Matt and Lisa's Adventures

8 January 2025

The hotel breakfast was very nice but I only had two pieces of plain toast, such a shame. Then caught the high speed train to Rome. Always exciting to be going to the eternal city, this will be our third time. 

Our hotel was a bit out of the way which led to a lot of debate during the day as to who chose it. I was happy with the one we stayed at last time, so that only leaves one other person who said something about being a bit further away being fine and the walk would do us good… But, ultimately I must have approved it, so I take full responsibility. 

It was also a mission to find the hotel as it was in an unmarked building taking up half of a floor. Once we had arrived it was very nice and we were able to check in early once again! It also had the largest bed I have ever had, we could easily fit one or two extra people in with us! I measured it as a square 2×2 meters. 

We had a quick turnaround as we had an 11 am walking tour. Our guide was Simone a relatively young guy who unfortunately had cut himself shaving and it wouldn’t stop bleeding. I felt sorry for him, having done that myself but the poor guy was bleeding through out the two hour tour. The focus of the tour was on the families that dominated Rome from the 1700s. Interesting to have a focus on such a late time period rather than Imperial Rome. 

• One of the most influential families was the Colonna. They had a lot of money and therefore a lot of power. We saw the grave of one of their patriarchs and also their private chapel in a church. Unsurprisingly their symbol was a column. 
• We went into a cool church that had two relics from saints. One was a foot and the other a bone, very creepy. 
• The church had been built on top of previous churches from earlier times. Simone was able to pull up a stone in the floor of the crypt and show a column from a previous church
• The reason Rome had so much buried archeology and buildings built on top of other buildings is the river Tiber that flows through the city. The river used to regularly flood and when it did silt and debris would be spread across the city. Sometimes it was too much to clean up and so people would start building on top of it instead. This makes Rome into a “lasagna city”
• We went into an abbey next door to the church. This was technically Vatican land rather than Italian land. In here was the original burial place of Michelangelo. He was moved to Florence as his will specified that was where he wanted to be buried. This was a big coup for Florence and loss for Rome as his grave would have been a big draw card
• We went to the Trevi fountain and threw our coins in. It had worked the past two times and I expect we will be back in Rome at some point, but probably not in the immediate future
• Went to a church with 3D art work. This included aspects of the paintings which were made of plaster and appeared to escape from their areas. Very impressive. It also has a fake dome that is painted to look 3D because they ran out of money to build a real dome. The dome only looks believable from one end of the church so they used to  stop people from going down the other end
• Walked past the Pantheon. I got excited. Have to pay for entry which is ok, but does mean an annoying line. We didn’t go in, this time
• Finished to Piazza Navarro. Simone shared a story about a gold digger woman who married to get money and then married again to get a noble title. She had a close relationship with the pope. She pushed a lot to get projects done and owned a palace on the piazza and campaigned for the impressive fountain by Bernini to be built. When the pope died she lost a lot of influence and was not well liked by the people. She caught the plague and died like nearly everyone else

We had lunch at a snack bar having a slice of thick pizza, which gives an indication that our stomachs were improving. And a couple of arancini balls (classic tomato and carbonara) which were less good. 

We had been to the Colosseum and Roman Forum on both of our previous trips and while we felt we understood the Colosseum well we were more interested in the forum. We had booked a guided tour of just the forum but unfortunately it had been cancelled a couple of days prior. We planned to get tickets for just the forum and use an audio guide on our phones. Upon arriving we did some people watching outside the Colosseum as it can be hilarious waiting people taking photos especially any instagrammers or girlfriends ordering their boyfriends about in order to get the perfect shot. Today wasn’t as good for the people watching as previous times. 

As we didn’t plan to go into the Colosseum we thought we should at least have a quick walk around it before we lined up for tickets. Just after we did they closed the queue as it was 3:15pm – don’t know how it had managed to get that late or why they closed up that early. After purchasing tickets we tried to enter the forum but were told to do the Colosseum first – so we did. We downloaded an audio guide and started our way around. We were a third of the way through when security told us the monument was closing and so we ditched the audio guide and sped up our walking. Still managed to get some good photos but it wasn’t really a win for us. To be fair there had been a lot of announcements over the speaker (presumably about it closing) but as it was only in Italian we hadn’t understood. 

• Always so impressive to see the Colosseum in person. Such a massive and iconic building
• We arrived at the right time in terms of crowds as they were none so we could just walk straight through ticket check and security
• There were some giant sea gulls hanging around. I got the obligatory photo of Lisa with a bird
• I was roped into taking a photo for a couple of guys, they were very insistent on the style and framing of the photo but tricky to portray that with the language barrier. I think I got it in the end

Then it was back to the hotel room picking up a banana along the way as we had a real craving for some fresh fruit. 

