Matt and Lisa's Adventures

9 January 2023

Back to having an early start in order to catch the train to Rome. We arrived at Roma Termini and headed to the hotel however we were a bit confused as the sign said it was a luxury hotel, but we don’t book places like that. Turns out we were in the right place and we had a nice modern room. Our hotel also has some weird artwork on the walls that had CDs and DVDs that had been incorporated into the art.

We then headed off for a hot chocolate and they did a very nice one with cream. The weather wasn’t very nice and a little rain was forecast so we decided to go for a wander and fall back to the hop on hop off bus if the rain did come. We wandered from our hotel down to the Trevi fountain, which is always impressive but it was undergoing cleaning and so wasn’t actually fountaining any water. We then walked to the Vittoriano, a huge monument to the unification of Italy. It also includes the Italian tomb of the Unknown Soldier from World War One. We went here on our last trip and it is still just as impressive this time. It is absolutely huge with a lot of stone and some massive statues including one of the first Italian emperor astride a massive horse. Lisa also encountered a massive bird, which she wasn’t a big fan of. 

There was an archaeological area next to this where some of the old Roman forums used to be. The highlight was seeing Trajan’s columns which is 30 meters tall and had pictures spiraling around the tower telling the story of Trajan’s their conquests. I’m not sure how people were meant to see the pictures towards the top as that would be well above anyone’s head and the pictures weren’t that large. 

Lunch was at a random cafe along the way and we both had pizza like slices which were delicious but expensive. We the continued our walk and came across the Pantheon. This had been a major highlight of the last trip and again was very impressive. I struggle to understand how they built this two thousand years ago with technology of the time when it seems to take us so long to build any infrastructure today. While we were there it was raining and so we got to see the rain coming in through the hole in the dome which was quite spectacular. We then went to the Augustus cinemas for a video about the history of Rome and some of the key monuments. It was very good and used plaster models to show in 3D how the buildings were created and situated. We then wandered back through the streets and came across piazza Navona which had a couple of impressive fountains that we stopped to admire. 

After coming to the Spanish steps (massively overrated) we split up and I wandered around the streets taking in a couple of the churches along the way. Dinner was at a local restaurant in the area which was followed by gelato at a cafe. Sitting at the cafe to eat the gelato proved to be twice as expensive as taking it away, another weird European quirk.

10 January 2023

Another early start as we were off for a guided tour of the Vatican museums. This was the first thing we had done on our previous trip to Rome and we were a lot better rested this time, despite the early start. It was also a lot less busy this time. 

We arrived at the meeting point at 7:45 as requested but there was no one there. They finally turned up about ten minutes late and then said we could grab a coffee for twenty minutes which was frustrating having got up so early and rushed to be there. Our guide was a lady called Solomona. The tour was very good and covered the Vatican museums, Sistine chapel and Saint Peter’s. However, it didn’t cover some of the museum including the Raphael rooms which was a bit of a disappointment. Highlights:

• The super impressive sculptures in the garden area
• The hall of busts, always a bit weird just seeing so many heads on display
• The tapestries are amazing. They are so big and detailed. Like paintings but you feel like they would take so much longer than a painting to complete and would require a massive amount of planning at the start. There was one tapestry of Jesus and it felt like his eyes would follow you around the room  
• The massively impressive room of maps. This has maps of all the different areas of Italy. You could imagine people standing around these maps planning wars or resolving regional issues
• The generally amazing details of the paintings on the ceilings and walls
• The Sistine chapel. This time there was a lot less people and so it was possible to get a seat and spend some time admiring the paintings. Michelangelo was primarily a sculptor and did not do a lot of painting so it is even more impressive that he produced this. No photos of this as it wasn’t allowed
• Saint Peter’s was as massive as I remembered it. It’s just such an impressive building not just in size but also in terms of the decoration and gold all around it. 
• Saint Peter’s has marks on the floor to indicate the size of other major cathedrals around the world. As Saint Peter’s is the largest this is a bit of a fuck you to all the other cathedrals
• All of the art in Saint Peter’s is mosaics, none of it is paintings. Not sure of the reason for this, but I suspect the mosaics require less maintenance which would be important considering how much art there is and how inaccessible a lot of it would be. 
• The dome was designed by Michelangelo and is massive. The letters visible on the dome from inside are two meters tall even though it doesn’t look like it from inside. 
• One of the deceased popes still had his body on display in Saint Peter’s although the skin parts are covered by a mask. It’s more than a little creepy

