When in Rome…

 

Travel info meter set to 93%  Thursday and Friday, June 8-9,  This is a 2 for 1 post this time. It is hot, really hot in the 30-34C range and we’re set to see the sites. We’ve been assured that it’s only a 20 minute walk to the Colloseum and all of the other major sites are within 20 minutes of it. One hour and ten minutes into our stroll we finally reach the first stop on our circuit,  the Vittorio  Emanuele II.  It’s the famous monument with the 2 chariots with 4 horses on its top that you’ve probably seen many times in movies or with any video to do with Rome. It’s spectacular!

I won’t go into detail or speak to the history of any of the many monuments, fountains, buildings, etc. that make up the center of Rome because it would take too long and all the info is readily available online. But it literally is numbing to see the historical sites one after the other.

The crowds are huge with tour groups everywhere and the heat made it uncomfortable to navigate the city core with no green spaces for shade and people and traffic massed around every venue. There are so many areas where there are rocks and bricks and broken columns from thousands of years ago that it became tedious and I lost interest after the first 5 or 6.

We saved the Colloseum tour along with the Forum and Palatine Hill for the Friday as they were all close together and part of the same ticket that gave us access to the interiors. I found it much more interesting to explore the side streets but even then if you were within 3 or 4 blocks of anything famous you were overwhelmed with tourists and busses.

I realize that these are all must-see spots and our goal was to get them out of the way so we could slow down our pace and get to know the other parts of Rome with out the madding crowds .

Neither of us are big museum enthusiasts and it would have taken away from the experience and would have been difficult to focus with so many people about, so we kept our schedule simple and avoided them altogether. Even at that we were foot weary both days as there is a lot of up and down situations (Rome is built on seven hills) and then walking was usually on ancient paths which were anything but flat. By Thursday evening we were worn out and baked by the sun.

Rome, like Paris, does not have a street grid that’s easy to follow and we became lost several times despite the 3 maps that we were using as guides. Once more a working smartphone would have saved a lot of time and shoe leather but we managed to see what we set out to see from the beginning, it just took longer.

Friday , we were determined to finish off the Colloseum and the nearby spots and as we walked up there were 21 tour busses parked out front, all empty. To be brief we followed the crowds and picked up historic details from the many speaking tours all around us, listened to the Rick Steves audio tour and called it quits early in the afternoon.

On our walk back to our bnb we would cross through the Jewish Ghetto with its long history of persecution in Roman times and then  from the Nazis, and again we listened to Rick’s commentary explaining the key buildings and sites in the small area set aside for them where they were kept for 300 years. It was a somber walk knowing how much pain had been endured on these same streets that we were now passing over.

Then home to rest up for the evening. I explored the few blocks close to us and finally found the Rome that so many travelers along the way had spoken of.

Where before I saw grime and graffiti during the day now as the sun was going down and the street lights were coming on there was a vibrancy that I had missed before. Europeans keep different hours from what I’m used to and now the restaurants were opening after their 3-4 hour break and the streets were teeming with people. Old friends with an arm draped over a shoulder, lovers old and young embracing and kissing up against rock walls and seated at bistro tables holding hands.

Just 2 blocks away I went to the San Cosimato Piazza and there was the setting for the Trastevere Cinema Festival (pronounced tra-sta-ver-eh). A large HD screen was set up with a sound engineering trailer set up at the back and a refreshment trailer beside that. You could buy soft drinks or draft beer.

The festival runs 61 consecutive days beginning June 1 and they show feature films, almost all Italian, and some classics going right back to the 50s. There was seating for about 300 but many people brought their own chairs or sat on the stone walls and curbs or leaned up against the light posts as we did at first.

The crowd was a mix of all ages but primarily the under 35 crowd, some with kids in buggies or preschoolers running around playing games. The show, first with introductions on the stage with cinema dignitaries started about 9:45 and by then the youngsters were gone and the sky dark.

There are easily a dozen outdoor restaurants in just a 2 block area around the piazza,  plus one of the best gelato shops in Rome (as rated by TripAdvisor) and popcorn available somewhere else.  Plus there was a mini market and a boulangerie still open down the block.

The opening credits showed 10 second vignettes of the local sponsors. We saw our coffee shop (called bars here) owner and another with the pâtisserie where we bought bread and sweets for our little meal in our room earlier in the day, and another of the toy shop just a 100 meters away, where the 2 owners, middle-aged men with barrel chests and husky arms would tickle the chins of the children in strollers as their parents stopped to talk outside the shop.  It made a real connection with me. It wouldn’t take long to feel a part of this young community and it was so different from what I was used to.

There was applause and appreciation for each supporter and then all of the lights dimmed and the movie was underway.

All in Italian, it was a contemporary love story of a 35ish couple;  he in the tech industry where he worked in a skyscraper with fabulous panoramic  views of Rome always in the background,  and she was a teacher or professor at a college. One of their fathers lived with them in their apartment and it made for an interesting dynamic for the film.

I couldn’t understand anything but some of the story didn’t require language skills and I laughed when the rest of the crowd laughed and could keep up to a minor degree.

The best part by far was to be immersed in this crowd of people who were all on the same page as far as their community was concerned and didn’t feel like an outsider. When we first found the situation I attempted to get a beer and was helped by one of the young volunteers. We introduced and he showed me the ropes as to where to buy my ticket and where to stand and who to ask for my purchase. This was one venue where Canada meant something positive and there was an appreciation of our natural unspoiled  beauty by this young man who obviously knew something about us. He just beamed when he heard where I was from and I felt very proud.

Walking back down the street to our place (I had walked Carol home earlier) with the yellow street light shining on the polished stone of the roadway it felt magical, like I was in a movie myself as the scene was so casual and romantic. It was one of the best moments (of many) of the whole trip and had turned around my impression of Rome after all of the chaos of the tourist attractions during the previous couple of days.

There were still many 100s of people about, even at midnight, with crowds of relaxed people gathered on street corners, wine bars, or just lounging in the eateries.

Now I’m looking forward to tomorrow even more as Carol and I will be taking the Rick Steves audio walking tour of Trastevere before the heat of the day and looking for gems in our part of Rome.