Sunday, November 14, 2010

Belgium

My next trip will be to Belgium for work in December. I am not going to be doing a blow by blow blogging for the work days but will definitely have a weekend there to look about so will be writing about that at the least. 

Italy Pictures

Now that all of the pictures from Italy have been posted I would like to apologize for how long it took to get them up. I had a busy week and it was just a bit too much to get them loaded up earlier.

Pictures for Italy Day 15

The pictures for Italy day 15 can be found here.

Pictures for Italy Day 14

The pictures for Italy day 14 can be found here.

Pictures for Italy Day 13

The pictures for Italy day 13 can be found here.

Pictures for Italy Day 12

The pictures for Italy day 12 can be found here.

Pictures for Italy Day 11

The pictures for Italy day 11 can be found here.

Pictures for Italy Day 10

The pictures for Italy day 10 can be found here.

Pictures for Italy Day 9

The pictures for Italy day 9 can be found here.

Pictures for Italy Day 8

The pictures for Italy day 8 can be found here.

Pictures for Italy Day 7

The pictures for Italy day 7 can be found here.

Pictures for Italy Day 6

The pictures for Italy day 6 can be found here.

Pictures for Italy Day 5

The pictures for Italy day 5 can be found here.

Pictures for Italy Day 4

The pictures for Italy day 4 can be found here.

Pictures for Italy Day 3

The pictures for Italy day 3 can be found here.

Pictures for Italy Day 2

The pictures for Italy day 2 can be found here.

Pictures for Italy Day 1

The few pictures from Italy day 1 are located here.

Monday, November 08, 2010

Italy Day 16

Day 16 was of course the transit day back home. I got up early to clean up and finish packing then had breakfast at the hotel. I really liked the brand of yogurt they had. After eating I checked out of the hotel and made the brief walk to the train station. The Leonardo Express was completely full for the 8:22 departure. I had bought the ticket the night before but I probably didn't need to as they never checked it. The train was too full probably. In any event I did see the route this ride as the sun was fully up by this point. There is a lot of graffiti along the way.

I got to the airport and checked in but the baggage check conveyors were broken so had to wait for a guy with a cart to come pick up the bags of those of us waiting. This meant the security line got longer but I guess I was plenty early so it was of little consequence. After getting in I checked the shops and bought a snack then waited patiently for the flight.

The flight to Rome was 2 hours long and I had a window seat on the A320 with no one directly next to me. I did doze off a bit as the only entertainment was the airplane GPS.

Arriving on Heathrow I had to rescreen security then wasted the time before my flight boarded which was around 2 hours or so. We had a general boarding which involved riding a bus to a remote space and climbing stairs onto the plane yet again (time 3). This plane was a 777. I apparently got assigned a middle seat but lucked out because the guy on the aisle didn't like the tall guy behind him so moved to the only other seat on the plane. This gave me am aisle seat with no one next to me. The in flght entertainment was individual seat but you had to choose between set channels. I had hoped to watch Despicable Me bit of course that was the broken channel. Instead I watched Agora which was odd as a first film. I think it was anti-Christian which I liked. The meal was ok but they called the pudding creme brûlée which was wrong. There was a significant pause to the entertainment system then I watched Toy Story 3 which was ok but not as good as the first two. The sound was a bit crackly which may not have helped. After finishing that movie it wasn't long before they started another set so I started watching Jonah Hex which seemed bad but I couldn't finish it as the flight didn't have enough time left.

The start of the descent was very bumpy and a few people sounded fairly nervous but it smoothed out after a couple minutes. I guess there was some serious winds in the jet stream to contend with. Then we got a bit bumpy as we were in the final moments of landing but all in all it was a fairly easy flight. After getting off the airplane the passport control line was short. With its humble beginnings on the cart in Rome my bag did actually make it across to Boston. It was within the first 20 bags off the carousel, and customs was a breeze, the one funny part being the passport guy's stamp on the customs form was hideously wet and it wasn't dry by the time I went to the customs guy. I saved him from smudging himself so he pushed me right through I think.  My brother was there to pick me up and the ride home was easy. All in all as travel days go it could have been a lot worse though I will never like having to ride a bus to a plane somewhere on the tarmac. At least I didn't have a huge bag to stuff in the overheads to carry up the stairs to the plane. That definitely caused difficulty for a few people.

Italy was a lot of fun. The drama with the car and the GPS aside I had a blast.  Seriously though, don't stay in Palermo if you go to Sicily.

Saturday, November 06, 2010

Italy Day 15

The one thing I hadn’t succeeded in doing in my visit to Rome that I had sort of set my mind to was to walk the Appian Way. I had tried it on the first Sunday when the weather was nice but missed the mark in finding it. I do not feel too bad about that as it was a good distance away, not actually on the map I got from the hotel and I was following signs that said Appia but apparently meant Appia Nuova rather than Appia Antica. So that was a failure. The second day I found my way to the head of the road but unfortunately I had already been walking for many hours and though I got in a small distance I was not able to finish it with any gusto so I returned to Rome standard.


Today I was not really sure what to do with myself but when I woke up I was nagged by the idea that I should again try to walk the Appian Way or I would regret it. So after my breakfast I set out immediately. This time I was armed with the knowledge of where everything was a fairly efficient route to get to the park. It is technically a park. In fact I was there by 8:20am. What I had sort of realized but was sort of deluding myself on was how long the park is. I think it measures 11 miles from top to bottom.

In the early going I really needed to visit a bagno and there happened to be a couple sites to visit so I hit both of those. They were both castles in their time dating back to the 2nd century BC or so. Owned by important people and all that. They are ruins now but still the size of the first is very impressive and the latter was still neat. The second had a cat that followed me around a bit and figured she should get some cat dander on me as well. There was a box where she sleeps inside the castle.