After the tour ended we walked through the Vatican grottoes where the tombs of the other popes are located before continuing out to Saint Peter’s square. We then went for a wander to Castel Saint Angelo which was original built as a tomb for a Roman emperor and we had seen some of the details of at the Roman cinema the previous day. After a bit more wandering we stopped at a restaurant for a lunch of calzones, these were just as massive as on our first trip. 

From there we walked to the coliseum for our walking tour. Our guide was Sandos and we were the only people in the tour. He was a very good storyteller who brought the history to life in an entertaining way. The tour focused on some of this history of the coliseum:

• Nero who burned the city and blamed it on the Christians. He was found out and deposed as emperor before he killed himself
• His successor was a military general who bought a lot of treasure and wealth back from his campaigns. He started construction of the coliseum and to fund it sold all the slaves he had bought back from his Jerusalem campaign. 
• The gladiators were well treated and prepared so that they could give the best entertainment. There was also a lot of betting on the fights. Most gladiators were slaves or criminals but some were Romans who volunteered for the glory and money. Being a successful gladiator was the first way of becoming a celebrity in Ancient Rome. 
• A large part of the coliseum fell down in an earthquake. Parts of it were rebuilt with bricks and new walls were added to help stabilize the structure

After the tour we stayed around the coliseum for some people watching. It was funny watching people trying to take the perfect photo for Instagram and watching some of the weird fashion of the young people. We then wanted to Trastevertie for our food tour and as we were early we popped in for a quick beer. 

The food tour was amazing and there was a lot of food! This was also complimented by a generous amount of wine. The group was also a lot of fun to chat to, helped by the alcohol. 

• We started with some street food, a rice ball with meat that is breaded and then fried. That was followed by a sandwich made using pizza dough rather than bread. That was incredibly tasty 
• Next stop was for entrees. We’re had some traditional Italian cheese that looked like a white blobby ball. It was ok, but didn’t have a lot of flavour. We then had a plate of cold meats, cheese and bruschetta. The Parma and salami were great, even though I’m not normally a fan of these. The cheese was good and we also tried truffles (bad), fancy thirty year old balsamic vinegar (ok) and a wine marmalade (very nice). We also had blue cheese with chocolate which was a a weird combination and will not encourage me to eat more blue cheese. 
• Main courses was pasta (carbonara) and pizza. A lot of pizza was wasted as we were all very full by this point
• Last stop was gelato which (as always) was delicious. 

11 January 2023

Up early again for our day trip to Pompeii. We went to Pompeii on our original trip to Rome four years ago however we didn’t have a guide and instead used the official audio guide. This meant we missed out on good explanations and spent a lot of times looking at mosaic floors that weren’t particularly interesting. So, we decided to return again, but this time with a guided tour.

Our train from Rome to Naples was delayed which meant it was going to be a close run thing to make the tour. When we arrived in Naples we had to transfer to the local train which is not easy to find and there was a bit of a mad rush to make it. Tickets were also unclear but we managed to make it to the platform five minutes before the train departed – which was lucky as the next train didn’t arrive for another half an hour. The regional train is old and rickety but there were a lot less people on it than last time. Throughout the journey I was tracking our progress on Apple Maps and could see that it was going to be very tight to join the tour group before they left.

