| Palermo | Taormina | Sorrento | Venice |
Rome September 4-5, 2004
| The trip started the usual way, with a long flight out of the
US. It got a mite rough, the carry over winds from Hurricane Frances
generated 135 mph tail winds, and when these winds got to Canada, it caused
a bit of up and down that wasn't requested. Left Detroit at 5:35 PM, arrived Rome at 8:20 AM, with a 6 hour time change, that works out to only a 9 hour flight (which is plenty long enough). The good news is we got baggage promptly, and were just in time for our Insight pickup (every 3 hours, so it could have been a long wait) which took us to our hotel. |
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Our hotel (Cicerone, but remember "c" before "i" or "e" is
pronounced "ch") was just outside the old city. So a short walk got us
to the bridge crossing the Tiber (in this picture, hotel is to the right,
old city on the left) and another short walk had us in the old city. As you may remember, this time (just after overseas travel) is a bad time for jet lag. So we had to trade off walking on legs not yet in shape with potentially going to sleep in a chair. |
| We finished up the morning walk at the Pantheon. Originally built
in the second century as a Roman Temple, it was later converted to a Christian Church. They
are now renovating it, and doing a very nice job. Here's the photo of
the altar. You can't see it in this photo, but there are holes in the floor. That's because the roof is open to the sky, and it rains in, so the holes carry the water away. It's quite lovely and very impressive to see the entire church. At this point, we walked across the square and bought lunch. Italian style sandwiches (called Panini), beer and diet coke (as in all of Europe, called Coke Lite) did us very well and gave the legs a chance to recover as well. |
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We finished up this trip at the Trevi fountain. (We'll
end up several times at this fountain, it's a convenient reference point).
We then walked back to the hotel using a different bridge, walked through the area where our hotel from 1982 was (but couldn't find the hotel). Ended up being about a 3 hour walk, so we had covered some distance. |
| After a short rest break in the hotel, we went back out exploring. This is the Castle San Angelo, originally built as a Roman (pre-Christ) observation platform, upgraded and upgraded and ... to this form. There is a covered, armored (brick) walkway to the Vatican (a fairly short block away) and in times of trouble, the Pope and his staff could move in safety to this fortress. It's really quite impressive, and today has a lovely park all around it where the moat was originally. Much of the time you can go inside (for a fee) and visit, and it is also used as an exhibition hall. |  |
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There was a get acquainted meeting at the hotel at 5:30, but
not much that was important. Dinner time [finally] came, and we walked over to this little restaurant for dinner (pasta, Carni (meat) and a bottle of wine, which became very familiar in the next two weeks). My Italian was even more limited then that is now (and now it's not even emergency level) but our waiter had adequate English, so we got by. Later learned he's the only one with much English so we got lucky. The weather was quite warm, so we were very comfortable sitting outside. |
| There was an optional (for fee) tour that we chose not to take Sunday
morning, so we took a city bus over to the Piazza Venezia where the Victor
Emmanuel II monument is. Marnie's comment was "I didn't know you could
ever see the street here, I thought it always was filled with cars". A
pleasant surprise. [When we were here in '82 with the kids, the square was filled with cars, all honking, none going anywhere, and even cars on the sidewalk!!! It was a madhouse and made me very glad we weren't trying to drive in the city. Although I still don't want to drive in the city, the traffic is much more under control with improved and increased roads all built to handle the crowds who came in the "Jubilee Year", 2000.] After taking pictures of the monument and part of the Roman Forum, we finally took a cab back to the hotel because we couldn't find the return bus stop hidden somewhere in all the one way streets. |
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Sunday afternoon we got the classic "Introduction to Rome" tour.
It started at St. Peter's (and mass was still going on when we arrived, but
telecast in as the Pope was at his summer villa). In order to go into St Peter's today, you have to pass through security, not something we did in '82. Not a big problem because they move people fairly quickly, but one more "sign of the times". I (Marnie) enjoyed the square and it's beauty more than the Basilica itself, and we took a picture of me by the fountain where we have a picture of the family from '82. |
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| That was followed by a trip to the Coliseum with a look at the
Roman Forum on the way. They've
done a mammoth amount of work on the Coliseum, and it was fun to see how it had
changed (since 1982). You can see that one end even has the original
surface reconstructed in it. We were able to get in a lot more parts than we
were in '82, but it still looks very much the same.
Our guide had a book which showed the various Roman buildings as they are today and with an overlay that shows them as they were originally. Another gal on our tour and I both had the same book (in its old edition) bought in the early 80's! |
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From inside the Coliseum, you get an excellent view of the Triumphal Arch that is right next to it. There's another up the hill to the right, but this really is the best view. |
| Palermo | Taormina | Sorrento | Venice |
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