If I were J.R.R. Tolkien I would have to give you a step by step detail of 11 miles of course. I think walking over 22 miles not including my in Rome time has sort of worn me out to the idea of actually writing things in too much detail. Suffice it to say the longer it felt like it was getting the greater the pace I took on in an attempt to finish it quicker and get back to Rome to buy some souvenirs. I checked the clock when I reached what I presume was the end of the trail and it was 11:20. Granted on the early going I was walking slower and no matter what I was stopping to take pictures on the way out so the timing is a bit deceiving. The roads on the trail are all very uneven cobbles of different make-ups that cause for some tiring footing at times. I am sure that didn’t help me in either direction. There were a couple points where work was being done on the cobbles and I was forced to walk on the shoulders which were also torn up in those areas. After a very long time the road turned into a trail. In the very latter stages it appeared that the locals dumped their trash there and occasionally someone came and picked it up but didn’t clean every last bit. I found that a bit disappointing.

In any event the trail is basically an ancient highway to Rome from the southeast. Along the way there are all sorts of buildings and parts of buildings that had been unearthed. Some of them were fenced off, some were not. Some looked very fantastic and others were just bits of stone wall. I took pictures of mostly everything that needed to be represented along the way, mainly skipping things that looked too similar to things I had already seen and taken pictures of.

I can say that the weather held out a bit too perfectly as it was sunny and hot the whole time. Most of the people along the trail seemed to distrust someone walking so fast that wasn’t in a running suit but what do I care really? When I reached what I presumed was the end I turned around, put the camera away and just did a speed run back to the top of the way. I checked when I was officially back on Roman streets and it was 1:30pm. I can’t say if I really went the full 11 miles each way but if the pictomap at the point I turned around was accurate to what I think I saw then yes, I did. I will need to check with more detail on picture I took of one of the maps that was in the early going of the road. Like most of Rome they are not generous with You Are Here maps so I really had no idea what sort of progress I was making on my way out the whole time. On the way back I at least had the benefit of knowing what I had already seen. There are tons of bicycles on the road but overall cars are kept from being on there except people how have farms or houses along the way it appears so the traffic was many foot and bicycle. There is the early stretch which is quite scary with the close walls and cars racing through in both sections but after the two catacombs I didn’t actually get to visit (and didn’t bother with this time) it wasn’t long before traffic was detoured away from the course. It did make for a pleasant summer feeling walk. I would have preferred to get going even earlier if I had any idea how long it was going to be.

The thought did cross my mind to try to take a bus on the far end but it didn’t appear there would be anything of the sort available so I just turned around and headed right on back. By the time I returned to Rome my feet were fairly sore and my legs tired and since I had only bought a bottle of water and a wafer cookie package on the way back I was very hungry as well. As soon as I got into the vicinity of the Coliseum I searched for a restaurant and ended up at one named the Coliseum which I am not sure was the best choice overall. I got a beer, a bottle of water and fettuccini with pesto. The pesto wasn’t really all that filled with basil and they had included small tomatoes in the mix but it tasted like pesto overall. They basically scammed me on price by about 2 Euros but I would have tipped them that if they hadn’t so I didn’t leave the tip I had been doing at other places. The food was OK overall but more than anything I think I needed to rest my legs for a bit. The beer was nice too if the more watery Nastro Azzuro? brand of beer around here.

Once done eating it was about 2:20pm and it was my mission to buy some souvenirs in the form of t-shirts and the like. All the shops are owned by Asian people of some sort. I think one shop had an Italian woman at the desk. Most of the stuff is basically the same from shop to shop and not one place sells teddy bears of any sort. I would think it would be a natural to have a Roman Centurion or Julius Cesar bear to sell, but no, only cheap crummy looking puppets of Pinocchio which there was no way I would buy. I managed to buy a few things in a windy course that took me up and down the Vias Cavour and Nationale. By then I was spent for much more walking and even if there were more shops down further I couldn’t put the energy together to get any further away from the hotel than I got. I do hope the airport has a thing or two worth buying in the international terminal. I didn’t really seem much in the terminal I used when I flew to Sicily but also I had no time at all. I am also hoping that I can actually get in the plane on a gate rather than a bus to stairs outdoors. We’ll see.

After the shopping I returned to the room to rest because it was about 4:45pm. Still too early to get dinner in most places around here and I needed the time off my feet anyway. I started out by writing the best majority of this before just relaxing a bit until it was time to eat.

For dinner I had intended to go back to La Mensa di Bacco again because of all the restaurants around here I liked them the most. Unfortunately I had not noticed that they are closed on Saturday so when I got outside to look for them they were all chained up. I was a bit disappointed about that but I chose a secondary place I had eyed most of the week but not gone to yet which was called 27 Tudini Gabriele & Tomoko. I would assume that they cater to Japanese people based on the Japanese tour that went in and the fact that they had a Japanese menu. They were a bit expensive but had a couple distinguishing features, the main one being a fairly extensive artisanal beer list all from Italy. From that I chose a beer that was an Italian version of an American pale ale. I shudder to think how much it cost but it was actually pretty good as in I would drink it again if for a more reasonable price. For dinner I skipped primi and went straight to having the roast chicken, which turned out to be two legs and some red and green peppers with a very nice yellowy-orange sauce. I cannot say what the sauce flavor was supposed to be but it was enjoyable. I accompanied that with some roasted potatoes that had maybe a touch too much rosemary on them. Overall it was easy to get rid of the excess rosemary though and they were cooked correctly and quite tasty especially when rubbed through the sauce from the chicken. After eating I was deciding if I wanted dessert for a couple minutes but instead opted to get a grappa as I had not had one yet in Italy (mainly because it was hard to identify them in restaurants). It was a clear grappa that was a touch rough but really not bad. It was definitely not the best grappa I have ever had though. After I was done with that it took the waiter forever to get my bill but it appeared that he was really overwhelmed with tables and I wouldn’t have held it against him too much if I hadn’t needed to use the facilities fairly badly. Since it was a few moments from the hotel I paid and rushed back to do so.

