So much Rage in Rome

This blog has become so epic that a name change was almost in order. Mariya's suggestion of "Bigger than Ben Hur" almost got up, but the Italians are such an angry people that I had to stick with my original Blog Title.

The Romans, and by proxy the Italians I guess, are a very angry people. During the 3 days we were there we saw a lot of road rage from pedestrians, motorists, bus drivers and scooterers (is that even a word?!) alike. I think the Italians need to find a new, violent sport to de-stress with, clearly they haven't found a suitable replacement for gladitorial combat.

Rome is what we expected all the large European cities to be, it is by far the best big city we have visited. The streets are relatively clean and graffiti is at a minimum (and non-existent on their old architecture and monuments). The police presense is very heavy around their momuments and artifacts (The Colosseum, The Pantheon, The Vatican etc etc) but it is just that, a presence, they are not actively harassing or questioning people. They are simply there to discourage things like vandalism, graffiti and petty crime and it's done very well.

There are some annoying aspects to Rome as is to be expected. Don't take this the wrong way, I'll cover the things about Rome that annoyed me and then get into the good stuff. As disappointing as the bad stuff is, the good stuff well and truly makes up for it.

There are a huge amount of Indian Street Sellers. There are 2 types, ones that set up stalls with the usual cheap tourist baubles and the others that wander around the streets with umbrellas when it rains or roses and sunglasses when the sun is out. The wandering Indians are extremely pushing and generally won't take no for an answer the 1st, 5th or 10th time. You eventually have to yell at them to get them to leave you alone as they follow you up the road for 50 meters. One was so annoying that after 50 meters he "gave" Mariya a rose for free ... which she took just to shut him up and then 10 seconds later started asking for money. They're extremely annoying and really detract from the Roman experience. There are also some Nigerians trying to sell things but they're considerably less pushy. We saw a big group of Nigerian stalls (maybe 10 or 15) on the road near the Vatican. They must have had a lookout watching for Police because as we walked past them, all of a sudden all 15 stalls were packing up and in about 15 seconds they were walking away with their wares in hand. Clearly they know they're doing the wrong thing but still persist.

The other major detraction in Rome is the poor dining experience. This was actually a big surprise for me, I thought that the Italians prided themselves on a spectacular dining experience and that is a far cry from the true reality. Their food quality is, at best, half of what you make at home when you make your own spagetti. Couple that with some annoying "tactics" to increase their profit margins and it's a very disappointing experience. The 3 most annoying tactics were a "table charge" of 1 euro per person simply for sitting down, putting bread on the table without saying anything about it and then charging you for it at the end of the meal whether you eat it or not and pouring you a glass of wine right away whether you ask for it or not and then charging you as well. These are all very sneaky tactics for someone who has never been to Italy (and in my case I don't even want bread or wine as anyone who knows me would know). Once you get used to this and wave away the bread and wine I guess it's just an annoyance, but if you never properly checked your bill at the end of the meal you'd probably never even realize you were being charged for these things. Needless to say, we never tipped in any of these restaurants as we figured they'd already got their tip by using these dodgy tactics.

Onto the good stuff! Rome really is an amazing place; the sights are amazing, the old architecture is in pristine condition and the city really is beautiful!

We arrived in Rome on Saturday afternoon at about 3pm. We checked into our hotel and decided to walk down to The Colosseum (called the Colosseo in Italian) as it was only about a kilometer away (remember, it doesn't really get dark here until 8:30pm). The Colosseum is stunning in real life. While some of the brick work is starting to decay, you can't expect any different for a structure that is over 2000 years old. Mariya took heaps of photos and they're once again up on Facebook, yet another shameless plug to check out Mariya's Facebook photo albums. We lined up at the ticket entrance and started our wait. Almost right away one of the "Official Colosseum Hawkers" told us that we could jump in the fast line and pay an extra 5 euros, head to the front of the line AND get a guided tour of the Colosseum too ... hmm, this sounds a bit dodgy, let's just stay in the official line. After standing in the line for about 15 minutes and not really moving anywhere we decided that we'd go back to the guy and pay an extra 5 euros. When we got there we saw a sign in the middle line saying that it was the audio guide/guided tour line ... so we ignored the dude and just walked down the line. Sure enough, the line was about 2 minutes long and the fee an extra 5 euros with the included guided tour. That's not too bad we figured, considering the normal line looked to be at least an hour wait (and probably much longer). As we'd payed for the guided tour we decided to wait at the meeting point and go along. After a 5 minute wait and getting a little bored we looked at the tags they'd given us for the guided tour, they had 4:15 written on them ... hmm that's about 40 minutes away, well that sux the big one. We decided to walk around the Colosseum and look at some of the areas while staying close to the guided tour meeting point. Finally at 4:15 the guide arrived, for a summary of the tour check out Mariya's blog, but suffice to say that the tour wasn't very good. Just pay your extra 5 euros for quick entry and then ditch the tour (or if you're a tightass stand in the 2 hour line to save your  5 euro =p).

