it makes you wonder why we have not made greater advances in the time that we’ve had since then.