I came back to the room and finished up this while watching some Europa League Soccer. I never did mention the thing that irks me about European sports. The real issue I have is that every single jersey design is basically an advertisement for some sort of product rather than the team. Some, like the hockey team ones were a mess of ads rather than any sort of team name or logo. In many respects their jerseys are the equivalent of NASCAR paint jobs. It doesn’t matter what sport you are talking about. This becomes an issue when, say, your favorite team takes on sponsorship from a product or company you dislike I would think. How can you support your team by wearing their gear if you hate the logos plastered all over it? At least that would bother me. It would be like if the Patriots got rid of their team logos and replaced them with Vonage logos or something. Yeck. Anyway, the next thing to mention is about European league football. That is soccer. I am sure that they have resources the world over to get the best players out there to play professionally. The problem is there are so many teams in so many countries on so many different levels of the sport that it is honestly very watered down talent in I am sure more than 75% of the games you can watch. I am sure that what they are airing here in Italy is not remotely the premier teams with the premier players. I have seen British Premier League soccer and know there must be versions as good in many other countries including in Italy but they must play so infrequently you are more likely to get bad football than good. It makes it all the less interesting for a person who is not really truly a fan of the sport. I am American after all. It doesn’t make sense to not stop time when play stops and then arbitrarily add on an amount of extra time based on guesswork. It is also tough to watch guys get barely touched and flop around for 5 minutes like they were shot by a gun. It gets much worse when teams don’t even really have the ability to accurately pass and there is no speed whatsoever to the game. I think, world sport or not, the world could use a lot less professional soccer teams and maybe we might find it more enjoyable. I might anyway. But enough of sports.

Day 16 is my return to home. I am set to get up early. I already purchased my ticket for the Da Vinci Express. I am basically packed already. As vacations go this one has seemed like 2 full weeks. I am not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing. I did like Rome a lot after all though. My legs and feet are tired…

It may take me until next week to get all the pictures posted. I hope folks can be patient.

Friday, November 05, 2010

Italy Day 14

I woke up early for some reason and I killed a few minutes flipping through the couple hundred mostly non-functional TV stations (it must be satellite) until I found an Italian hockey game being re-aired. It was a dark arena and the players made most Boston area college teams look like 10 year pros but it was still something to watch. I suspect it was situated somewhere in the Alps region with the adverts on the ice and boards.


After killing enough time to get ready and start off with my breakfast at the hotel I walked down to a Da Vinci museum that was displaying a series of his larger inventions from drawings as made in the appropriate material. That is to say there were models of the various machines he invented. Obviously some of them worked and some didn’t, especially the flying machines but it was still an interesting idea to see them I thought. I arrived an hour before they were going to open so managed to get another coffee at a cafeteria and then wandered for a while until they let me in. I was the first person in and they hadn’t even finished turning on all the lights as I started through it. I did like the museum but it took maybe about 45 minutes to see and read everything there. I took a bunch of pictures. When I was leaving a family was coming in and the woman at the desk told them not to take pictures. No one told me that and there were no signs saying not to so I don’t feel like I cheated too much. Overall it was a bit too expensive at 9 Euros but I am happy I did it anyway.

After the Da Vinci museum I intended to go to the Villa Medici. It is a now French owned villa that was owned by the Medici (a strong financial family from Florence) and built up by one of the arch-bishops as well if I understood it correctly. Napoleon bought the villa and since it has been a home for French dignitaries as well as many artists who speak French. They take turns staying and working on various projects. The artists are all established artists it seems and they spend a lot of time either reproducing ancient art or who knows what else. Of course I also arrived about an hour early for the English language tour which started at noon so I walked into the park grounds that are considered part of the Villa Borghese which is a museum that you need to make reservations for. I knew this from Kate the woman I met the day before who said she had reserved her tickets for it. I didn’t reach the villa in this trip through because I was mainly trying not to be late for the ticket I had bought for noon. So I wandered a bit and bought a package of cookies to eat because I wouldn’t be done with the tour until after 1pm.

I got back to the Villa Medici with about 15 extra minutes and patiently waited out the time until the tour started. All the people on the English tour were Americans, two from Michigan and two from Philly. I talked a bit of sports with the guy from Philly which was nice. He agrees that Philly fans are horrible and said he wouldn’t bring his kid to an Eagles game until he was 15. I explained my experiences with Philly fans via the Winter Classic. He said it is usually worse there. In any event, our guide was Italian and her name began with an L I believe unfortunately she said it quickly and quietly so I didn’t really get it. She was nice and spoke English fairly well but it sounded as if she was concentrating on saying certain words so her accent was a bit exaggerated at times. All the same she knew a lot about Rome and the villa so it was a good tour.

The tour is of the gardens in the villa. The actual villa is privately owned and is off limits to tourists. I was surprised that the main gardens didn’t have any flowers. According to the guide that is typical of Italian gardens of the sort. They instead do geometric shapes of rocks and sand. It is basically what we saw but I figured with the climate it would be easy for them to grow flowers. Also it is a French owed estate and the French definitely did flowers. All the same the grounds were fairly large. The better side of the villa is inside the gates so I was glad I got to see that. The tour takes you through the gardens and shows you some artwork that the various artists that have stayed there have made including a series of 8 statues that had been recreated from statues found in ruins in Rome. Also you get to see a room that used to be a tower along an ancient Roman wall that had been frescoed and was in the state of being restored as they found a thin veneer of marble underneath some wallpaper that had been put in the room. It was interesting and the frescoes were fairly well maintained even with the humidity and light that appeared easily able to get in.

After that we visited a room with a bunch of plaster reproductions of statues and one marble statue of King Louis XVIII though it is believed it was started as a statue of Napoleon then recommissioned when Napoleon was sent into exile. Lastly we got to visit the grand room which had 8 really well restored tapestries from King Louis the XIV. They were very colorful. She said they were restored recently. The whole tour took about an hour and 15 minutes and she told us a lot of information I could not remotely repeat in this blog but it was interesting and very fun. I did manage to get a picture of the guide though I made her blush of course. After the tour I chatted with the guy from Philly for a few more minutes before moving on to get back into the park of the Villa Borghese, it being right around the corner.

In there I had lunch in the form of a Pizza Napoli which unfortunately meant with anchovies (I didn’t know that and there were no descriptions on the menu. It was top of list and I assumed it would be simple. I guess it was but the anchovies definitely were not my favorite though I ate all but the equivalent of one slice of it.). I rounded that out with a beer and then after leaving that place found a mobile snack shop and bought a chocolate gelato which I ate while walking through the park.