Walking around inside the Colosseum was amazing, they've preserved this building incredibly well. One end of the Colosseum Arena they have re-covered with a wooden platform to show what the Colosseum Arena was like. Obviously the original Colosseum wooden floor has long since decayed. The rest of the Colosseum Arena floor has been left open to allow visitors to see the "catacombs" area below the Colosseum floor where all the Gladiators, slaves, animals and christians were kept before their entry into the Arena. The Colosseum seated over 70,000 spectators! That's enormous for that day and age. People from all walks of life came for the enterainment which included drinking, gambling, gladitorial combat, executions and the "voluntary" slaughter of the christians. Being a Gladiator in many cases was actually a "career choice". Some people chose to become Gladiators and entered the Arena, they even had managers and support staff. Other Gladiators were slaves, prisoners or christians that would fight in the Arena to win their freedom. The average survival rate of a Colosseum Gladiator was about 2% over thier career, with the most successful Gladiators retiring (or finally succumbing) after no longer than 10-12 years. Gladitorial combat in the Colosseum was a very popular spectator sport where the spectators actually wanted to see a good fight and not a one sided slaughter.

On a hot day huge sails would be pulled over the Colosseum room to create shaded areas for the spectators. The wooden benches spectators sat on have long since rotted away but the stone butresses still exist and the stairways and tunnels leading to the seating areas looks surprising similar to something you would see at Lang Park or ANZ Stadium.

After our time in the Colosseum was over we wandered outside to see a huge archway with chariots and soldiers on top and latin inscriptions around the exterior. This is the Roman version of France's "Arc de Triomphe", but built about 1500 years earlier than the French one.

After getting some photos of the ruins around the Colosseum it was getting late and we decided to head back towards our hotel for some dinner. We stopped at a little cafe on the corner near our hotel for a light dinner. This ended up being our best dining experience in Rome! It was a very small cafe and Mariya and I were the only people seated for dinner. The service from our waiter was exceptional, we weren't treated to any dodgy tactics (like the bread, seating charge or wine mentioned above) and the food was good. We shared a Caprese salad (tomato, mozarella, lettuce) to start, then had a Quattro Formaggi (Four Cheese) Pizza followed by Lasagne for Mariya and Cannaloni for me. Mariya also had a glass of Lambrusco wine with her meal and we grabbed a bottle of water (apparently tap water doesn't exist in Rome, if you want water you need to buy it in a bottle with your meal). We got all of this and gave the waiter a tip, all inclusive for a price of 35 euros. This was only a cafe, so as you can imagine our expectations for restaurant dining in Italy were high.

After our dinner we found a nice little Gelateria two shops down from our hotel that had dozens of Gelati flavours on display. I was in heaven and even Mariya was tempted to try a Gelati or two. I grabbed a cone with 2 flavours, caramel and dark chocolate, and Mariya had a cone with just caramel. To say this Gelati was divine probably doesn't do it justice.

With our Gelati in hand we headed back to the hotel for an early night, in preparation for our big day in Rome the next day.