Then it was our one chore of the trip, the mid way clothing wash. We piled all our washing into one suitcase but had to walk all the way back to Trevi fountain to find a laundromat. The machine was very confusing to work but thankfully someone gave us some pointers. It also took a very long time to dry while we sat there watching Squid Game season two. This was a much more painful process than it had been in Madrid a year earlier! Thankfully we got it done and now we are back to nice clean clothes! 

Dinner was at a restaurant next to our hotel. We are still working out way back to pasta so I had the Cesar salad and Lisa had pumpkin soup, we shared some baked potatoes and it was all delicious! 

9 January 2025

Breakfast in the hotel, which was an unexpected bonus. Lisa made a mistake and somehow ordered two coffees which came out and the she didn’t drink either of them. You can tell that Lisa is unwell if she isn’t drinking coffee, especially free coffee!

Today was Vatican day! We caught the metro to the meeting point early and I had only my second Italian hot chocolate of the trip. It was very nice, but no cream. As Lisa is off the coffee she had a ridiculously early Coke. Then it was off for our Vatican tour. Or guide was Francesco (same name as the pope he told us). He spoke with a heavy Italian accent but was very passionate and our tour was more than three hours. 

• Went through a giant room with lots of statues heads of various Roman emperors and their wives. The wives had different hairstyles which then in turn became the fashion in Rome while their husbands were in charge. Also had a creepy child’s head and a cool statue of Marcus Aurelius
• A whole room called the “Zoo of the Vatican” with statues of different animals. 
• There are very few bronze statues from Roman times as most of them were melted down at some point afterwards, often to make weapons. Those statues that we do have are because they were found more recently and therefore avoided the fate of being melted
• Generally we see statues without eyes but it is thought that they did originally have eyes made of glass. Obviously being made of glass the eyes were often the first thing to get damaged or destroyed. It would make the statues so different if they did all have eyes. In a similar vein the statues are generally not coloured, but they probably were originally. Again, what the artist may have intended could be quite different from what we see today
• There is often a lack of dark blue in art because it requires lapis lazuli which come from far away places like Afghanistan or Africa. It is very striking when used
• Most of the statues in the Vatican museums had fig leaves to cover the genitals because of the instructions of a particular pope who thought they needed more modesty. Such a travesty to have a butchered the art work to add them
• We were able to go through the Rafael rooms this time which we missed out on last visit. This happy outcome only occurred because the Sistine chapel was too full and they needed to slow down the entry of people into the chapel. But it was a great outcome for us and the rooms are incredibly impressive. I particularly loved the knowledge picture with Plato and Aristotle that Lisa had done the puzzle of
• The Sistine chapel was impressive as always, as was Saint Peter’s. 

We walked back to the Roman Forum as we had to use our 24 hour ticket from yesterday. We made it with five minutes to spare. In the forum we used an audio guide that we had downloaded. It was only ok, lots of information but didn’t really bring the scene to life as much as I would have liked. This was clearly a time when a human guide would have made all the difference. 

• There was the temple of the vestigial virgins who kept the eternal flame of Rome burning and were the physical embodiment of the empire. It was only a few years after the order was ended and the flame put out that Rome was sacked by the Visigoths. A coincidence? I think not!
• There was a temple to Julius Cesar located where his body was said to have been burnt. Someone still leave flowers in that temple everyday
• At its early peak Rome had over one million inhabitants. However, after the fall of the empire the city fell into disarray and most of it was grown over. The city went down to only fifty thousand people which is an incredible change

On the way out I decided to drink some water from the free taps. I ended up accidentally spraying Lisa and she was not impressed. 

We caught the metro back to our hotel and took a wrong turn coming out of the station. Turns out that was a happy mistake as we appeared right next to the Spanish steps. This is one attraction in Rome that I don’t understand that appeal of at all. Lisa was approached by a scammer who to give her a rose, she told him “I can’t, I have diarrhea” – which is a line she has been waiting to useand so she was very proud of herself! 

10 January 2025

It was then onto Circus Maximus which used to be a massive chariot racing track back in imperial Rome. On our first trip we went to Circus Maximus for a New Year’s Eve concert but it was all doof doof Italian rap music and very cold so we didn’t make it past 9pm. This time the circus was very quiet with just the old ruins. It is a very large and impressive area. There was a VR experience that we purchased this gave us a VR headset and eight different stations where we learnt about different aspects of the circus. It was very good and bought the arena to life, something that the Roman forum could learn from. However we did look a bit like idiots using them especially as there was a hygiene mask we had to wear! 