The park is very large and I wandered around for a few minutes while heading towards the Villa Borghese to see the outside of the building anyway, knowing I couldn’t get in. Oddly, Kate and he friend were there very early waiting for their 3pm reservations. I chatted with them for a few minutes. Apparently the place is very strict on what you can bring in and no pictures and you have to go in at the set time and you have 2 hours to do the site and get out. It is not a tour per se, you go in on your own but they apparently let people in in groups and there is generally a large line to both stow bags in the baggage check then to get into the museum. It sounded like a terrible hassle really. I chatted with them for a few minutes while they were killing time then when they were going to line up at about 2:45 to get inside I said goodbye and continued my walk around the park. I definitely did not attack the park in the most efficient manner. It has a zoo but the zoo costs 12.50 Euros and I was not into paying that much at all so I skipped it. I was curious to find the Piazza Thorvaldson because of the name and I had a very unpleasant time doing so. The map of Rome I have does not cover this park and the maps in the park were far too infrequent to be useful. I made a couple wrong turns in guesses and that sent me back to where I started the park before I regrouped and set back to finding the place. As I said my stubbornness paid off but with little reward as I cannot really say why it was named such. I can say there are a lot of statues of non-Italians in the park. Many different people who “liberated” different countries in whatever context that means. I also so the museum of modern art which I of course will not visit because modern art is more lost on me than older art is.

By this point it was rolling around to 4pm and I figured I should head back to the hotel. I was in a new area of town for myself and I made a couple guesses based on my Rome map and was correct so much so that it took me about half an hour to get back to the hotel. I had been expecting much longer. There were a couple steep hill climbs in this part of the town but all in all I was able to get in and relax and write a fair portion of this before heading out for dinner.

For dinner I rounded the corner to Ristorante Il Condor. It was pretty much basic I guess. I had a beer and a lasagna for dinner and followed with a café Americano and a tiramisu. The food was good and the service reasonable. The prices were pretty much the same as anywhere else I’ve been. They didn’t try to sell any extras to ring up the bill higher and they include service and all that in their prices which is nice. I didn’t really have a lot of soul to decide what to eat so I basically ordered what the Swedish guy next to me ordered honestly. I am not sure why, just maybe getting a bit tired of Italian food. In any event the tiramisu was ok but not the best dessert I have ever had. The coffee was good, not too chalky though obviously made with the espresso press like all coffee is around here. I think if I skipped the coffee and the dessert I could have come in at 11 Euro or so. As it is I paid 18.50. I should say the servings were large because they were, so there is that. I realize as I am putting up Euro values that you really need to multiply everything by 1.5 to figure out a US dollar guestimate but I try not to think about exchanges during trips or it gets to be too much. Being on vacation the last thing you should be doing is worrying about your budget. You can do that after you get back and sort everything out.

I haven’t decided yet what to do with day 15. I have managed to see most of Rome itself a couple times over and the thing I wanted to do which was visit the Villa Este and Hadrian’s Villa are closed for the winter since Halloween so I missed that. I may just have to tromp around town one more time.

Thursday, November 04, 2010

Italy Day 13

Today I opted to go for something I had researched way back when I first started planning this trip. Outside of Rome there was a city named Ostia, it is quite close to the coastline. It appears that it is somewhere in the 2400 year old range or so but it fell into disuse in the 5th or 6th century AD. The site of the ruins is called Ostia Antica.


To get to Ostia Antica you really need to take a metro train from Rome. The best place for me was to walk to the Piramide station (right near the Pyramid of Sestia) and to get on there for the ride to Ostia Antica which is about half an hour. I could have taken the metro the whole way I assume but I like the walking and all that so rather than get in a dark crowded stuffy underground I would prefer to walk the 45 minutes or so to the train I needed to take. Vacations are supposed to be about relaxing and walking is a way I relax so it makes sense for me anyway.

I woke up at 7 and had breakfast at the hotel at 7:30 and was on my way to the train station. Armed with a lot more knowledge of how to get around the city it was probably less than 45 minutes to get to Piramide station. First I used a self cleaning bathroom which looked like the self cleaning part wasn’t working so well, and that for .50 Euro. Inside I bought a day pass metro ticket and then found myself confused as to which train to take. It says this way to Lido line but then the Lido line just says the name of the stop Porta St. Paolo. So I had to ask if it was the train I needed to take. It took a few minutes to get through this process but I boarded a train that departed at 8:45 or so. The train ride was about a half an hour. This train was not very clean and very shabby looking and didn’t have any announcements or anything so I just had to keep track of the stops myself which I guess wasn’t too difficult.

Arriving in Ostia you get out of the station and do a flyover walkway over the autostrada towards the site. On the way you see a castle wall and then as you get there you turn into Ostia Antica. The site costs 6.50 Euro to get in if I recall. I think it was highly worth it. The city of Ostia is all ancient Roman ruins without the various transformation that Christianity brought on in Italy. There is one Christian basilica ruin but that was from 400 AD or so. I realize that most all of it has fallen down and many of the buildings would be much taller than they are now but it is still amazing to think how people actually used to live there well over 2000 years ago.

The site is gigantic. I need to point that out. Getting there at about 9:15 or so I was inside the actual grounds until about 2pm, including only a few minutes for a pizza and beer lunch. It is the remains of a complete city that used to live on the banks of the Tiber. The problem is in the 15th century the river flooded and the course of the river changed so the site is no longer on the river but that might actually be for the best. There is still a fair amount of excavation and restoration going on but even then there is an unbelievable number of buildings to see and may different varieties whether they be warehouses, housing, hot baths, temples, stores or whatever. I would have to assume there are some liberties taken with some of the placements of statues and the like but overall it looks like they mainly have tried to dig up what they have found. Another cool thing is that there are a very large number of areas that are free reign to walk about. I mean there are more places you can go than can’t. It was neat to get inside some of the buildings and even into some more underground stuff. I am not sure if they are dug completely down to the original ground level. I suspect some buildings may have had cellars based on stairways and the like. In the common living areas it is obvious that the living quarters were overall very small. I am sure the wealthy had more to live in but still if the book I bought is accurate most of the buildings were made of non-flammable materials in an effort to reduce fires. They also had a fair amount of water collection and deposit to help deal with fires. It is believed due to their regulations they had a lot fewer fires than the city of Rome did in similar time.

