6/12/24
We were keen to come back to the flat early that day so we woke up early, enjoyed coffee, but no pancakes, and started walking. We’d looked at getting a bus but it only saved ten minutes of walking.
We’d found a nice walking tour of the many piazzas and sights which we would do in reverse. Rome’s a very large city and it’s much harder to find a one day itinerary. We’d been before, almost ten years ago, and seen both the Sistine chapel and the colosseum, so we felt comfortable just exploring the city and perhaps finding some places we hadn’t seen before.
As we toured the piazzas and their many fountains, there was a common thread. Rome was repairing the fountains, all at the same time! The Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi in Piazza Navona celebrates the four great rivers and was sadly behind construction barriers albeit with a viewing window. The Trevi Fountain was also undergoing repairs and they’d installed a walkway so you could get even closer to the ginormous sculpture. The walkway didn’t open till 11am and we were too early for that.
We wandered around the outside of the Pantheon, marvelling at the feat of its construction. It was once clad in marble, but it was ripped off to get to the nails so they could be melted down for weapons. Rome is like every other city, it frustratingly doesn’t have any public toilets. At least McDonald’s has some use then. They actually sell coffee, but it’s only €1.10, and they have a counter full of pastries. How else could they compete with the numerous nice cafes all around.
We popped into magnificent churches along the way. One of them had a citrus garden, and we cheekily plucked a lemon for our dinner. After walking up the Spanish Steps, we walked through to the lovely park and gardens known as Villa Borghese. There was a lovely view over Roma, and we visited a temple on a lake before going to an art gallery. It was nice and warm but the art wasn’t particularly exciting to us unfortunately.
Below the park is Piazza del Popolo which has at least two fountains. The central one, not undergoing repair, presented an actual Egyptian obelisk which was already 2000 years old when it arrived in 10BC. The lions and fountain around it were added in the 1800s. The other obelisks we’d seen were actually fakes.
The Sun was coming out nicely now and we started walking back between the twin churches down the famous Via del Corso. After picking up a bag of pasta for dinner, we headed back to the Trevi fountain to see if we could utilise the walkway but the crowds and the queue were now monstrous.
Instead we spotted a sign for an archeological site and intrigued we went to explore. Vicus Caprarius is an underground site known as the ‘The City of Water’. It reveals an aqueduct and house, 9 metres below the current street level, that weren’t discovered until 2000. The water for the Trevi Fountain emanates from here and it was used in various ways for centuries. It was surprisingly warm down there!
We continued heading south towards the Colosseum and got sidetracked by climbing the glorious Emanuele II monument. There were nice views to the Forum and Colosseum and on descending we decided to locate gelato instead. Grezzo is a purveyor of raw chocolate, including incredible looking cakes that were at least €20 each, we had to leave it at just the gelato. It was delicious, though we wished afterwards that we hadn’t bothered with salted caramel as one of our flavours. It didn’t have a strong taste at all.
There were several, good, vegan bakeries in Roma but they were all so far out of the town it would take us at least an hour and a half there and back. We settled on finally sampling some tiramisu from Tiramisú Merisù in the area of Trastevere. It was a lively part of the city across the river and after enjoying our second dessert of the day we enjoyed our walk back, still popping our noses into every church we saw. We were home by 3pm, a triumph as we really needed some more downtime.
We ate our pasta and watched the Sun descend over the Basilica. We finished watching a film called A Man Called Otto, which was a gentle but sad film before continuing to watch the American version of Accused which we were enjoying quite a lot. After dinner we walked round Piazza San Pietro, we almost thought we would be able to saunter inside but they had closed it early. Just our luck! We went back and finished the tub of cheap tiramisu ice cream we’d found in Eurospin.
Tomorrow we had the exciting task of trying to leave Roma, the EuroVelo route had suggested using public transport to escape, but there seemed to be another option…
Surly They Won't Make It 