Roma: Day Two

From One End of Town to the Other

Borghese Gallery and Ancient Appian Way 

Today we got up early (you’ll see that is a theme) to tour the Borghese Gallery Museum in the Villa Borghese. The kid that runs our hotel Our hotel concierge said that it was a 35 minute walk to the museum. We also had to arrive 30 minutes prior to our reservation, in order to claim our tickets. After about five minutes of brisk walking our calves were killing us and we could tell that we weren't covering enough ground fast enough. So we caught a cab, which ended up being a way better idea. It was a long way (35 minutes?) and the cab was totally affordable. We made it with several minutes to spare.

Of course, there are no pictures allowed inside the museum. If I was ever going to break that rule and snap a photo of one piece of art, it would have been in this gallery. They have several sculptures by a seventeenth century artist, Gian Lorenzo Bernini. He was incredible and one of the first in his time to make masterpieces out of one solid piece of marble. His father was also an artist that sculpted using this technique, but the son really made the marble come alive in a way that no one else really had. One statue in particular was unbelievably breathtaking, and I wish I could have photographed it. Apollo and Daphne You’ll have to look at pictures online, but trust me it was amazing in person. The intricacy of the leaves and bodies, it is incredible that it all came from one solid piece of marble. The leaves are so thin they are almost translucent. Incredible. 

The entire house was stacked with fantastic art, but in a way that was digestible. We just used their audio guide, but still it was fantastic. You are only allowed 2 hours and we soaked up every second. It was interesting to hear about who requisitioned each piece and then how it came to be in the Borghese collection. Sadly, Napoleon forced his sister to sell many fantastic works of art during his time of power, and because they were sold, not exactly stolen, they weren’t required to be returned once he was conquered. I think I heard that most of them are in the Louvre. It was also sad, and interesting, to hear that so many paintings were obtained through misuse of power. The Borghese family was related to a pope, and at one point, the head of the house was a cardinal as well. They used their positions of power to extort people for the art they owned. For example, they might charge you with some crime and put you in prison, so that the price of your freedom was most of your possessions.

We thoroughly enjoyed our time in the museum and surrounding gardens. You could easily spend all day there.

I asked if there was a drinking fountain, the bookstore lady said, yes, just outside.

I was a little nervous. This looks like a decorative fountain, not a drinking fountain.
However, she assured me that she drinks it every day. 

The Borghese family wanted a home like no other. This was used to house exotic birds.

There were designed gardens and acres of open park.

This building was so intriguing to me, wish we'd been able to go inside.

There is even a zoo on the property!

We were just outside the old walls of Rome.

After our morning on the north end of town, we headed south to the Ancient Appian Way: Rome’s oldest and first road. I really enjoy ancient history and I was excited to see this bit of history first hand. We toured an early Christian catacomb and then walked our way up the ancient road to a little café where we had a sandwich and a cappuccino. It was a perfect afternoon.

Inside a catacomb, before I realized that no pictures were allowed. 

A reconstructed portion of the ancient road.

Ruins, ruins everywhere. There should be some sections of aqueduct out there somewhere.

Welcome to Rome, the city of headless statues.

I confess, I can't even remember what this building used to be now. Currently it's a museum.

The original portion of the Appian Way.

This guy (or girl?) was right at home outside the Appian Way Cafe. 

Delicious!

We eventually caught a bus and headed back to town to do some classic tourist sightseeing. We took the metro to the Spanish steps and walked our way down to the Trevi Fountain and on through town, eating our daily gelato. 

The Spanish Steps

Blake got suckered by the rose peddlers at the Spanish steps. 

At the top of the steps.

The view from the top.

It had just poured rain and cleared everyone out for our picture ;).
I think there is a raindrop on the lens though, right about at Blake's face.

Trevi Fountain, all lit up.

The green tree cracked me up. This is a memorial to the man who united Italy.

And then we crashed into bed! I'm behind on getting these posted, but at the end of the day I'm just completely beat!

Roma: Day One

The Day of Only Naps

We started the day with a drive to Seattle airport at 1:00 AM. The plan was to drive at night so that by the time we were on our flight to Rome, via connection in Chicago, we would be tired enough to sleep soundly on the plane. I'll go ahead and let you in on the outcome of that plan now: FAIL.