Something that is found all over Ostia is mosaic floors. Whether in the mercantile area or in the baths or whatnot there are tons of black and white mosaics. I am sure most of what has been found is restored and according to their information boards they have had to recover from problems caused by poor restoration techniques in the 20th century. In many cases they had to go back to original photos in order to more accurately reproduce the corrupted versions that were created during initial restoration. Still there are tons of them all over the place and many of them are quite nice. It was not really predictable where you might find one so it meant a lot of zig-zagging through various parts of the ruins to see every nook and cranny to make sure you don’t miss anything. I think it was worth it though. It was a lot of walking and even a fair bit of climbing steps and the like but I enjoyed every minute of it. It helped that the weather was all sun with a maybe 75F day an no real wind, though I think a touch of wind may have helped for cooling this off a bit at times.

They have a small museum with some relics that were taken out of the ruins and have been cleaned and put on display. There is also a gift shop (book store in Italy) and a cafeteria where I bought my pizza and beer and an ice cream bar. The pizza was not so great and the beer was a Scottish 9% version called Tennants Extra Strong I think. It was decent. The ice cream bar was a Togo classic which had very thick chocolate on the outside and vanilla ice cream inside. I liked it. There is also a section that displays some of the various marbles that were excavated and where they were from and what they were used for. It was interesting to see so many versions. I really know little about geology. This sorted of helped to point that out. Rock is rock, right?

When I was finally on my way out I was interested in seeing about the castle on the edge of town. It is in your face as soon as you get off the train basically so I hoped it was something I could visit. Walking around the wall to the square I found there was a small church and the entrance. It was closed but not locked and some people in cleaning uniforms were heading in at the same time. It turns out that the place would open for a tour at 3pm and it was just a bit past 2. While finding this out I met a woman from Canada named Kate who had just arrived in Rome today and was also curious to see the castle. Since we had near an hour to kill we decided to see if we could find a coffee and to chat. Her husband is a pilot (second woman married to a pilot I have met) for Air Canada. She was going to be going on a major Mediterranean cruise in the next couple days it sounded. We chatted about travel and killed the hour fairly easily. She has been to a lot of the place I have been to except many years before I went to them. We compared notes on how they were then to now. It was very interesting.

After finishing our coffees we headed back to the castle and were allowed to come in for the tour which amounted to a woman walking us to various rooms and waiting for us to be done looking. There were about 4 Italians and 2 Spanish people aside from us. The guide did not speak English at all. According to the Spanish people she was not really giving any history or the like, just taking people in to the rooms. I had already read on the signs outside the castle it was initially built in the 9th century and then redone in the 15th century and of course was almost entirely Christian based. There was some theory it might have been built on older ruins but it is speculation. In any event the castle was very nice and they were restoring some ceiling frescos. It has an outer wall and an inner keep with a tower. We got to the top room of the tower but it is enclosed. They have some artifacts in cases in the various rooms. I think the tour took maybe half an hour or so. I wasn’t fully watching the time. The unfortunate thing was that they didn’t allow pictures inside. I would have liked to take a few. Still for free it was definitely worth it.

When we had finished the tour both Kate and I were heading into Rome, her to a stop before mine so we rode the metro back together. It was much nicer train that announced next stops and the like but there were no seats available so we had to stand. In any event we talked until her stop then wished each other safe and enjoyable travels. When I got off the train I had to walk back to the hotel about 45 minutes or so and the I took a few minutes to start writing this because it was before dinner time being just a few minutes before 5pm. Most of the time it is easier to write while it is still fresh in my head and I haven’t clouded myself with too much beer or wine. All in all it was a very fine day. One of the best days I have had in Italy. Granted I had the whole drama of having the GPS stolen that really set me off for a while, the driving the car was a bit of an issue too, and I really didn’t like the cleanliness or visit value of Palermo but overall it has really been an enjoyable trip. That might be lost somewhat in the mix of my issues with my arrival in Sicily along with a couple of days of sort of crummy weather, but it has not really been a bad time at all. Those were blips that I eventually dealt with and moved on. Still today was pleasant and something very much in line with what I enjoy seeing and doing. And it is always great to meet nice people to chat with here and there. That obviously has happened more in Rome than in Sicily and I am grateful for it.

After the brief stop I walked the block really quickly to decide where to eat and ended up at the Trattoria Elektra which was right downstairs from my hotel. I had spaghetti aglia a olio a peperoncini for a primi and grilled sea bass for the secondi (not able to give the Italian name sorry). The pasta was decent but I make this at home on occasion and I believe mine is better. The sea bass was a whole fish presentation. I managed to get the vast majority of the meat but I had to fight through a few bones in the process. I accompanied this with a very gigantic beer (I didn’t think large meant keg sized) and followed everything up with a vanilla ice cream and coffee sauce dessert. This was by far my most expensive meal in Italy and though the food was good I won’t go back there. The service was reasonable but the prices are a touch high for my tastes. I realize I ate a lot of food but all the same I don’t think the bill amounted to what I did eat in the long run. If you accept the whole fish was the same cost as the fish I had at other restaurants then it really seems disproportionate. I suppose I could have made it cheaper by trying a tourist menu but I wanted what I ordered rather than what was on the tourist menu. As I said, the food was reasonably good but not for the prices.

From the end of dinner it was up to the room to watch some odd European sports channels then call it a night.

