We had fun exploring the city with Andrew and his girlfriend Lindsay during the first weekend. The two of them were studying abroad in London for the semester and basically went to a new country every weekend. (I think 22 countries was their final total?! So envious!!) Anyways, they kindly waited until their very last week in Europe to visit Rome, so their trip could could overlap with ours. Yay!
We spent Saturday at the Vatican. Various friends had advised us to find a tour guide, because as a group of four art-challenged engineers, we'd have no clue what we were looking at. We failed to do any advance planning for this though, so we ended up finding some British tour guide who approached us off the street. I was having flashbacks of Slumdog Millionaire and hoping fervently our metaphoric shoes wouldn't be stolen. But it out mostly turned out okay...
The tour guide's first comment, after finding out that everyone in the group was from the US, UK, or Australia, was about how nice it was to have an all-Anglo-Saxon group. I said, "Er, I think this is the first time anyone has called me an Anglo-Saxon." He replied with something like "well, actually, the true definition of "Anglo-Saxon" is really inclusive of everyone!"
Hm.
To be fair, the Wikipedia definition of Anglo-Saxon says that the term "can be used in a variety of contexts, often to identify the English-speaking world's distinctive language, culture, technology, wealth, markets, economy, and legal systems." Suffice it to say, we had an early warning to take what he said with a grain of salt.
I'm not sure how much of our tour was actually lies, but it was at least more interesting than us going around and thinking "hmmm, and this must be another painting...". Plus the tour guide legitimately seemed to know a lot about art (based on my extensive high school Art 1A training).
Both the ceilings and floors in the museum were surprisingly gorgeous.
The Sistine Chapel might have been more awesome with less noisy people and less security people shouting at the noisy people to shut up. Sadly, we weren't allowed to take pictures inside the actual Sistine Chapel, but here's Michaelangelo's Pieta, which we spent a LOT of slides on in Art 1A, so I know it's important.
Of all the lovely sights we saw in Rome, I think I was most impressed with the size and grandeur of St. Peter's Basilica.
Decent restaurant near St. Peter's Square (Piazza San Pietro): Arlu. This place was recommended by our tour guide. We stopped by for lunch and I got some excellent spinach and cheese gnocci there.
Later that night, we got some gelato (mmm, stracciatella) and walked to the Trevi Fountain. I had major deja vu when I saw the Trevi Fountain.
I swore I'd seen it before, despite never having been to Rome.
Me: "HEY!! Maybe I saw it in Las Vegas!!"
Me: "Yeah maybe at the Venetian or something!!"
Chris: "Um, try Caesar's Palace?"
And indeed, there is a fake Trevi Fountain at Caesar's Palace.
The Pantheon was under construction and had a nice two-face effect going.
A good restaurant near the Pantheon: Trattoria Dal Cav Gino – Warm, cozy, friendly restaurant in a little alley. I don't remember exactly what we ordered, but it was a very nice meal and the prices were very reasonable. It's about a five minute walk north of the Pantheon.
A GREAT restaurant near the Pantheon: Fortunato Al Pantheon – This was our favorite restaurant of the trip! I'm still salivating at the memory of what I ordered. Well actually they ran out of what I ordered (originally pasta with porcini mushrooms). They offered me pasta with artichoke and bacon instead. I realize this sounds completely plain and unexciting, but it was REALLY perfect. The artichoke was delicately done (cut up nicely, no chewy bits), and the bacon in Rome is more fatty and very flavorful. I wish I knew what they did so I could make this.
Chris ordered a steak in cream sauce with green peppercorns. The steak was so tender, and the cream sauce with peppercorns was divine.
We highly recommend Fortunato Al Pantheon if you're looking for a restaurant near the Pantheon. It's just a hundred meters away from the Pantheon, but shockingly not filled with obvious tourists. The meal was more expensive than other restaurants we went to but certainly not bad compared to anything in Zurich. Our waiter was super polite and helpful. The patrons were dressed nicely (business suits etc.) so we felt slightly underdressed in our nicest casual clothes, but this place was well worth the trip.
Okay, enough ranting about food (for the moment), haha.
The next day, we saw the Colosseum, which was much, bigger than I expected.
The audio tour claimed that in ancient times, they could probably jam in a maximum of 70,000 spectators. That means in comparison to other pro sports stadiums, the Colosseum might rank higher than Candlestick Park, whose capacity is a piddly 69,732. And Ancient Romans built this thing by stacking rocks on top of each other. Mind-blowing.
Also of note: I almost got robbed while taking the picture above.
People warned us repeatedly to watch out for pick-pockets in Rome, and it actually happened. I was listening to an audio tour with one hand, taking pictures with the other, and a bunch of kids were bumping my legs and purse. Perfect target right? By the time I got suspicious about the extra jostling, I whipped my head back just in time to see a man snatch his hand back from under my purse flap, turn around with his big black leather bag, and walk quickly away.
Scary. But at least I noticed before he took anything. Whew.
Good restaurant near the Colosseum: Naumachia (Na Machia?) – This was a really nice find just a couple blocks away from the Colosseum. We were too hungry to do much research on where to eat, so we wandered resolutely past all the restaurants trying to hustle tourists into their restaurants, and eventually stopped at Naumachia, precisely because they just said hello, and didn't try to push us in. I ordered the special, which was a lasagna in cream sauce with porcini mushrooms. Chris snarfed half of my meal it was so good.
After lunch, we went to the Basilica of San Clemente. This was an awesome layer cake of a church. It's a 12th century medieval church, built on top of a 4th century basilica / pagan mithraic temple, built on top of an ancient Roman citizen's home, which was in turn built on top of an underground river. We went all the way down to the bottom and saw the water flowing underneath.
What we still haven't figured out is how all these buildings accumulated enough dirt that subsequent inhabitants found it easier to build on top rather than demolish and start over. Could it really just be dirt carried in by the Tiber? Or dust blowing in?
Later in the afternoon, walked quickly around the Roman Forum, but it was raining, and Andrew and Lindsay had a flight to catch, so we didn't stay long. Thus ends the first half of our trip to Rome; I'm going to take a break and continue in a little bit.
Best picture of the first half of the trip: Italian leather roses!!
Some poor cow got made into ROSES.
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