Dia Due…When in Doubt, Walk!

We both wake early and with different sleep experiences as mentioned yesterday. The jet lag is still present, but on the ropes. Today will tell the tale.

We learn that just because the apartment water heater has been checked by the renter, doesn’t mean he has turned it on. The positive part, from my perspective, is that I get to enjoy delicious espresso that Dennis has learned to coax from the edited version of kitchen appliances.

After relearning how to shower when there is about two minutes each of hot water, we are ready to take on the sites. 

We know that today it is important to provision ourselves for tomorrow, which is the equivalent of the Labour Day national holiday at home. Given that we know Italians love their time off with family and friends, it is likely that we will find little open or available. We find a Carrefour grocery store just two blocks away and after enjoying a sandwich and “people watching” on a park bench we gather the bits needed for a fine day of eating at “home” tomorrow, if necessary.

Ready for tomorrow, we can enjoy today and decide to branch out. Our main goal for the day is the Piazza del Popolo. A great friend of ours who has recently died told me of stumbling on this piazza, which has twin churches. We want to see it and have a toast to Mike in a place he found amazing.

While all roads lead to Rome, as the adage goes, I’ll bet they don’t do it directly, because every street has it’s own mysterious angle, it’s version of  “turn here’ that confuses and defies people who expect that four right turns will bring them back to where they started.

It reminds me of Boston, for people who have been there, at the core it seems that they just paved over the goat tracks, which works less effectively for today’s traffic.

One of the Angels at the entrance to the Ponte
Vittorio Emanuele II

So, today we find the Ponte Vittoria Emanuele II decorated with statues of Angels that bridges the Tevere River with a great beauty that belies the somewhat dirty and inhospitable places on the river’s banks below. It is a far cry from the welcoming Seine in Paris, but such is the danger of comparison.

We walk further up stream, because we know a left turn will take us to the Vatican and that adventure is planned for another day. We cross to see the Castel Sant’Angelo, but on the outside only. The Castel is closed on Mondays.

There is a market of sellers under tents and the book and poster sellers along the river that in France they call Bookistas. We would like to know what they were called in Italian, but we have not yet discovered it.

Our ramblings take us back to the Piazza Navona for our first gelato. So delicious! I have told myself I will eat a different flavour everyday, but the Stracciatella is so delicious it will be hard not to keep reordering it. We lean on a building entrance beside an open door to lick our cones and being curious, I glance into the entrance. It seems there is a chasm beyond the brief lobby and I walk in. There, out of nowhere, at the back of the foyer is another excavation with arches and columns a storey below. We feel so lucky to have found it.

The Pantheon looking remarkably small for how remarkable large it is!

Our trusty map guides us next to the Pantheon. In a city of “old” this building is remarkable. We walk where the Caesars have walked before us. I am a little disappointed be cause I know that this building was built to celebrate “all” the gods – hence the name. I was expecting to see artistic tributes to a plethora of the gods and goddesses we learned of in ancient history, but the building’s art is primarily Christian. It’s lovely, but has been edited by the victors, in much the same way that the posters and policies of a previous regime are replaced in politics.

We ramble on and stumble upon an unmistakable media scrum in waiting on the lovely Piazza Colonna, which is cordoned off by Polizia in various uniforms of importance. Political “minders” talk on cell phones and look bored, but self-important. Men in suits wait impatiently and gesture importantly to each other. We ask a family that is watching and waiting what’s up and they tell us that this is the Italian Parliament and they expect to see Italian President* Mario Monti. This cracks us up, because when we were in France we happened into a similar situation and saw Nicolas Sarkozy glad-handing the crowds on Bastille Day. We wait a bit, but clearly the President is in no hurry to leave the building, so we mosey on along Via del Corso. 

Clearly we have entered the “shopping street” and the further down the street we get, the more familiar and high-end the brand names become until I glance to the right and notice an amazing burst of purple and pink bougainvilla about three blocks away. We have stumbled onto Via Condotti made (even more) famous in the movie “Roman Holiday”, at the end of which is the Spanish Steps. We head for them, passing all the “we’re so famous we only need one name” stores like Fendi, Gucci and Armani. Of course we climb the steps, weaving among the people using them like bleachers to people watch and visit with each other. The view from the top of the steps is enchanting, especially the rooftop gardens on buildings like the British Embassy. Wow, this would not be a hard posting for a diplomat.

We came upon the Spanish steps without planning.
What a marvellous and beautiful gift from the Universe.

Our map guides us a little further to today’s destination the Piazza del Popolo—the plaza of twin churches, one of which is enjoying a facelift behind a construction mask. This is the Piazza our friend Mike told us he came across unexpectedly and enjoyed. We thanked his spirit and enjoyed its beauty, fabulous sculptures and fountains, and relative peacefulness with few people.

We head for something to eat and find a small restaurant on a side street to enjoy pasta. Dennis has carbonnera and I select a simple dressing of garlic, olive oil and basil for mine. So good! Neighbouring tables host a Japanese couple and a French family. It’s delightful to be in such a cosmopolitan centre.

  

For being just over 24 hours in Rome, we are delighted and amazed at our great fortune at seeing all we have. Tomorrow, if they operate on a holiday we will “Hop On and Hop Off” the tourist bus. We know that it is great fun and has our next destination…The Coliseum and the Forum on its circuit.

  

A final thought as I head for bed: The only map of Rome that we carry is about 14 by 20 inches; the kind that most hotels have as “flat maps” supplied by the tourism board. It has little iconic drawings of significant sites and geographical waypoints. I look at it as I write to learn spellings and street names and I recognize that it is like a cartoon entrance door to an indescribable wealth of delights.

* So this blog is growing footnotes, which seems very grown up ;-). Turns out that Mario Monti is the President of the Council of Ministers of the Italian Republic, not to be confused with Giorgio Napolitano who is the President of the Italian Republic. I wonder if this is sort of like our Prime Minister, versus the Governor General, but not enough to research it at the moment.

Lots more pics from today are available on Facebook.

Buona sera!