Wednesday, November 03, 2010

Italy Day 12

Today I again started with a quick breakfast in the hotel and then on to the Castel St. Angelo. Of course I started out early and I didn’t stop as much to take pictures along the way so I ended up getting there at 8:30 and the place doesn’t open until 9am. So I opted to walk further up the river to the Piazza del Popoli. I think it took me about 20 minutes each way to get there. It is basically a square with an Egyptian obelisk and some fountains and the like. After the quick visit there I turned right around and visited the Castel. It is in truth a giant monument that had been used as a prison, residence of a pope and a few other things over time. I think the original foundation is Roman or maybe earlier and then it was modified and added to and rebuilt and the like until it is what it is today. It has an outer wall and you can get to the top terrace as well so there is a fair amount to do even though it is not really that big of a place. I stayed there for just a bit under two hours before moving on. The entry was 8 Euros but overall I think it was worth it. I am sure I took a fair number of pictures.


After leaving the Castel I moved on to see if I could visit the Mausoleum of Augustus but it is blatantly obvious that the location has been closed for quite some time and they do not appear to be renovating it currently. I do hope they intend to at some point. It has a high fence around it which made it tough to get any pictures of anything and it was all really overgrown inside with weeds and other plants that showed it hasn’t been open for the duration. This is the second of this type of monument I have run into that does not appear to be open. In any event I walked around it then onto the Via del Corso where I walked back up the Piazza del Popoli and then back downwards again where my goal was the Fountain of Trevi. It is obvious that the Via del Corso is one of the shopping streets in Rome. I basically rushed through it.

The Fountain was fully overrun with people. As with other places of interest there were at least a half a dozen walking tours eating up all the space and making it generally overcrowded. I took a few pictures. It really is a beautiful fountain but it would be much nicer without hundreds of people crawling all over it and intentionally getting in the way of your photos and the like. Since it was close to lunch time and I was near a McDonald’s I decided to not go Italian for lunch. I figured the crummy burger would give me some protein I have been skipping throughout most of my lunches in Italy and I could compare it off to the US version. I had a McBacon something. It was basically a bacon double cheeseburger with something like Russian dressing on it. It was ok. Very similar to the US. I think the fries are better in the US. The packaging claimed the burger was 100% Italian beef. In any event it was something to kill a bit of time and to fill my stomach and overall I was not disgusted with it.

After lunch I moved on and found the Pantheon. This was under some renovation on the outside so one half is all scaffolding which is of course disappointing. The outside obviously looks very Roman and old. It is free to get in. You can buy an audio guide but I rarely do that. It is a very large dome and it is very crowded again with walking tours and other people and at times is tough to move around in. The inside has been of course Christianized, what else would the Italians do. It is a bit disappointing because I would prefer the Roman stuff stay non-Christian but I guess that is a bit too much to ask for. It is in incredible condition on the inside and is very beautiful I will give it that. Really very nice for a free visit. I was overall happy with the monument though I would like to have seen what it looked like on the outside just a bit better without the scaffolding. You can’t have everything of course.

Next along the course was the Piazza Navona. It is a square with another obelisk built into a fountain and two other fountains on it. There are a ton of people selling cheesy artwork all over the square and the place was overrun with statue mimes as well which is a bit annoying. Still it was less crowded than the Fountain or the Pantheon was. I bought a coffee gelato here that was much better than the crema gelato I had the day before outside the basilica. I spent a few minutes wandering the square eating it then I moved back on my way.

I basically knew where I was and I opted to just do a couple side street dives to see if I could turn up anything interesting but really it just kept bringing me back to places I was familiar with. I ended up coming up to the side of the Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele II which is the very large white building with 2 chariot statues on either side of it. It is a very large building. What I found is that you can get up on the top through this side entrance. They have a small cafeteria and you can walk around the majority of the lower roof and take pictures of the Roman skyline. They also have a paid attraction which gets you up to the top of the building basically where the two statues are. The lift ride costs 7 Euro and I paid it to get up there. I should point out the weather was absolutely beautiful at about 76F or so and with minimal clouds. The rain feared from the day before never came to pass then and the rest of the week is supposed to be clear and warm (to me). The morning started off in the low 50sF but I didn’t bother with the sweatshirt as it would only be extra weight for me. You can tell the true northern non-European tourists around here because they don’t have coats. The rest are all bundled up like it is mid-winter at the north pole in this 75F+ weather. Ah well. The top of the monument might be the highest place you can get in Rome except the dome of the basilica. Of course that was mobbed and this was a lot less crowded so I liked it a lot. It probably helped that I hadn’t climbed thousands of stairs in sweltering heat before getting to the top. In any event it gives a great view of the Roman landscape and you can see pretty much to the mountains when the weather is this clear. I was very happy that I paid the 7 Euros even if it probably is a bit of a rip off considering how far from the edges the safety railings are set. It does make it a bit tough to get some of the better pictures I would have liked to get but all in all I managed with what I was looking for.

After returning to ground level and leaving the monument I decided to head in to the hotel to rest for a few minutes. It was still only about 3pm but I had to do some research and I wasn’t sure if places I wanted to go would be places to just look at or to go inside. I figured I could use the pit stop and get a few minutes of rest and to look at email and the like. The Hotel Milo does indeed have a wireless internet connection but I have to be sitting on my toilet to reach it which is sort of awkward. Anyway I stayed for less than an hour and armed myself with a few places to look towards for tomorrow. I walked down to the Quirinale which is the home of the Italian president after being a papal residence in the past. It is not very far from the hotel but involved directions I had not yet walked so I figured it would kill some time to find my way there then to work my way back because it was still very early for dinner. Of course the weather was still perfect so that wasn’t a problem at all. I was hoping that by the time I returned to the area of the hotel it would be getting dark and then I could find some food.

The building of the Quirinale is very large and I was unable to actually circumnavigate it because the roads don’t seem to follow around it correctly. Nonetheless I tried and found myself turned into some odd locations for a bit. I had a basic idea of where I was so I was not too concerned with being lost. Aside from that while Rome is a moderately large city I have managed to figure out the main streets well enough that I can find my way back to the hotel with relative ease. It helps that certain landmarks are taller than any of the buildings out there. I would assume that the city has building ordinances keeping any structures from getting too tall that weren’t some form of monument already. It makes for a nicer looking city after all. It also helps to make certain monuments more visible from different points of the city. Using that I walked my way back to around the Palantine (which was not a really efficient direction but I was still trying to kill time.

