After settling in we had a two hour siesta before heading out to the ancient city. We purchased two tickets for the ATAC, Rome’s bus and tram system, and headed off to the Victor Emmanuel II monument and the Coliseum.
You purchase tickets for the bus/tram system at any tobacconist. The price is quite reasonable (see prior blog entry). Victor Emmanuel II is the last stop on the #8 line making it difficult to get lost. We walked around VEII AKA “the Wedding Cake” toward the colessium. I was blown away by the grand scale of the city and its architecture. I was not prepared for the emotional impact I felt walking back two thousand years in time. It was and is incredible.
Ellen and I strolled through the ancient city finding ourselves at dead ends serving as the exit for some monuments and having to retrace our steps. There are many instances where the truly ancient abuts the relatively modern, a visually stunning juxtaposition. We walked for a few hours returning to Largo di Torre Argentina for gelato. Julius Caesar was killed in the Curia of the Theatre of Pompeii, which is part of the Largo di Torre Argentina ruins. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largo_di_Torre_Argentina
We took the tram back “home” in Trastevere for a brief rest and dinner at a local restaurante. The meal was quite scrumptious. Ellen had a yummy soup followed by a veal dish. I had a pork dish prepared using “traditional ancient roman recipe”. The pork sauce was very complex, with hints of cinnamon and the slightest taste of cardamom, but I could not guess the other ingredients or how they were blended. The pork was excellent and cooked perfectly. We had a bottle of Sicilian wine for $17e that the proprietor recommended. I had misgivings ordering such an inexpensive wine. All it took was one sip; the wine was superb.
We had fun bantering with the owner. The restaurante was closed when we knocked on the door at 6:48pm. The owner’s son let us in and the owner was initially a bit gruff, “do you have a reservation? We are booked for the evening.” “No.” I said and Ellen added, “but we would really like to eat here.”. The owner said he might be able to make room for us if we could come back in fifteen minutes. That’s not a problem for us, and we pleasantly agreed to check back with him. Fifteen minutes later, after strolling through the local church’s courtyard, we returned to the restaurant. The owner introduced himself as Romeo and had us sit at the front table.
Romeo said that this building (the one we were eating in) is the oldest working building in Rome build around 150AD, but that you go back another 80 years for each step you take going down to his cellar which dates to 80BC. We asked if we could take our desert into the cellar, which we did. I’ll post photos taken in the cellar on an iPhone. Not the best shots given the lighting.
We returned home around 9:30 and zonked out.
The bed in the apartment is wonderfully hard. “That’s the way, ah ha, ah ha, I like it”
A wonderful first day, though we did walk 5+ miles and our toes paid the price.
I’ll dig out the restaurant’s name and the homeaway info for the apartment we rented. With the breeze, the apartment is fine in the afternoon in late May. It does have a small wall air-conditioning unit, but it would probably not be a match for July or August weather.
Ron