Our second day in Rome we decide to do a "Hop On, Hop Off" bus tour. The "Hop On, Hop Off" bus tour (I'll call it the HOHO from now on!) cost us 15 euro each for a 24 hour pass. This meant that we could use the HOHO buses for the next 24 hours. The HOHO buses basically stop at about 10 major sights across Rome and you can get on and off the buses at these points. When you jump on the bus they give you some headphones and tell you that Channel 1 is for english. We headed up to the top level of the bus (yay, they're double decker buses) and got a seat near the front. We plugged our headphones in, found Channel 1 and then spent the next 2 hours being driven around Rome, seeing the sights and being given an Audio tour talking about the sights, their names, their history, how old they are, who built them etc etc. It was really interesting and we learnt a lot about the history of Rome. We decided to do the HOHO bus circuit once and then decide where we'd get off on the second lap and be tourists.

The HOHO bus lap was enormous and the stops were as follows. We boarded the bus at the Colosseum stop, we then headed to the Palace of the old Ceasars (called The Forum). The next stop was a huge monument which included the Italian Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (guarded 24/7 as all the Unknown tombs are). The Angels Bridge and Castle was the next stop, shortly followed by the stop at the Vatican where the bus driver takes a 10 minute break and to let people on and off the bus. The next stop is then the Spanish Square with the Spanish Steps nearby. On Saturdays and Sundays your next stop after the Spanish Square is for the Rome Zoo and Villa Borgese, on weekdays this stop is for the Trevi Fountain. So on our Sunday tour we just cruised past the Zoo and Villa Borgese. You then head onto the stop at Barbarini Square; the Barbarini's are a famous family in Rome and one of them was a Pope. They were responsible for destroying almost all the "pagan" constructions (ie non-Catholic buildings) in Rome and there's a famous quote about them, "What the barbarians didn't destroy, the Barbarini's did". That's a little disappointing but it was the middle ages after all. You then head to the "first" stop in the HOHO bus loop which is their central stop near the main transport hub. This stop is primarily for more passengers to once again get on and off and for the bus driver to take another little break. The last stop on our loop (before getting back to the Colosseum) was a stop that I can't remember for the life of me, clearly it wasn't that important =P I certainly don't remember anything significant at that stop. As you can see, the HOHO bus loop was enormous and took almost 2 hours. You can see almost all the sights of Rome with a quick lap of the city and it's well worth the 15 euros for 24 hours access to the bus line.

The first stop we decided to get off at on our 2nd lap was the monument to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The first area we headed to here was Michaelangelo's Steps. These are long sloped steps (each step is about 2 meters long) that lead up to a courtyard with 3 museums covered in sculptures of people, horses and roman gods (yes, there are many, many sculptures in Rome). Plenty of photos were taken, and as expected, they're up on Mariya's Facebook. Behind these museums is a giant archeological site where the Romans have uncovered a huge ruins site of ancient Rome dating back almost 2500 years.

After taking photos of these areas we decided to head back down Michaelangelo's Steps and check out the Tomb of the Unknown Solider. This monument is magnficent! It's a huge building with giant fountains out the front with naked men (hmm almost all the architecture in Rome includes a naked man of some sort) and there's 2 giant bronze chariots with horses and soldiers on the roof. There are dozens of sculptures of soldiers, angels and women adorning the building and as you walk up the stairs you are greeted by three Italian soldiers guarding the tomb. There are 2 fires eternally burning on the sides of the tomb and the mosaics on the tomb were beautiful.

After we took photos at the tomb unfortunately the weather started to turn ugly on us. The clouds rolled in and some light rain started failing so we decided to grab a coffee and then jump back on the bus and head back to our hotel. Fortunately for us, it was about 3pm, the weather had held out all day (we had sun most of the morning even though the forecast predicted very poor weather) and we didn't feel like we'd lost much sightseeing time in the day.

After a short rest and recovery break at our hotel we decided to venture out for dinner at an Italian Restaurant just around the corner. This would prove to be a devastating decision and the worst dining experience of the holiday, if not our entire lives.

I've eluded to the poor dining experience in Rome earlier in my blog. Our dinner this night largely contributes to the abhorent dining experience in restaurants during our Rome visit. The restaurant was called Le Virtue in Tavola (remember that name, and run screaming like a little girl in the opposite direction if you ever see it). To say this restaurant was absolutely digusting and abhorent is probably being generous to them.