When I got back to the region of the hotel it was just a bit past 5pm. Early by Italian standards when it comes to dinner but I was ready to eat. Still I did a bit of a loop around to see what I wanted to eat though I think I had already made up my mind earlier in the day that I was going to have Chinese food for dinner, probably about the time I chose to have McDonald’s for lunch. Today became my food vacation from my vacation in that sense I guess. The restaurant was just starting collect guests though the largest table was Chinese. I bet they got better food than I got. In any event, I ordered a beer and chicken with green peppers, which was listed as spicy, along with a bowl of white rice. The food was not the best Chinese food I have ever had but it was not the worst either. The spicy chicken had a bit of spice to it. More than any of the all’arrabiatas I have had here so far so that was sort of nice. It did have some odd jelly-like black mushrooms that had little flavor and a very chewy texture. I ate those first to get them out of the way. There was also red and green bell peppers and peanuts in it. I ate the whole thing so either I was very hungry or I liked it. Not totally sure but I guess I probably liked it more than anything.

After dinner I walked back towards the hotel and found a market where I bought a beer and a bottle of water for the room. I had to use my house key to open the beer bottle because I don’t have an opener with me but I have gotten reasonably good at that trick. The key I have is perfect for pulling out the lips on the cap so it will bend and loosen. The beer was a special Moretti called Baffo D’oro and while at first it smelled like it was going to be skunked actually tasted decent. I had that while I wrote this before getting to my wireless point to post it.

Italy Day 11

Italy Day 10


I did not mention this but the women I met at dinner on day 9 had already reserved a tour through the Vatican but instead had managed to see the Vatican on Sunday through another tour. That meant they had a pass to get into the Vatican at 11am today. In talking to me the daughter asked me if I wanted to take the voucher from her because it was only going to go to waste. I bought it off her for less than the ticket price so as to give her something back for her generosity based on the fact she really had no idea who I was and had offered it to me anyway. I got up at 7 and had a roll and some yogurt for breakfast before heading down towards the Vatican. It took about an hour to walk there and that meant I was well early of the 11am start time for my reservation. I tried to get in anyway but the guy said come back at 10 instead of it being before 9am. I wandered a short loop around then came back to the entrance and waited until just after 10am and he let me in instead of making me wait. It probably helped that I was solo so he could sneak me in.

The voucher basically saved me about 2 hours of waiting in line, that was obvious. The line runs all the way around the Vatican for people who are waiting to buy a ticket. If you reserve online you can get in basically immediately at the time you reserved for. A bit of begging and being polite helped me get in earlier than had been reserved as well. So, once in the voucher pays for your ticket as well. You just give them the voucher and they give you your tickets. I got two because that is what she reserved but I obviously only needed the one for me. I would probably have tried to reserve my tickets for Saturday if this had not been handed to me so easily so I hopefully wouldn’t have had to wait in line for hours anyway but it was definitely helpful. I am betting the line without reservations would have been near 2 hours long. Many people join “tours” that allow you to skip the lines to get in faster. I am not sure how much they cost but then you have to move around the place at their pace and that would annoy me.

Having got in I can only say that as a Recovered Catholic that I am mystified that the Catholic Church can ever claim that it needs money from anyone. There are artifacts of wealth from all eras of time. They have Egyptian, Byzantine, Roman, Greek, you name it artifacts in their museum collections. There is not doubt that there is so much wealth there that it is unlikely the church could not find money by selling off all this stuff. Especially the stuff that is not of Christian origin. I am not the biggest artwork fan in the world. I do not generally have a visual mind but there is no doubt that tons of time, effort and money went into everything that makes up what the Vatican museum holds. The fact that is all aimed towards one guy who may have existed and died 2000 years ago is sort of nuts to me. Don’t get me wrong the basic idea behind the Christian concept, the idea that is skipped by everyone who believes devoutly in their various sects is not really all that wrong. If you took the teachings of the man they call Jesus Christ at the most simplest level it was basically, “Be nice to others and they should be nice to you.” It is common sense. Humans aren’t capable of it. Instead they bent it all into the various messes that are what make up the Catholic and Christian religions. It is why I don’t really want to subscribe to a church. I shouldn’t need a god to tell me to be nice to others and nor should anyone else. Sadly that is not the human way.

Enough philosophy I guess. The Vatican Museum includes a visit to the Sistine Chapel of course and you get to see the paintings of Michelangelo all over the chapel. It is amazing stuff even to someone who is not an art connoisseur at all. In speaking with the people from the night before I found out that some Japanese paid to have the chapel restored and now own rights to all the postcards and whatever else involves the artwork. They said that the restored version is much better than it had been some 20 years ago (I suspect more recently than that but she was there 20 years ago and said it was vastly superior now. I can attest to the fact the paintings are vibrant and incredibly detailed. You are not allowed to take pictures in the chapel and they wish people to be quiet and respectful though of course the latter part does not happen at all. Being a stickler for those sort of rules I didn’t take any photos and instead bought a book with some detailed photos. Of course it is not the same but it is a sacrifice that has to be made.

In all it took me about 4 hours to make it through all of the Vatican Museum sections. I am very much sure that I didn’t miss anything as I ended up doubling back and seeing some areas more than once (including the Sistine Chapel) and I even managed to have lunch inside at a pizza joint. Once you leave on your ticket you are not allowed to return so they know they have a captive audience. I had a slice of pizza and a beer but at least it was still only 8 Euros or so. That carried me through lunchtime well enough. I can say for certain at some point you do get an overload on taking pictures of things. For the most part they don’t prevent pictures but if you took a picture of everything there was to see it would take days to get through it all. As it is I think 4 hours is a long time for a museum visit no matter how large the museum is. I was very happy with the visit even if it does make me cough to think about all this wealth gone awry in the world.

