Roseyland

Click here to read all of my Italy trip posts in proper order.

Hey look! It’s been seven months since my trip and I’m finally finished blogging about it. I’m actually closer to my next trip than I am to this trip. More on that later. Today we fly back to the great states of America and remember how grateful we are for all the things that seem normal to us. The company that rented us the apartment arranged for a car and driver to take us to the airport. We arrived at the airport fairly early, which was good, because the security lines were long, and we had to take this little bus to the gate area.

They had a store at the airport, so I made some last minute purchases. One of them was a kinder egg. These are chocolate eggs from Germany with a toy inside. I don’t remember what the toy was, but the egg was good.

The airport bathroom also sold disposable toothbrushes from this gum ball like machine. I was fascinated, so I had to buy one. I tried it out, and it worked okay, but nothing like a real toothbrush, and yes, I know what it looks like.

At the airport store, I also bought chocolate hazelnut bars and Pepsi. It’s hard to find Pepsi in Europe, but they always seem to have it at the airport. They make their soda with real sugar in the rest of the World (rather than high fructose corn syrup). Some people think it taste better this way. I think it taste good, but I’m pretty sure I couldn’t tell the difference in a blind taste test. Notice the guy on the Pepsi bottle, that had something to do with the World Cup, which was going on in Africa at the time. A quick tip, if you buy soda in a foreign airport and then take it back to the US with you, you need to remember to put it in your checked bags before you recheck your bags in the US, since you have to go through security again, and they won’t let you carry on liquids.

Here is my view on the plane. Economy is cramped, I wish more US airlines had a premium economy class.

Here are my left over Euros. I love the €2 coin, it makes carrying change worth it.

And there you have it, the Roseyland Italy adventure of 2010 is complete. A few final notes:

• The total cost of the trip was about $3000 per person for three people. I was surprised it was so low actually. This is about $1300 for airfare, $500 per person for the apartment, each context tour was about $100 per person, and the train tickets to Florence were about $100 per person. We saved the most money by renting the apartment instead of staying in a Hotel.
• I have mixed feelings about renting the apartment. It saved us a lot of money, and we had more space, but there is a certain sense of security that comes with staying in a hotel, and having a front desk with people to ask questions of. I’m not sure which way I would go again, but if I did rent an apartment, I’d spend a little more for one in the center of the city. Our apartment was on the edge of central Rome, which led to lots of long walks home.
• If you want to learn a bit of the language before you go, seriously consider trying Fluenz. I tried Rosetta Stone before I went to France last year, and it was okay, but not great. Everything in Rosetta Stone is in the foreign language, no english at all, which works okay for building vocabulary, but horrible for understanding grammar. Also, Rosetta stone teaches you words you will never use. I could say “the cat is on the table” in French, but shockingly, that never came up. Fluenz explains the foreign language to you in English, which greatly speeds up the learning process. Also Fluenz teaches you words you will actually use, and they have a fun audio component to help drill the information into your head. The audio component of Rosetta Stone was insanely boring. Trust me, go with Fluenz. I made my way through Fluenz Italian 1&2 before my trip, and while I wasn’t having any conversations in Italian, I could tell what the waitress meant when she said “Posso?”, I knew how to tell the taxi driver we were tired, and I even asked if could take the elevator (Posso usare l’ascensore?). Hey, I still remember it. Woo Hoo!
• It looks like my next trip is going to be a week in Bavaria, with a quick stop in Paris first. I’m really hoping to fly Air France in their Premium Voyageur class. For some reason, I want the experience of flying Air France, and their premium economy class is not that much more expensive than regular economy, but it looks way more comfortable. Finding the flights I want for a reasonable price has been a challenge though. I’m not looking again until March, then I’ll decide.

Hey, now maybe I can blog about something other than Italy! You can see more pictures from my trip here and a few videos here.

Click here to read all of my Italy trip posts in proper order.

Welcome to Day 6! Today is our final day in Rome. I didn’t plan anything for this day, because I figured there would be something we would want to do, that I wouldn’t be able to predict ahead of time. Let it be known, I can function, without a plan, for at least 1 day. Of course I did have a couple of ideas sketched out in my head, just in case. One of those ideas was to visit Ostia Antica, which is what we decided to do. Ostia Antica is an ancient Italian port town that was covered in river mud a long time ago, and thus well preserved until uncovered by archeologist somewhat recently. It’s kind of like Pompeii, but much closer to Rome. Getting to Ostia Antica is fairly easy, you take the Rome metro system to the edge of Rome, and then you can use the same Metro ticket to board a regional train to Ostia Antica. As an added bonus, Ostia Antica is near the beach, so you can also check out an Italian beach while you are there.