We arrived ten minutes late but thankfully the tour hasn’t left. Our guide was Raphaello and she was very good. Highlights:

• We saw one of the fanciest houses. All Roman houses followed the same plan, a short entry corridor that opened into an atrium (with an alter and a hole in the roof for collecting rain into a little pool that would be used for washing etc), then a large garden with rooms around the outside and the slaves would live on the top floor. This house followed this plan and was very nice with some beautiful artworks. 
• There was a large theatre built in a semi circle. The theatre hosted plays and music and was designed for the sound to easily travel from the stage to all of the seats. It was very impressive. They still perform plays and concerts there today. 
• The main forum was still just as impressive as last time and was clearly the centre of the town. 
• We saw lots of phallic symbols which pointed the way to the many brothels in the town. 
• We saw lots of shops, which could be identified by the groves in the floor for the sliding doors. There were even fast food restaurants with big tubs where the food would have been displayed. 
• The roads are very uneven but it was possible to see the grooves in the roads where the chariots wheels would have traveled. There are stepping stones across the road which confused us last time. The guide pointed out that the town didn’t have a a proper sewer system and so it would have been poured down the roads which lead out of the town. The stepping stones would have helped people to cross the street without getting dirty 
• We went to the brothel. The first room had reviews that people had scrawled onto the walls. There were also frescoes showing different sexual positions so that customers could make their requests even if they didn’t speak the local languages
• The city baths had separate areas for men and woman. They had areas for dressing (but you would have to pay someone to watch your clothes) then areas with warm and hot water along with a pool of cold water to refresh yourself. Sounds like Hanmer but not geothermal (ironic considering the place was destroyed by volcanic energy)
• There had been an earthquake seventeen years prior to the eruption and this earthquake had damaged a lot of buildings. There were a lot of extra trade people in the town to help rebuild. Nobody had any idea that the mountain was a volcano. There were two eruptions and neither produced lava. It was instead ash and volcanic rock. 

The tour lasted a little over two hours and was fantastic. It helped provided a great overview of the site and covered the key sites – a much better experience than last time. We had lunch in the site at the same cafe as last time. It still had appalling systems and high prices. After seeing the line and prices for a sandwich we went for chocolate croissants instead. We ate on the steps outside and Lisa made friends with a cat. When the cat climbed on me Lisa almost cried out in pleasure! Going to make getting out of my cat promise a bit harder…

We had seen a stuff.co (reference for the parents) story about a new house that had recently opened and so we checked that out. It was very fancy, but had a picture of a guy with a huge penis on the door. We walked up the tower on the wall to get some great views before heading out of the archeological area. There was a final museum on the way out each had some good exhibits and plaster casts of some of the people who had died in the eruption. The casts was morbid and sad, but also very interesting to see.

We caught the train back to Naples. When the train’s arrival was announced at the station it was announced as “get away from the line”, which was unusually blunt for a recorded message! Every time we had caught this train there were people onboard playing music and collecting tips. On this trip it was just a guy with a giant speaker playing doof doof music, I declined to tip for that. We grabbed a beer at the Naples train station and then caught our train back to Rome. 

Back in Rome we went to the Hard Rock Cafe which was just around the corner from our hotel. Italian food is delicious but we’ve had a lot of Italian food recently and we were in the mood for something different. I had the pulled pork sandwich and Lisa had the legendary original burger. The food was ok and the cafe was very quiet. 

12 January 2023

Relaxed start to the day and we managed to have a bit of a lie in. Once up we walked to the Trevi fountain which was back up and running. We took some photos and each threw a coin into the fountain. We then went looking for our final hot chocolate in Italy. The cafe we chose though turned out to be a mistake, it was very expensive, didn’t come with cream (despite me ordering that), was in a takeaway cup and generally tasted very average. A very disappointing experience!

We had a Marvels of Rome walking tour booked in for ten, so we walked to the start point for that. Thankfully it wasn’t just us on this tour and we had a big group of about eighteen people. The guide was Ana. Highlights:

• The palace of Venice that was originally the Venetian embassy. Mussolini made it his home and would address the Italian people from the balcony
• Learning more history about the Italian unification and Victor Emmanuel. It is his statue that is on the massive Altar of the Fatherland monument
• We went back to the Trevi fountain and watched everyone else throw their coins and take photos. It’s always good people watching at places like this. Seeing the fountain again emphasized how much quieter Rome had been on this trip compared to the previous one. Last time it had been bedlam at the fountain
• We went to an interesting church. The architect has been given money to build the church and had promised to include a dome. However, he ran out of money and instead hired a painter to paint a fake dome. This was an optical illusion but actually looked really good. When you first went in you couldn’t tell it wasn’t real but as you moved it looked less realistic.
• We went to the Pantheon again. Always impressive! There were a lot of touts outside and interesting watching their strategies to get people to engage. Two of them told me I had cool shoes and Lisa got asked if she was from Africa!
• Piazza Navarro, which is my favourite square in Rome. It contains the amazing four rivers fountain by Bernini. Bernini had a rivalry with another designer who built a church in the square. Apparently they both built their statues not looking at the other’s work, which just seems a bit childish. The church is missing a statue and this meant the church could claim to be unfinished and therefore not have to pay taxes – seems like a scam to me!