We were super tired driving to the airport (we were supposed to get in a nap after packing.. didn't happen), so we were driving after being awake since 6 AM-ish that morning. We were super tired at the airport and took a 30 minute nap. We were super tired flying to Chicago and took an hour nap. We were super duper tired waiting in Chicago and took a 20-ish minute nap. And we were super duper duper tired by the time we boarded the plane in Chicago. Thinking we were close to our long awaited sleep, we were unpleasantly surprised with a mechanical issue that delayed us on the tarmac for over two hours. We still couldn't sleep because we knew we'd just wake up again during take-off announcements and then the meal etc. We hoped to sleep after the meal, straight for at least seven of the nine hours.

On our way to Chicago, trying to stay awake with the in-flight movie.

I guess we've been spoiled by our other intercontinental flights because we've always experienced better leg room, nicer seats with individual monitors in front of you, and several other little amenities that make a long flight tolerable. Sadly, this was an old plane and those comforts were not present. We found our knees hitting the seat in front of us, even before they reclined. This did not bode well for our long desired sleep and all we got was a couple of hour naps.

Needless to say {further} we arrived in Roma, very, very tired and almost three hours later than originally scheduled. We tried to make our way through the activities we had planned for the day, so that we could check in to our hotel and sleep only through the night, setting our internal clocks to local time. Again, FAIL.

To pass the time during the day, we visited {what we thought was} the National Museum of Rome. It turns out it was only one of the locations, and not the main one. We saw some interesting things though.

Outside at {one of the} National Museums of Rome

Walkway down to a fountain

This crazy tree was more interesting than the fountain ;)

These horse statues guarded the fountain.

Inside an old Bath house - now used as an exhibition hall. 

This place was HUGE.

Welcome to Rome, where almost every statue you see, is headless.

Piazza della Repubblica, opposite the church below.

We also toured an incredible church that is housed in the former Baths of Diocletian. Michelangelo was commissioned to renovate and create the church. The old Roman baths were over five stories tall and the church now takes up all of that space. It was absolutely breath taking, and I know that the pictures don't do it justice.

The unimpressive exterior to the incredible church.

Giant dome, which used to be open at the time of the baths.

Every square inch, covered in art.

See how tiny the people look!

They seem to hold televised services here, as there was a lot of video equipment behind where I'm standing.

An interesting part of this church was the meridian line on the floor.There are two holes in the walls (see below) that allow light to come in and fall on this calendar, indicating the calendar very precisely. I can't do the explanation justice, so feel free to either just be satisfied with my simplified explanation or read more about it here, second paragraph down.

See that little circle of light, there's another one of these on an opposite wall.

There it is again, waaay up there.

What a massive, and beautiful, organ!

A view of the church from the side.

Back at the museum to collect our bags, and ready to find our hotel.

After that we initiated ourselves to the bus system and started finding our way to our first hotel. The bus was easier than expected, once we figured out how to validate our tickets. Finding our hotel, however, was not as easy as expected. Essentially, our hotel is two (or maybe more) floors of an apartment building. We were looking for a hotel/business entrance, but couldn't find it. Then we started looking for anything that would give us a hint of the hotel and finally saw the sign on a standard looking door. It's kind of fun to feel like you are a local, going in and out of the door with your own key.

That's our room with the cracked window, second window up.

After getting settled at around 4:00 we foolishly laid down on the bed, 'just to see how hard it was going to be' and woke up after dark around 6:30... oops! We forced ourselves up to freshen up, shower, etc. and hit the streets again. We walked around our neighborhood, promptly found a gelato bar and meandered through the busy streets (my flavors were hazelnut, that was pure heaven, and a darn good tirimisu) We also came across a pizza place that serves by the slice. You pay per kg, which ends up making pizza very cheap.. yet delicious!

This is pretty much the extent of our hotel room, there is just enough room to walk around the bed and
our suitcases barely fit on the floor. There is a tiny desk with a tv and closet rack with a safe opposite the bed.
As you can see, Blake fell asleep first.

The bathroom is also tiny, but clean and functional.

This hotel room does put a new meaning to 'small European style hotel rooms' but really, it's everything we need and we aren't spending much time here (awake) anyway. It's clean, nice, recently remodeled/decorated and very conveniently located near many places we want to see. It's just tiny :).

Cleaned up and ready to hit the streets (with a jacket of course).
We were also testing out our monopod for self portraits :)

We walked over a bridge and around a corner to this mass of people.
We never did figure out what was going on here, we think that this is just a meeting place.

Our pizza sampler... delicious!

Every kind of pizza you could think of, all were delicious.
We thought that this place was unique, but later realize that these types of pizza places are everywhere!