Day 9 Rome

April 4, 2010  Sunday

It is Easter Sunday in Rome. For this very reason, we avoided the Vatican. We woke up to grey skies and freezing rain. Lovely.

Breakfast at the hotel was an even bigger buffet than in London. There was more of a selection but we found only few items that pleased our palettes. I chose french bread, cream cheese, Nutella, and fresh eggs. There was a machine to make your own cappuccino. I loved that. We ate breakfast and plotted our Metro and bus routes.

We discovered that the Metro is as fast as Paris’s Metro and London’s Tube, but there were fewer stations so we would still need to use the buses. Rome’s Metro is dark and dirty, but the trains are very modern inside and spacious. 

Our first stop was Colosseo. Rome is a city with a lot of ancient history. It’s sad to see all the grafitti and dirty streets within the city. 

It was was pouring rain so we continued to walk to Santa Maria to see The Bocca della Verits (Mouth of Truth). This was the place Gregory Peck took Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday. 

Photo: Wikipedia. After a long stroll we discovered that it was closed! We continued our wet walk to Musei Capitolini. We entered using our Roma Pass. This was one of the nicest museums with a variety of mythological, Greek and Roman sculptures. 

Remains of Constantine’s giant statue. I was fond of the pointing finger. 

Venus and Medusa. 

The Dying Gaul. 

I was too distracted to find the name of this soldier. I called him Cheeks. 

Look who’s blocking the … Oceanus “Marforio”. :) 
We braved the cold and headed out to the Pantheon. The facade was under construction but that didn’t stop the drove of tourists. 

Hunger set in so we stopped at a fancy Italian restaurant, Rosa Rosae. This was one of the few places that would not serve “tap” water — Beau was fond of the blue bottled water, Blada. I ordered Linguine with clams and Beau had the Fettucini — both tasty.
Even when we tried to leave early, we endured another nightmare with the buses. We were stuck in a bus for over an hour and had to use the restroom. By the time we reached Termini, we were throwing coins at the man collecting euros for use of the toilets. 1.40 €!
Two hours later, we got back at the hotel around 7:30 p.m. and had dinner.

We walked by the tiny door before realizing it was a lift. The elevator at this hotel is even smaller than the last two — the size of a casket! It barely fits 2 people. 

Going on 4 hours of sleep the last two nights, we called it an early evening.

Photos: Beau and Ren Reiske © All Rights Reserved