Roma e homa

23 June, Hotel Panda, Roma

The trip to Rome was so easy. No underpasses for the Pisa train, though we did have to take the bags off the bikes. Then lifts (hurrah!) to change platforms for the Rome train, and we were able to drag them on loaded. Our carriage was air-conditioned, and we used the time to get the Cinque Terre photos and Lucca photos chosen for the blog. We also chatted to a couple who live in Switzerland and manage a rich man's ski chalet, and go cycle touring between times. They were about to start the Orbetello – Siena ride. It was strange to come back through some familiar territory, including Orbetello, and Civitavecchia from where we took the ferry to Sardinia. Actually, we put some more photos of Sardinia on the blog yesterday. They've been added to the first blog entry.

We rode and walked from the train to Pensione Panda. The traffic was busy but not ferocious, and Mr GPS ably guided my navigator. The Spanish Steps were swarming with tourists – it was amazing – the Panda was two streets away, in a very elegant area of super expensive shops. The bikes went into a storeroom on the first floor, and we lugged our luggage up to the next floor and our very unusual – but sparkling clean, and at 108E a night, very cheap – room. Think one small bedroom with view across to pretty green shutters and roof garden up and opposite and down to the street, and a winding staircase with a shower cubicle at the first stair, a little toilet and bidet at the top on the left, a single bed with shelf at foot and head.

We were PRETTY EXCITED to be in Rome so we quickly unpacked, putting all the bags upstairs, setting out the food, and hiding the stove. Then on went the glad rags and we were out the door and walking in our neighborhood. We walked down the street full of Prada and Gucci and then let our feet take us wherever, gazing around in wide-eyed wonder as if we'd just arrived in Europe. The . buildings are so huge and sumptuous though and street-scapes glorious. In one laneway Phil noticed a number of body-guards leaning against the wall apposite a bar. I asked the waiter what was happening. A senator was having a drink there. A woman went across to him, kissed him on the street and climbed into his lap for a photo. Most exotic! Houses of parliament, and black cars and drivers waiting outside. We were hungry and had been looking at restaurants. Finally we chose one and it was an awful meal – and expensive because the extras (bread, water) were phenomenally dear. Ah well. I resolved to look in the Planet for the next night.
On into deep dusk and we happened upon Piazza Navona with its wonderful central fountain by Bernini. We stood in the bar opposite and had a drink watching shadows flickering on the fountain and tourists enjoying themselves, and Indian sellers of multi-coloured glowing circular rings which they were firing into the air. We recommenced wandering, in the direction of home after getting directions from the waiter, and came upon a supermarket for breakfast and lunch supplies. Then on again and came across a piazza with fountain, where an opera singer was singing famous arias, and an enthusiastic crowd had gathered. I would have stayed all night – how romantic – but Phil dragged me away after three songs on account of being tired. In fact we'd wandered a pretty far and had a long walk home.

Thursday 24 June

We slept with the window open and just a sheet on us – the days and nights are humid. People were having fun in the street below til very late – around 1am, and then the street sweeping and garbage collection starts early – think thousands of glass bottles being tipped into a truck at around 5am in the e morning. Allora, we're on Roman time; late to bed and late to rise - so we slept through it sort of and then rose to have showers and breakfast in our ship.

I wanted to ride to Villa Borghese, because I saw it was set in the midst of a giant park, but Phil didn't feel like the GPSing necessary, so we walked – the long way around as it turned out – and it was hot and took ages and I realised that I was tired. However, instead of having to buy tickets in advance we got the last two “walk straight in” tickets, so we did and the sculpture was just as wonderful as it was 29 years ago; there was Persephone trying to flee from Perseus but he's got her, and his fingers are pressed into her flesh and you could swear it was flesh and not marble. Then the next room and Bernini's utter masterpiece – he was only 23/25 when he sculpted Apollo and Daphne. He desires her, she rejects his advances. He pursues her through a wood and she begs the god ----- to save her. Her prayers are answered as he is upon her. She is transformed into a tree. The sculpture catches her in those few moments of transformation. Her toes are putting out roots, her outstretched fingers and hair is sprouting leaves and branches, her legs and belly are partly sheathed by the trunk, and it is this that his encircling hand gently holds. She has escaped him, but given up her human existence. It is a most intoxicating creation. From the back you can see only him, flying in pursuit. It is beautiful, balletic, graceful, and the marble has been sanded so finely that it glows.

There were other lovely things, and pictures upstairs, but that sculpture was what we had come back to see.

A walk home the shorter way via some leather shops, a salad picnic lunch in our little cabin upstairs and then Phil did things on the NET while I fell into bed and slept for two and a half hours. I woke to be told we had an email from our Nafisa, telling us we had a new prime minister. Amazing!

