Italy, Day Two: Rome

Rick Steves said if you get to the Pantheon before 09:00 you have it all to yourself. We didn't make it there until around 09:30, but he was (as usual) right. The square was almost empty, very peaceful compared with the previous afternoon's madhouse.

We fired up our Rick Steves Audio Guides and walked straight in.

It just doesn't look real. How can it be real? Two thousand years old.

We walked by the Pantheon several times in the evening, and my favorite thing is that it sits there, in the middle of the neighborhood, without spotlights or fanfare. It's just part of the neighborhood, a church still in use today.

We also walked back by the Trevi Fountain, which was not crowded, either. We were catching on pretty quickly that mid-day is always the worst for everything. There were guys sucking the previous day's haul of coins out of the fountain, which the city uses to fund services for the poor.

Monday was the Ancient Rome day. For whatever reason, it hadn't really sunk in until a couple of weeks beforehand that Rome was, you know, ROME, seat of the Roman Empire, and that I was going to get to see all these ancient things. I love ancient things.

We passed through Trajan's Forum on the way, which is visible from the street but is closed to entry on Mondays.

  

I was already starting to see why nobody paid much attention to the Largo di Torre Argentina. They already have quite a lot to deal with.

We had some nice tourists take our picture.

Once again we used Rick Steves' audio tour while wandering around the forum. These are all via a free app and, while nerdy, they're a great way to get oriented to things.

The green bronze doors are original to this building, which dates from 300 AD. 1700 year old doors, and the lock even still works.

This is still in use as a church.

The pools of the Vestal Virgins still exist, in the shadow of a complex built on the hill by Caligula. I'm not sure I knew the Vestal Virgins were actually a real thing before this.

We also saw the exact spot on which Caesar's body was burned. Amazing.

I didn't really know what to expect from the Forum, but it wildly exceeded any expectations. It's absolutely fascinating.

There were quite a few people at the Colosseum. Lots of people wandering around with official-looking shirts trying to scam you into expensive tours and extra tickets, too.

The Arch of Constantine nearby.

We went inside and, of course, it's quite impressive.

Ten years ago, Ben and I went to the colosseum in El Jem, Tunisia, which claims to be the second biggest in the Roman world, second only to Rome itself. We had to stay an entire day, because there was only a morning train and an evening train into El Jem, and there is absolutely nothing else to do in town. We sat and read our books on the ancient stone seats as the sun set. There were, at maximum, 20 other people who entered that place the entire time we were there.

That was not the case in Rome.

On the way back to the hotel we passed the Victor Emmanuel II Monument, which is absolutely ridiculous. You can see also someone posing near the fountain for Instagram. The selfie situation at tourist spots was by far the worst I have ever seen it. Facebook has officially ruined everything.

After a rest, we went out for a walk. We were only about 5 minutes from the river, from which St. Peter's was clearly visible, so we decided to walk over to the Vatican.

The Castel Sant'Angelo was on the way. Built around 130 to be Hadrian's Tomb.

The Vatican at night was beautiful. The scale is difficult to comprehend until you're there. I'm especially grateful we went over there at night given how absolutely nuts we were to learn it is during the day.

Crossing the Tiber back into our neighborhood...

...and stopping for dinner at a random restaurant on the way back to the hotel. The food in Rome was incredible. Even in places that seemed touristy, it was always consistently stellar. This was one of the best meals of the trip.

I love Rome!

Italy, Day One: Arrival in Rome

My mom and I arrived in Rome around noon on a Sunday, the first day of a 10 day odyssey around Italy. I had first booked a hotel near the train station because I figured it would be convenient, but a friend of mine who has been many times talked me out of it. Thank you, Theresa.

We stayed at the HiSuite Rome, about halfway between the Pantheon and the Vatican, right near the Piazza Navona. It could not have been a better location. The whole area is a tangle of cobbled streets with sidewalk cafes and gelato shops everywhere you look. This is the view from my window.

Because of course on the first day in Europe you have to stay awake to get on track with the time zones, we took a brief rest and then went out to wander around. I was really surprised at how immediately and thoroughly I loved the city. For whatever reason, I've never cared much about going to Italy, but it didn't take long in Rome for me to wonder why in the world not. It has all of the main things I love: great food, deep and obvious history, and serious beauty.

For the first food, we got pizza. Good choice.

The yellow/pink/orange color scheme in Rome (and throughout Italy, really) gives it such a unique, immediately recognizable feel. Just perfect.

When we emerged out of an alley onto this ancient-looking building, I knew it had to be the back of the Pantheon.

The crowds made that pretty obvious as we rounded the corner.

