International Destinations

Roman holiday is sure to be a pleasure

By Sandy Campbell

Photo by Sandy Campbell

Everyone should visit Rome at least once. Whether you have a few days or a few weeks, the Eternal City will not disappoint you.

Arriving at the Leonardo da Vinci Fiumicino Airport, we discovered that to get into the city we could take an expensive taxi (about 50 Euros), an expensive shuttle (about 25 Euros) or the fairly inexpensive train (about 14 Euros). We chose the very comfortable and efficient train, which delivered us to Termini station in the centre of Rome. From there we took a taxi to our lodgings.

We were staying at the Basilica Square Bed and Breakfast in Piazza di San Giovanni in Laterano. The bed and breakfast is on the second floor, but the management is on the sixth floor of the building across the street, so checking in was a bit of an adventure.

The accommodation was inexpensive and comfortable and the location was ideal. From this site we were able to walk easily to the Coliseum, the Circo Massimo, the Forum and other sites.

The breakfast included with the room was unremarkable, but we bought fruit, milk and yogurt at the local corner stores, including one directly below, to keep in the refrigerator in the shared kitchen.

The window of our bed and breakfast looked out on the piazza and the Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano. This remarkable old church, built in the 4th century, is the cathedral of the bishop of Rome, ranking above all other churches in Rome.

The plaza in front of the church serves as an outdoor meeting place. The last weekend we were there, it was filled with tents for a large international youth music event.

On the far corner of Piazza San Giovanni is a subway stop. While the subway will not take you everywhere you want to go, it is good and inexpensive. All-day cards cost less than five euros and can be purchased at most of the stations.

Walking, public transit and taxis are definitely the best ways to get around. Unless you have a death wish, you do not want to drive in Rome. Traffic is horrendous and no one seems to pay attention to signs or road markings.

However, drivers are very respectful of pedestrians. If you step purposefully into the street, drivers will stop for you.

On the subway, be prepared for the bands of musicians who will make their way through the train cars looking for donations until the conductors shoo them off the trains. You will also encounter these people begging on the street.

The Coliseum is the first place most visitors want to see. Around the entrance to the Coliseum there are aggressive tour company representatives who immediately approached us to offer a tour of the site. You do not have to take a guided tour, but going with a guide allows you to bypass the lineups.

Although the guides must be licensed and must have passed examinations on their knowledge of Roman history and the site, the tour quality varies a lot.

We went on two tours. One was excellent, led by a young Italian man who had spent six years in the United States. He gave us a lot of detailed information that I hadn’t heard or read about before.

The second tour was with a young woman whose very thick accent I couldn’t place. She was almost incomprehensible, shouted like a ringmaster and gave us about half as much information as the first guide.

At the end of each tour, an associate of the guide offered us a free tour of the Forum. It was unclear why these guides were working for tips only. Perhaps they were not yet licensed. However, both gave us enjoyable and informational tours – well worth a few euros’ tip.

Shade is scarce at these sites, so on hot days you need a hat and sunscreen, neither of which seemed to be readily available for purchase.

In the vicinity of the Coliseum there are many restaurants. Most do not open until 8 p.m. and some do not take credit cards. The further you move away from the Coliseum, the less expensive and crowded the restaurants will be.

For dinner, the Italians usually have a pasta dish followed by a main course. We found that this was typically expensive and more than we needed to eat. We would often just have the pasta course.

While we had some fine dining experiences, we gravitated towards restaurants serving Neapolitan pizza. A twelve-topping pizza in Rome is a unique dining experience. It is a pizza with an egg baked in the middle and twelve slices, each with a different topping. Near the Coliseum we enjoyed Pizza Forum and Le Naumachie, but there are many other restaurants to explore.

We also found satisfactory alternatives in small bistros, remarkably good and inexpensive Chinese and Japanese restaurants and places supplying take-away that we could enjoy at the bed and breakfast.

The Vatican and St. Peter’s Square are, of course, a “must see”, easily accessible by the subway. We visited twice. The first time we went on Sunday morning for the Papal Blessing, at which time there were tens of thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square, and His Holiness blessed us in eight languages. If you plan in advance, you can arrange for tickets to a Papal Audience on most Wednesday mornings.

The second time we went to tour St. Peter’s and the Vatican Museums. There are usually very long lines to get into both sites. Again, if you go with a tour, you will be able to jump the queue, but you will definitely feel rushed. There are so many artifacts, that you could spend weeks just to see them all.

The tour of St. Peter’s is a little more relaxed than the Vatican Museums tour. You can take time to appreciate the ornate interior decoration. We were also able to climb to the top of the dome of St. Peter’s, which gave us a remarkable view of the Vatican Gardens and of Rome.

Our tour through the lower level Tombs of the Popes, past the austere tomb of Pope John Paul II, was more like the Museums tour. We found ourselves hurried along by the guards and swept along with the crowd.

As you wait in the queues or walk the main streets, you will encounter many African immigrants selling scarves, sunglasses and handbags. To enter many of the churches, women must have their shoulders and knees covered, so the scarf sellers do a good business.

Most of the sidewalk merchants have no license to sell, so they have temporary stalls, sometimes blankets or folded cardboard. Their goods are arranged so that when a lookout whistles to warn of the arrival of the police, they can scoop up everything and be gone in seconds. Minutes after the police leave, they will be back, setting up again.

The Circo Massimo, where the chariots once raced, is now an open oval where Romans go to run and do other exercise. In addition to the joggers, we encountered a group practicing karate, another doing African dances, people playing Frisbee and others just out for an evening stroll.

On the south side of the Circo Massimo is a large rose garden that is worth a visit. The garden is on a slope, with the oldest varieties at the top and the newest at the bottom. The collection includes roses of all types from all over the world.

We were able to see very old continental rose varieties, as well as modern varieties such as the Bugnet roses developed by Georges Bugnet in the Rich Valley area, northwest of Edmonton. Many of the old varieties produce small flowers that are simple when compared with the modern hybrids.

For an overview of the sites in Rome, there are hop-on, hop-off bus tours that take you to the most popular sites including the Trevi Fountain, the Coliseum and the monument to Vittorio Emanuele II, locally known as “the Wedding-Cake building.”

There is no need to book in advance for these tours. Just look for the lime green open top buses and buy a ticket on board. The tour we took connected with a riverboat cruise up to Castel Sant’ Angelo.

We took the last cruise of the day, which was supposed to drop us back at the bus stop near Isola Tiberina in time to catch the last bus back. The last bus never arrived so we ended up walking back to our bed and breakfast.

One of the advantages of staying in the old part of Rome is that everything is very close, A week in Rome was enough time to see the most important sites, to get a general sense of the city and to realize that we had only scratched the surface. Rome is definitely on my return visit list.

If you go:

Basilica Bed and Breakfast www.basilicasquare.com

Le Naumachie
Via Celimontana, 7
00184 Roma

Pizza Forum www.pizzaforum.it/inglese/home.htm

Vatican Official Site www.vatican.va/phome_en.htm