This was a day for sculpture. We also wanted to see Michelangelo’s Pieta again, which is in St Peters in the Vatican. It's a tourist hot-spot, but we hoped that by going late the hordes might be reduced. So, we walked to the Steps, hopped on the metro and went 3 stops. Then a walk, through security, and at 6.20 there we were with only a handful of others. (It shuts at 7pm.) The Pieta is hauntingly beautiful. Two slight figures. A beautiful Mary mourning her dead son, whom she cradles in her arms. It's behind glass now, ever since a crazy took to it with an axe, but it radiates purity, sadness, stillness, grace. We looked at St Peters fairly quickly after this, but were impressed with its cohesion. Michelangelo built the dome after someone else's design, and Bernini was responsible for most of the interior design. Amazingly it hasn't been fiddled with and 'improved' since then ( ) and so the statuary fits its enormous scale, themes re-occur and everything is in proportion so we found ourselves admiring it much more than last time. A last look at the Pieta and it was time to go, admiring the Swiss guard in his brightly coloured silk stripes – like a page from a book of fairy tales.

We walked across to the cafe across the road after this. They served us 4 biscuits and two small slices of delicious chocolate cake (all unasked for) with our decaf cappuccinos, and then charged us 10E ($16). We'd eaten it, and complimented them on the cake – what can you do? C'est la vie!

We planned to walk home very circuitously because I’d checked out the Planet for recommended restaurants and we'd plotted them on the map. We were hoping for an enjoyable dinner after the debacle of last night and a look at some new territory on the way.

Now, you probably think there would not be much left to report, and so did we, but the evening soon took a frightening turn.

We found one of the recommended restaurants, and got a table outside. A little later a woman and her daughter came and sat at the table next to us and we gradually started chatting. It turned out they were from California and in Europe for two weeks to celebrate her 50th birthday, leaving her husband (who couldn't leave work) and the twin brother (who didn't want to come) at home. Unfortunately the daughter (who looked 24 but was actually only 15), had had gastroenteritis two days before and had been so sick that her mother, Tricia, had to call a doctor who'd prescribed medication for her. She'd felt so lethargic on the medication that they had made the decision to stop taking it at lunchtime, and now she was trying to tentatively eat something which was not fried and not dairy.

They had just arrived in Rome. After a lovely week in Paris they were feeling sad that because of the gastro they had had only one day out of three for sightseeing in Florence and she still wasn't well for Rome. We chatted pleasantly – they were fascinated with our adventure- when McCall, the daughter, started stretching her neck. It was sore she said. Tricia said she was a most high-maintenance child. I went to massage her neck and shoulders. When the stretching became involuntary spasms, Tricia called the hotel to arrange a doctor and went to organise a taxi. For a while I could lessen the severity of the spasms by pushing down hard with my thumb on the muscle between the shoulders and the neck, but then the strength of the spasms became enormous (think broken thumb) and we all became really afraid because as her head went back her eyes rolled back as well. It came to me that she was really, really sick and that whatever it cost, she needed an ambulance and not a doctor. I mouthed 'ambulance???' questioningly to Tricia, and she nodded, looking terrifed, and went to ask the manager to ring. He only understood when I made the sound of an ambulance. Now we were all really frightened. Sitting in their hotel room the next day we confessed that each of us was secretly terrified that she'd have a massive seizure and die. The restaurant manager asked if she'd like to lie down, and put some chairs in a row inside the restaurant. McCall was glad to lie down, but it didn't lessen the spasms and eye rolling. I went looking for somebody in the restaurant who spoke English and Italian in case we needed someone to translate for the ambulance driver, and a man identified himself as a doctor and left his dinner to see her.

He did some checks. She knew her name, she could follow a pencil with her eyes, she could bend her legs lying down, she wasn't dizzy when she stood up. He said it was not meningitis, and that he didn't think that we should worry, but that was not reassuring.

[Phil says]
After what seemed a long time, an ambulance came, and we went with Tricia, Gail in the back, and me in the front, with the driver helter skelter through the pedestrian streets taking no prisoners, with no seat belts for anyone. Then full speed ahead and across the Tiber to the hospital which was nearby.

On the way, Trish realised she didn't have any documentation. Also, the medication McCall had been on for a day and a half was back at the hotel. I was despatched in a taxi to get them. The hotel was fantastic – I did not have any ID, just a scribbled safe combination, Tricia's US cell phone number and the key to their room, whose number she did not remember. They were expecting me though because McCall's father had rung from the USA. The manager opened the room and found the medication, immediately ringing Tricia up with the details, and sending me and one of the desk staff back to hospital in a taxi with the passports. The taxi driver, having been told it was an emergency of some kind, took a firm view, hitting 90kph at one point, and treating red lights with the disdain they deserved.