The Pantheon has to be... I was going to say my favorite thing in Italy but honestly, it might be the best thing I've ever seen, period. It is so old and so perfect. Pictures of this place don't really capture the ancientness that is so obvious when you stand there and look at it. Ruins make it hard to understand that the people who lived in these cities two thousand years ago were real people, just like us, living in cities just like ours. The Pantheon makes that undeniably real.

There were unfortunately one billion people in the square. We kept walking.

One of my favorite things about Italian cities was wandering into random churches and being blown away.

I mean....

I have been in lots of old churches, but Italy's are the most impressive. The level of ornate detail is unlike anything I've seen elsewhere.

There were nuns and priests and monks all over the place.

Lots of Egyptian obelisks scattered around too.

The column of Marcus Aurelius:

And the Trevi Fountain, which is beautiful, of course:

but man, the crowds. Craziness. This thing isn't even that old!

On the way back to the hotel, we spotted some ancient ruins across the street and went over to check it out. Nobody was paying attention to this place at all. I googled it to discover it is the Largo di Torre Argentina and it is a CAT SANCTUARY. We perked right up and started looking for the cats.

There were a lot of them! The more we looked, the more we spotted. There are about 150 cats living there - the city spays, neuters, vaccinates and feeds all of them.

I could not get over the fact that this site of ancient ruins was sitting at the corner of a busy intersection and was FILLED WITH CATS and that nobody walking by seemed to care.

Then I googled some more and discovered it is also the site where Julius Caesar was stabbed to death. What.

 

Mercifully, it was finally late enough that we were allowed to go home and go to sleep.

Guest Suite: DONE

This room is supposed to be the master, as it's the one with the en suite bathroom, but we decided to make it the guest room. That way, our guests have their own space, and we have the hall bathroom right next to our bedroom anyway.

We had just recently painted the guest room in the old house this color and bought new bedding & curtains, so we retained this theme in the new room. It's the most colorful room in the house!

This is what it looked like before. Horrors. I had completely forgotten that the outer part of the bathroom was carpeted. 

This room is giant. For the first couple of months we only had the bed in there. It was cavernous and echoey. Then I took matters into my own hands and ordered this little loveseat and table from Wayfair. The loveseat is fabric and Mike likes to claw it up, but you know, it was cheap. 

We spent an hour yesterday moving all these books and bookcases from the fireplace room, to make space for our new sofa. These bookcases really complete the room. It feels like a real place!

The bathroom was the Worst Of All Rooms - painted wallpaper on improperly primed walls. It took us both an entire weekend to peel it off, tiny bit by tiny bit. Ben had to spackle the hell out of the walls in order to smooth everything back out, then we re-painted and got new curtains, etc The floor is the same white marble tile as in the other bathroom.

  
This picture, while terrible, does not begin to convey the horror of this bathroom. The inner tiled floor was cracked and wobbly, and when they took it up discovered the toilet had been leaking into the floor probably for years - the floor and wall were full of mold. They replaced the entire subfloor and drywall behind the toilet before retiling.



Now it's nice! Ben uses this bathroom when we don't have guests.

Ben is going to replace the faucet next week with a nicer one we purchased approximately half a lifetime ago but have not had the chance to install yet. Then we're done!

The Laundry Room, featuring Doki

The laundry room is my favorite room. One of our top priorities was a house with a good place to put the cat litter (as opposed to a carpeted guest bedroom, our previous arrangement, and having to move it into our room any time we had guests). This room is huge and also has a cat flap cut into the door that leads into the kitchen. FATE.

Here's what it looked like before. *SHIVERS* Old linoleum, an uneven green paint job, filthy curtains, a weird shelf blocking one of the outlets, and poorly assembled floor to ceiling cabinet.

 

The cabinet on the left reeked of urine. I thought Harriet might have kept a litter box in there but then discovered it was also full of mouse droppings. Apparently a family of mice lived in there at some point for quite a period of time. I debated whether or not I should make Ben rip the cabinet out - I bleached it four or five times and the odor wasn't going away. Fortunately, when the tile man came to get started, he took both cabinets out and we immediately told him not to put them back when he was done. Problem solved! 

We chose slate tile for the floors because it was inexpensive and everything else at Home Depot was ugly. It turned out to be a great choice - I love it. It also matches perfectly with the paint we used in the kitchen, which was fortunate as we had a massive amount of this color left over.

I love the little old fashioned curlicue thing above the windows.

I got a little shelf for our car keys and found this old collage with pictures of Owen and Bouley, cats from days of yore. This hung by my side of the bed in our first apartment in St. Louis and has been in a box somewhere since then.

We also got a thing for the wall to hang up the brooms and mops.

I love my laundry room!