• The circus was built in a natural valley between two of Rome’s seven famous hills
• It originally started as a chariot arena with wooden seating but there were many fires. Over time the seats were converted to stone which helped lower the fire risk
• There were twelve doors for the chariots to enter from and designed so that the race was fair no matter which door a rider was assigned to
• A race was seven times around the track and there were large globes that insisted what lap the leader was up to
• Crashes were common place and highly dangerous, they were referred to as shipwrecks 
• At its peak it could hold about 250,000 people which is insane as that would have a quarter of the population of Rome. It is about five times the capacity of the coliseum
• After the imperial period it wasn’t maintained and the construction material was recycled for other projects. The area eventually returned to grass land. 
• In the early 1900’s a gas factory for generating electricity was located in the circus. During fascist times there was a swimming pool and exhibition centre, which just seems bizarre. Now it is empty, used as a public park and archeological site

Lunch afterwards was pizza with large slices of ham on it. 

We then walked back towards town. On the way we saw a massive police motorcade with dozens of cars and officers on motor bikes. We had seen a similar motorcade the previous evening in the vicinity of our hotel when searching for a dinner location. We now think this was President Zelenskyy who was in town for talks with the Italian government. We even think we saw him briefly through the window of one of the cars, but that may have been wishful thinking. In any case, it was a crazy amount of security. 

We walked past the Colosseum on our way and stopped for our usual people watching. It was busier than the previous days and therefore more interesting. There were four young American girls who were not dressed for winter and took a million photos. It was just so unbelievably stereotypical that it was hilarious. 

Lisa has been off coffee which had been very difficult for her. But more troubling, she hasn’t been to Uniqlo since Gold Coast. I accidentally found one in Rome yesterday and she was determined to go. Once there she disappeared and when I found her she had already purchased three (unneeded) tops. I purchased a jersey since my wrinkled one is unwearable. Hopefully that fulfils her needs and we don’t have to go to any more Uniqlos on the rest of the trip. 

Next up was a walking tour about: who killed Caravaggio. Our guide was Jacopo and he was brilliant. It wasn’t a topic I would normally get excited about, but he was very good at turning it into a compelling story. 

• Caravaggio’s real first name was Michelangelo but because of the pretty famous painter (who died before Caravaggio was born) he is normally called Caravaggio after the name of the town where he grew up
• He wasn’t of noble birth but had some rich relatives and therefore some access to privilege. His father and brother died of plague when he was young which shaped his life
• In the Renaissance Michelangelo and Raphael were the two most famous painters. When they died it was thought that no one would ever be as good again. Other painters just attempted to imitate these two. Caravaggio was the first to move away from this and come up with his own style rather than imitate
• Caravaggio was famous for his use of light and dark to create contrast in his paintings
• We went to the French church that had three of his paintings inside a private chapel. All of the paintings were of Saint Matthew and were very impressive
• At another church we saw another masterpiece which was near a fresco by Raphael which provided an interesting contrast between the two styles. This had a humble church and so the people who commissioned the painted wanted to be included in the painted as poor pilgrims even thought they were immensely rich
• Caravaggio was an angry man who was arrested many times for lots of different crimes. He also got into a lot of beefs with others including writing a very offensive poem about a rival painter
• He never had any money and often used his roommate (and possibly male lover) as a model in his paintings. He also used the most beautiful prostitute in Rome, Lena, as a model too. This was occasionally scandalous
• Caravaggio often got into fights. Eventually he killed a man in a duel. Both men were banging Lena but Caravaggio was banging the man’s wife too. The man’s family were very angry and he was sentenced to death by the pope
• Caravaggio fled to Naples and then onto Malta where he joined a group of knights which had always been a goal of his. However he pissed them off too. He fled back to Naples and was attacked there. He was stabbed and cut up but survived for a while before dying on a boat trip to Rome where he planned to plead for papal clemency
• It’s believed he was killed by one of the knights of Malta in conjunction with the pope. But there were a lot of people who were pissed of at him and there were lots of suspects
• Caravaggio also worked without an assistant and so mixed his own paints which were often made from unsafe chemicals. This may have contributed to his anger and criminal issues. After his attack he didn’t get medical treatment and continued to paint. This meant using the unsafe chemicals with open wounds which may well have been the key contributor to his eventual death

Our final meal in Italy was pasta – I finally got the great lasagna I had been craving. Lisa had gnocchi which was a weird choice but she said she liked it, if it was a little gluggy. 

Overall thoughts on Rome

• It’s been great being back in the eternal city. There are incredible sights to see every time you go around a corner and having the Colosseum in the background is always something to behold
• We had planned to do a food tour here as we had enjoyed one immensely on our last trip, but with our sickness issues we missed out which is very disappointing. The sickness really affected our ability to enjoy Italian food – we had one gelato each the entire trip after Lisa had earlier declared that she would have it every day
• Lots of scammers here which is disappointing
• It has only been two years since we were last here so everything felt very familiar and that probably took a bit of the excitement and shine off the location. I think it will need to be a few years before we return