The upshot was that uncontrollable muscle spasms were a known side effect of that medication. They put McCall on a saline drip to help flush the medication out of her system, gave her a shot of muscle relaxant in her rear and said she'd need to stay in hospital for the night. They tried to keep Tricia out of the ward without success. She stayed in the room sitting on a hard chair until McCall was released at 10am the next morning.. She told us later that it was the longest and worst night of her life

Once I arrived back at the hospital neither of us were allowed back to see McCall who had been enormously brave and dignified the whole time. After all that, we walked home stopping for a prosecco in Piazza Navona and a gelati as we walked, getting home at about 1.30.

Friday 25 June

We got up late, as you might expect. Gail had had lots of time to read the LP on the Vatican last night, while sitting in the emergency waiting room, and we decided we should go the Vatican Museum, particularly to see the Sistine chapel. This involved booking ahead so that we got into the 2pm time slot.

Getting there was a bit complicated. We went to the Metro, but it was stopped (for what seemed to be a stop-work meeting). So, after piecing together our limited info about the buses, we concluded that there was probably a bus from Piazza Navona. There was, but when we arrived we found the stop work included bus drivers as well. All else failing, we took a taxi and arrived just before 2pm.

[Gail says] We grabbed a pannini from the cafe across the road, but then had to stand at the entrance and eat it, while streams of people went in ahead of us. Finally we joined the human river which was following the signs to the Sistine Chapel . On and on and on we flowed, down whole corridors of sculpture, past enormous tapestries, through rooms of medieval art and through what used to be the pope's private apartments with the entire walls of rooms frescoed by the who's who of Renaissance painting ….. Raphael, his master, his students… . Then still onwards; up and down little staircases, then through rooms of modern art until I felt like one of the boys on a bush walk when they were little asking plaintively, “Are we there yet?” We estimated that we walked between one and a half and two kilometres. When we reached the cafe and we still WEREN'T THERE YET, we stopped and had a reviving icecream. Another ten mins of walking through stuff we weren't remotely interested in, and finally there we were, squashed almost like vertical sardines, into the Sistine Chapel.

Michelangelo spent four years painting the ceiling, from scaffolding he designed himself which allowed him to be upright, but bent backwards – and it wasn't even his idea. One of the popes instructed him to paint it and wasn't interested in M's protestations that he was a sculptor and not a painter. You can actually see the difference in the first two ceiling panels he painted. The figures are much smaller than the rest of the ceiling (too small from down below) and they're too sharply shadowed. After that it seems he got the hang of it and proved the pope right - his beautifully large, muscular figures and expressive portraits float on the ceiling (and especially its huge curved edges), clothed in rich and shimmering garments of pastel hues. So an elderly man is wearing soft green, mauve, rose, ochre, lemon. It sounds crazy but it looks fantastic. I particularly love one of his very famous portraits, of a girl holding a paper scroll in her hands. She's been looking to see whether she's in or out (of heaven) I guess. We weren't allowed to take photos, but I photographed a postcard of her, and we'll put it on the blog. Michelangelo was then instructed to paint the Last Judgment on the end wall. This time I didn't like it as much as the ceiling. The other walls are covered by frescoes by Raphael and others, but Michelangelo's outshine them all.

[Phil says]

That was the visual part of the audio-visual experience. The audio came from the attendants, who called out to the crowd every 30 seconds or so, in stentorian tones: NO TALKING! NO PHOTOS! The mighty hum of conversation and tour guide commentary would ebb for 5 seconds, and one or two people would stop taking PHOTOS for 3 seconds, then off it would all go again.

After all that we went to the relatively deserted Vatican Pinacoteca and looked at pictures. There were a few Raphaels and Titians and it was an easy gallery to look at because of its relatively modest size.

Then it was closing time and we flowed with the human tide down the famous circular staircase, out into the world and to the café across the road where we started. We chatted to a family just arrived from Florida, with two boys about 8 and 10, all equipped with i-phones with Vatican guides on them. We were quite impressed with their planning and the clever use of gadgetry to keep the kids caught up in the experience.

We dropped in to see Tricia and McCall and see how they were going. We were welcomed warmly, and McCall seemed to be on the improve. There was mutual photography and fond farewells.

Now it was time to eat – we were hoping for a drama free dinner, which we achieved. However, our plan to go to another recommended restaurant was less successful – they were booked out. Gail cleverly asked one of them for a recommendation which they happily gave and we had a pretty good meal. We were entertained by watching the next tables where a family of four (at one table) and a quartet of – I was going to say Englishmen, but one was Scottish – each hoed into half or so of a roasted cow, accompanied by nutritionally sound potato chips.
The quartet turned out to be principals of Catholic schools in East Anglia – evidently, all the regional principals come over to Rome together for a 3 day pilgrimage. Given the beef and the red wine which was flowing, these four appeared to be refugees from the pilgrimage, as they freely acknowledged.