In the afternoon we had our guided tour of the colosseum and the Roman forum. We met our guide Fabio at the arch of Constantine before heading into the forum. Fabio spoke non stop for two and a half hours and the information made the sites much more interesting than when we did them last time by ourselves. 

• We got the history of the colosseum which was very similar to the story given to us by Sandos. 
• We got to walk on the floor of the colosseum which was amazing. It gives you a great perspective of what it would have been like to be a gladiator walking out. Of course there was no one in the stands for us but you got a sense of the size of the place and just how intimidating it must have felt. 
• It was also fascinating to look into the underground area. Lots of elevators were used here to raise and lower things during the shows. 
• While gladiator fights are what the colosseum is known for, it did a lot more. They tried a naval battle recreation there once by flooding the stage, but this caused the structure to sink so they didn’t do that again. They had a lot of animal fights there, which seems barbaric. Most of what they did were shows to educate and entertain the audience. 
• The stadium could hold 70,000 people but as with other big events more people would try to get in and so it probably has even more people on some of the big occasions. 
• The colosseum was originally covered over the stands to keep the sun and rain off the audience. All of that is gone now, but it would have been a very impressive site. The whole structure was built in eight years which makes the construction of Christchurch’s new stadium and sports facilities look terribly slow
• We had previously been told it was thumbs up for the person to live and thumbs down for them to die. However that was wrong. It was thumbs up for them to die (as the thumb was like a sword) and a fist for them to live (as this was sheathing the sword). 
• We didn’t have a lot of time at the forum as Fabio was running a bit late due to all the talking at the colosseum. At the forum we went to the top to get a good view and Fabio pointed out the key sites. 
• There were some massive seagulls at the forum and I convinced a reluctant Lisa to have some photos with them. 
• After we left Fabio we had a quick walk through the forum but without a guide it wasn’t that easy to understand what things were. We had also covered the forum last time with Rick Steve’s audio guide and the forum was closing which didn’t give us the time to do it justice.

We then walked to Trasteverie and found a pub for a couple of beers before dinner. Ana had given us some recommendations on where to eat and so we went to one of these for dinner. We both had the lasagna and it was delicious! For dessert Lisa had the tiramisu and I had a chocolate cake. Overall it was a great restaurant at a reasonable price. We then got an Uber back to our hotel. 

Overall thoughts on Rome:

• Seemed much cleaner and quieter than last time. Might just have been because we were staying in a different area but a lot less graffiti and emergency service sirens than I remember. 
• Easy to walk around between the attractions. The metro is also quite good but doesn’t have many stops in the city center
• Food was generally very good. The food tour was a real highlight and helped to broaden our Italian food choices
• There are a lot of police in Rome and a bit unclear why. Some of them were soldiers – there were two guarding the building across the road from our hotel which looked like Argentinian embassy but it looked like a very boring job
• They love the story of the founding of Rome, I think we heard variations on that story half a dozen times
• Amazing that at its peak it had a million inhabitants and then died back to around thirty thousand before increasing again. Explains why so much of the city was buried and now needs to be discovered again. Crazy to think of people tending their sheep in the colosseum considering all of the history and fights that had occurred there
• Things are just bigger and grander in Rome. No matter how many times you see the pantheon or the altar of the fatherland they will still be incredibly impressive. 
• A lot of the areas you can come to multiple times and still get more depth from them, the Vatican museums being a key one. Also, we’ve never made it to the other museums around the city which would be great to explore. 
• Hotel was fancy but in the end not that great. Shower head didn’t stay in the right place which drive me nuts. 
• Overall fantastic as expected and would love to come back. As we threw one coin into the Trevi then that should help us return to Rome!