We took the Metro to the Pyramide station, where we would switch to the regional train. Something seemed off, because there were a lot more people in the Metro stations, and they all seemed to be in a big hurry to board the trains. Still, we made it to the Pyramide station, and headed towards the regional train tracks. Then they started closing all the gates. When we looked confused at the Metro workers, all they said was “strike, strike”. The Rome public transportation system had gone on strike. Wonderful. The good news is we didn’t make it all the way to Ostia Antica, which would have been around 20 miles from Rome, but we were still about 2-3 miles from the central part of Rome. Fortunately, the taxis were still running, of course now everyone wanted a taxi, but after a little wait in line, we got a taxi to take us back to central Rome. Below is a picture of the Pyramid near the Pyramide Metro station, where we waited for our taxi.

I wasn’t really sure what to do at this point. We had seen most of the main attractions in central Rome, but with the public transportation strike, I wasn’t really comfortable going anywhere else. One place we hadn’t seen was the Castle St. Angelo, so that’s where we went. The Castle St. Angelo is near the vatican, and once upon a time, it was used as a fortress and hiding place for the Pope. Supposedly, there is a secret walk way between the Castle and the Vatican. I tried to find it, but I was unsuccessful. Today the Castle St. Angelo is a museum. Here is the bridge leading to the Castle.

The best part of the Castle St. Angelo is that you can climb to the top, where it has great views of Rome and the Vatican. This is the view of St. Peter’s Basilica.

Here is Rome and the Tiber river from the top of the Castle St. Angelo.

After the Castle St. Angelo, we took a Tiber river cruise. The Tiber river isn’t as scenic as say the Seine or Thames, but the cruise would take us to Trastevere for lunch, without walking or finding a cab.

This is a street in Trastevere. Trastevere is a neighborhood in Rome with many pubs and restaurants. I would describe it as artsy. If you look closely in the picture below, the restaurant has a chalk board that reads: “We are against War and Tourist Menus”. We didn’t eat there. We did eat at the Ristorante Paris, where Anthony Bourdain ate in his show No Reservations. We had the fried artichokes, and they were very good.

After Trastevere, we walked around the Villa Borghese park for awhile, where I saw this graffiti. I had been practicing my Italian before the trip, and I was able to translate this as: “And after a year, we are still here to talk” or something like that. Good for them. Also, is graffiti an Italian word? Because it sounds Italian, and that would make a lot of sense, because there is a lot of graffiti in Italy. Hmm…

A view of Rome from the Villa Borghese with St. Peter’s Basilica in the background.

This is some type of water clock in the Villa Borghese. It was so hot, I totally could have jumped in that water.

Here is another fountain in the Villa Borghese. This fountain is on the way out of the park, and while walking by it, an Italian girl came up to me and said: “Scusi, dov’e Villa Borghese?”. And I knew what she meant!!! I was so proud of myself, I pointed up the hill and said, “Uh, that way”. She looked at me funny, said “Okay”, and walked off. It was exhilarating. But now that it’s over, I wonder, why did she think I was Italian? I also got mistaken for German on this trip. That I can kind of understand, but do I not look American. I always heard that Americans stand out in foreign countries. Is that a myth? Or do I just have an international flare? I’m going with flare.

On our last night, we ate dinner near the Spanish steps at the same restaurant we went to on night 4. Kiko was a fun waiter, and we wanted to see him again. We also walked around the shopping district near the Spanish Steps. Here is a street artist doing her thing with spray paint. She was fairly talented.

Our last stops on the trip were for gelato and to see the Trevi fountain at night. It was a Friday night, and the Trevi fountain was packed with tourist. Very pretty though. Afterwards, we tried to get a taxi back to our apartment, but the taxis in Rome on a Friday night only want to take you places that will pay them to bring people. Like some casino the taxi drivers kept mentioning. The metro was still shut down, so we had to walk for a bit until we found a taxi that would take us. Ugh.

And that is pretty much it. It was only 6 days, but they were exhausting. I’ll have one more post with some odds and ends. Expect that sometime in the next 4 months or so You can see more pictures from my trip here and a few videos here.