Saturday 26 June

Check out day today, but Hotel Panda was happy to look after our luggage while we savoured the last day of Rome tourism by visiting the Pantheon, first stopping in a beautiful church. The Pantheon was terribly impressive and atmospheric, the best preserved Roman building of, well, the Roman world.

We continued our wandering to an absolutely fabulous icecream shop(claimed by LP to be the best in Rome, not without justification). We were abstemious, having the smallest 2 flavour tub…. 4 times for 8 flavours of which our favourite was whichever one we had just had.

We found ourselves in a jeweler's as we walked and found ourselves looking at rings and found ourselves buying them (no point in wasting all those Euros), so I now have a ring very like the one my father wore. Then up the Spanish Steps for some shopping and present buying. The plan was to get on our bikes at about 6 so we could ride to La Maison Jolie in Fiumicino (our very first hotel near the airport) which was storing our bicycle bags.

As we walked and shopped and had a coffee or so, the blue sky turned grey, greyer, and black. By the time we got to Pensione Panda, the heavens had opened. Undaunted, we changed, put on raincoats, and headed off, to find the rain was stopping. We took the scenic route – down Via Corso to the Vittorio Emmanuelle monument, inadvertently going the wrong way round the roundabout, until we realized the error of our ways, and that perhaps setting the GPS to pedestrian mode had its disadvantages.

Then past the Forum and on to the Coliseum, around (the outside of) which we did a victory lap. Out through the suburbs on the route of the old Roman road to the port, and surprisingly quickly into the countryside. The traffic was fairly heavy, and keen as they were to get to their Saturday night destinations, the drivers were as considerate and tolerant as usual.

Mr GPS was on his best form and guided us past the airport and, symmetrically, along some of the very roads we had ridden when we set off from Fiumicino in early April.

La Maison Jolie was good, again, and had dutifully kept our stuff. We got there quite late – riding in the dark for the last bit, and managed to get to “our” restaurant at about 10.30.

Sunday 27 June

Our initial thoughts had been that doing anything more than packing up on Sunday would be too much. After the rain, though, we certainly did not need to wash the bikes, and we decided to take advantage of our location by riding to Ostia Antica, about 8km away.

We had been there 29 years ago, on a day excursion from Rome. It is the ancient port at the mouth of the Tiber and is very well preserved (at least the first 2 metres in height are well preserved). We enjoyed and visited some old friends, such as the Temple of Jupiter, the ancient Roman café (eerily like a modern café, though, obviously without the espresso machine, or, indeed, the coffee) and, of course the public toilets. 29 years ago we took photos of each other at some of these sites but decided to avoid invidious comparison by focusing on the scenery this time.

Back to La Maison Jolie to collect our bags and, yes, ride to the airport (about 5km away). After considering various means of getting ourselves, bikes, bike bags and luggage to the airport, we hit on the obvious solution. It was the hairiest 5km we rode in Italy. We did manage not to get on to the Autostrada to Rome, but there was no real shoulder, the traffic was heavy and moving fast, and, unlike everywhere else we had ridden, the drivers did not expect bikes to be there, which made it a bit unnerving.

Anyway, we got to the airport, took the bikes apart, organised our luggage, cleaned up and went to check in. The man on the counter was obviously a cyclist or a fellow traveller. His rigorous check in procedure involved weighing one bike and nothing else. He did ask us what we thought things weighed and whether the bikes were the same weight. In fact, all the staff went out of their way to make it easy to get sorted. Our difficulties turned out to be self-inflicted.

It was a 10pm flight. The boarding passes, on a cursory look, said something about 9.40. We were concerned about being fed, so we had brought a picnic to the airport. Once we had got rid of the bikes , we found a quiet spot and had a leisurely meal, reading an English language paper. We did this in the terminal not the departure area, because we had some nice yoghurt which would not pass security.

At about 9.25, we thought we had better head to the gate. Well, folks, this was not Kansas. Security was a breeze – quick and simple but passport control was crowded, with long , slow moving queues. The clock was ticking. Gail explained our problem to the officials who let us go through the gate for EU citizens. Then., loaded with panniers and bits and pieces, we sprinted up the escalators following the signs to our departure gate. We got there. It was a train station. We had to catch a train to another terminal. The train came after what felt like several hours. We got there, sprinted, again (just as well it had been a cycling holiday), to the gate, where our friendly check in bloke was now stationed. We were, naturally, the last passengers to get on, and a look of mild concern and mild relief flickered across his face as he waved us through.

We collapsed into our seats, which were not that flash (as it turned out, on either leg), despite checking in on line last night within an hour of being able to), and wished Italy farewell until next time as the plane took off.

Since we have been back, people have asked what the highlight was. The true answer is all of Italy, and each other.