After the Vatican it was only natural to visit Saint Peter’s Cathedral. It is right around the corner and attached to the Vatican City but is not considered part of the Vatican tour. There is inevitably a line to the basilica as well but it is a security line where they screen for weapons and the like. It looked long but it really wasn’t more than 15 minutes before I was actually inside the grounds. The main basilica does not have an entrance fee. It is a gigantic cathedral that I am not sure I have seen the equal to anywhere. It of course is even more of a symbol of the waste a religion can spend on itself than the Vatican museum. At least the museum had materials that were from times other than Christian times. That means it is a collection of stuff and not necessarily only stuff that was made for the religion. The cathedral is all about the Catholic god and it is huge and ostentatious and unimaginably expensive I am sure. There are three parts to visiting the basilica. The main cathedral, the dome and the papal tombs. The tombs were closed for some reasons so I did not get to see them. The basilica was everything you would expect it to be.

The dome is the interesting part in many respects. You can buy a climb by foot for 5 Euros or a lift ride for 7 Euros. The climb is pretty much what you would expect and is what I bought. A ton of stairs. The lift only gets you part way up and then it is a ton of stairs after that. The lift gets you to the lower roof of the cathedral. From there you can climb to the internal catwalk inside the dome of the basilica. It is a tad disappointing because of the 10 foot tall safety grating that pretty much prevents you from taking any good pictures of the inside of the cathedral from on high. After you get through that it is what seems like thousands more stairs until you get to the top of the outside of the dome. This sounded like it would be a great thing except it was so painfully crowded that almost as soon as I got up there I was ready to get down. I took a few pictures but you couldn’t really get around the entirety of the accessible area because there must have been hundreds of people up there. It didn’t help that the climb was so hot an humid and sweaty then to get up there and find that the vast quantities of people up there were sort of blocking off the breeze that might have been available was basically unpleasant and it wasn’t long before I was headed back on my way down. Fortunately the climb down was a bit less strenuous. By the time I had finished with the basilica and the dome it was basically 4pm and I was ready to start heading in. It had been a full day. I didn’t exactly run in but it was a bit after 5pm when I got back into the vicinity of the hotel.

I decided to try to eat at the Aquila Nera which is across the street from the hotel before I even went back inside. Technically it is early to eat at 5pm in Italy but I am not one to care that much about their timing issues. I had a garlic and olive oil bruschetta and a turkey entrée that had artichokes and mushrooms. I coupled that with a couple beers. I do think the Mensa di Bacco is better for taste overall but it wasn’t bad food. While eating I met a Canadian couple from Toronto and talked to them for a while. They were very nice if unfortunately Maple Leafs fans. They have been traveling in Europe for a bit and had just come into Rome from Paris and were then going to head to Poland then England after this. Their stay in Rome was only a couple days. I gave them some advice on saving time I hope by going to the Palantine before going to the Coliseum and also to pre-order their visit to the Vatican to save th time for waiting in line.

I will say this. After a week in Palermo, Rome looks like a very clean city. I remember that my initial thought on Rome was that it was dirty but somehow a week in Palermo made it look like Stockholm. I know it is not really that clean here still but in comparison it is pristine. Stockholm is of course much more insanely clean than Rome could ever dream of being but it is all a matter of perspective.

All allusions to Catholic waste aside I would definitely say that it was a very good day filled from top to bottom.

Monday, November 01, 2010

Italy Day 10

Day 10 was basically a transit day back to Rome. I got up kind of late at about 7:20 or so because I figured the longer I was awake the more time I would have to kill. I intentionally had not packed the night before so I would have to kill even more time. I was correct that today was an Italian holiday and a lot of the traffic was missing and the gas station I wanted to use was closed. I found this out with a scouting walk after I finished packing. I also found a hardware store where I bought a replacement lock before checking out of the hotel. It was incredibly windy out and stayed so till I was firmly entrenched in the airport. 

It was really still too early but I was not sure what time checkout was and I was ready to be done with Palermo by this point anyway. So I made the short detour to the gas station and filled up before the surprisingly short ride to the airport. Even taking my time it was a half an hour or so. Returning the rental car was easy and the wait for the shuttle to the terminal was not long. This meant I had time to kill before I could check in. This flight was with AlItalia and I hoped my bag would make it unscathed. I ended up finishing my book on the wait to check in. 

After check in I got lunch which was a slice of pizza and a Danish beer made by Royal. It was 7.7% alcohol by volume and not bad really. After lunch I went through the very easy security and waited still qite a while at the gate for the flight. At least AlItalia has assigned seats. That being said like any other flight to Rome I have taken it was delayed by nearly two hours. I was not really amused as an already long stay at the airport took even longer. 

Boarding and exiting the plane both occurred outside rather than through an actual gate with a bus ride to boot. The flight itself was short and mostly uneventful except for a couple bumps. The passenger next to me was a middle aged man who sort of looked like Dr Rusty Venture if he had hair and it was brown. He did not smell too good and he kept fidgeting with his beard the whole flight. It was extremely annoying. We however did arrive and the new lock still looked secured at baggage claim. I was actually third bag off, which was nice. There was light rain in Rome. I was able to catch the train back to Rome almost exactly. A half hour ride again which meant about 6:45pm. As with theasy train ride into Rome it was already dark and I was cheated out of seeing the surrounding countryside yet again by the late flight.

I managed to get a first floor room (read as second floor in America) at the Hotel Milo this time instead of sixth which was nice. Since it was already so late after check in I opted to just go to La Mensa di Bacco again for dinner because it is right next door. It was very crowded but I ended up talking to a mother and daughter who were visiting Rome for a couple days after a cruise that started from Barcelona. They were extremely nice and it was good to hear a bit of English again. I had a bruschetta aglia i olio and penne all'arribiata. The bruschetta was excellent and the pasta was nice too. It had more spice than the other one I tried but perhaps still a bit tame. I followed up with a coffee and gelato. The daughter is married to a former air force man now Delta pilot and we shared a few travel stories. She was born in Vermont and they lived in Worcester after he got out of the air force for three years so that was the small world bit involved. They live in Utah now and her mom in Arizona. I do really envy her the free flying she gets due to her husband's job. It turned out to be a very nice end to a somewhat annoying day.

Please forgive errors in this post typed on my iPhone.