A Weekend in Rome - Day #2 & 3

Below Jenny mentioned some of the highlights of Saturday and Sunday, but I'll add a little...(okay, maybe a lot).

On Saturday morning, we got up and rode the metro to the Basilica of St. John Lateran (La Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano). We decided to buy a 24-hour pass for the metro, which costs 4 Euro and provides a very efficient means of getting around the city. Single-ride passes cost 1 Euro, so paying 4 Euro for one packed day of “touristing” usually turns out being a good deal. There is one main metro line that can be taken to reach most of Rome’s main attractions, so it was fairly easy to navigate our way around the city. We spent about two hours at the Basilica of St. John Latern before getting lunch and heading to the Colosseum.

The Colosseum (Il Colosseo), for me, was very neat to see, although all that remains is the crumbling skeleton of the original structure. This goes for most of the buildings within the Roman Forum (Il Foro Romano) as well. It’s easy enough to fill in the gaps with your imagination and a decent tour guide. However, if you do want to get a better idea of the type of materials and artistic pieces used in these Roman buildings originally, you can still see them in person...by visiting other tourist attractions in Rome like the Vatican. As it turns out, "recycling" building materials has been fairly popular throughout Rome's history.

It was at the Colosseum that we took are hostelmates' advice and signed up for a tour through the Colosseum and the Roman Forum that allowed us to skip the line. It ended up being a decent deal and a great time-saver.

Afterwards we visited the Trevi Fountain (La Fontana di Trevi) and the Spanish Steps (La Scalinata della Trinita dei Monti) before heading back to the Vatican in hopes of popping by the Sistine Chapel. We soon learned that "popping by" the Sistine Chapel isn’t a realistic plan. We were trying to make it to the 6 p.m. soccer game and it was already close to 5 p.m. In addition, the entrance fee is 12 Euro (because it includes entrance into the Vatican Museums). 12 Euro for a fly-by visit? Mmm, maybe not. Seeing that Sunday was to be a free admission day and having limited time, we decided to save the Sistine Chapel stop and instead head to the soccer game...which we didn't end up getting into either. We did, however, get in a nice walk and along the way got to see some of the Olympic facilities remaining from the 1960 Olympics in Rome.

On the way home, we stopped by the wine bar where the hostelmate-recommended wine was sold. The name of the wine is a slightly tweaked version of "fragola rossa," (red strawberry) and it is VERY good. I got to practice my Italian with the bartender. It was good practice, but I did, unfortunately, fail. We ended up buying four GLASSES of the wine before we got around to getting the four BOTTLES (which was all we actually wanted). It was a 20 Euro mistake :/ ...but useful practice?

We topped off the evening with dinner at a restaurant a few blocks away from the hostel. The food was mediocre, but the dinner (conversation, company, environment AND food taken into account) was a nice way to spend our final evening in Rome.

On Sunday morning, we attended the 10:30 mass at St. Peter's before speeding out of the Basilica (which seems to be our preferred way of entering and exiting that building) to the square for the Pope's Sunday address. He came out right on time (noon) and addressed the crowd in multiple languages (Italian, French, German, English, Spanish...). It was a fun little experience, similar, in ways, to a concert. Everyone cheered when he began speaking in his or her language. Like people who begin to cheer after they hear the first few chords of a favorite song, people in the square would begin to cheer halfway through the first sentence in their language. Halfway through his first sentence in French, the French flags start waving and people start cheering in one part of the square. Halfway through his first sentence in German, people start jumping up and down in another part of the square. It was very fun :)

At one point, in all this, an Italian woman walked by us, clearly confused, looking this way and that, wondering what had everyone’s attention. Finally, she looked up at the window the Pope was speaking from and stared for a second. Then, it must have clicked because she whipped around and looked at us. "Il Papa?" she said. We smiled and nodded. "Ohhh," she replied and then crossed her arms and stopped to watch.

After, we left the Vatican and made our way back across town to catch a train to Florence. We hope, however, to go back to Rome on another weekend because we still need to see the Sistine Chapel and would like to spend some time at a beautiful park we happened to stumble across when we were headed in a wrong direction.

Lauryn