While their menu looked good and their prices were reasonable this is the first restaurant we have visited where Mariya felt the need to visit Trip Advisor and 1 star it, warning future prospective patrons away. We decided to have a pasta for our 1st course and then scallopine as a main course. The prices were reasonable and even with 2 courses we were paying a similar price to anything you would see in Australia (note: most of the Italian restaurant menus we looked at were in a similar price range). When the waitress came to take our order she placed a bread basket on the table and filled our glasses with wine, we had said nothing to the waitress at all at this point in time. Refer to the above in my blog where I talk about the sneaky tactics some Italian restaurants use to make more money. Mariya and I were surprised about the wine and bread but figured it was just a nice extra they provided to give their patrons a more pleasant experience. Plenty of the other countries we've been to over the last 2 months have provided us with various freebies during our dining experiences. Alas, that was not to be, we were sneakily charged for both the wine and bread at the end of the meal.

For my pasta I ordered a Bucantini alla Matriciana which was actually quite good, it's such a shame that the rest of the dinner couldn't even come close to comparing with it. Mariya's pasta was a "Meat Ravioli in a Tomato Sauce" called Ravioli Pomodoro. Well the ravioli actually came out looking like fat little dumplings ... I've never seen ravioli like that before but maybe that's how they do it in Italy ... or not. The ravioli were weird little dumplings with a ricotta and basil pesto filling which tasted horrible ... not exactly the meat ravioli Mariya was expecting. For our second course we both ordered scallopini. I ordered the Scallopini al Porto, Mariya ordered the Scallopini al Limone and we ordered a plate of steamed vegetables to share. This is where things turned from bad to worse. Mariya's veal came out uncrumbed (scallopini is always crumbed AND the german translation of the meal was kalbschnitzel), was pure white with an ugly purple colour around the edge, was slimy and stunk to high heaven like rotten meat. While mine looked similarly unappetising, it didn't reek of rotten meat and was at least edible. Our "Plate of Steamed Vegetables" was a horrible spinach stew which I attempted to eat twice but couldn't stomach. I quickly wolfed down my meat while Mariya was progressively getting greener and we jumped up to pay. After disputing some of the bill, where they tried to explain that the "Bread" on our bill was a table fee (which we outright refused to pay), we left the restaurant in disgust.

Off to our Friendly Neighbourhood Gelateria! At least we could slightly recover the evening with awesome Gelati from our friendly Icecream Lady who reminded me of the Icecream Lady from the Simpsons =) That night Mariya elected to have a cone with 2 flavours, coffee and dark chocolate, while I tried two new flavours, chocolate chip and a weird yellow and brown gelati. I have no idea what it was but it tasted bloody amazing!

With our night partially recovered thanks to Super Awesome Sauce Gelati Lady, we walked back to the hotel for another early night.

For our third day in Rome we had a bold plan. With the poor weather cutting our previous day short we had a lot to see and had to stick to a tight schedule. So with a pre-planned route programmed into Google Maps on my phone we jumped on the HOHO bus and headed for the Trevi Fountain.

A quick 30 minute bus trip saw us delivered to the middle of Rome, near the Trevi Fountain. With Google Maps in operation and GPS providing our exact location the walk to the Trevi Fountain was nice and easy. I really don't know how tourists travelled Rome before Google Maps on their phones. This is one confusing city and even has Brugge beat, hands down. The Trevi Fountain was breathtaking. The Fountain is enourmous and built into the side of a giant building. Seeing photos of the Trevi Fountain really doesn't do it justice and seeing it with your own eyes is a real treat.

Our next stop was the Spanish Steps, located in the Spanish Quarter. With awesome GPS locator device in hand aka Google Maps, it was a quick 5 minute walk from the Trevi Fountain to the Spanish Steps. Unfortunately there was some maintenance work happening on the Steps, a crew of carpenters were building temporary seating, some sort of event must be coming up soon here. We still managed to take quite a few photos but the wood work and vast amount of people just sitting on the steps unfortunately detracted from our photo opportunities. They are very beautiful though and constructed purely from Marble, they must be worth a fortune!

Our next destination was the Pantheon. The Pantheon in Roman times was constructed as a place where people of all religions could go to pay homage to their god. This was probably one of the biggest things I was looking forward to in Rome as I expected it to have a very real "Ancient Rome" feel about it, being dedicated to all the Roman Gods by it's commissioner Augustus Ceasar. I was disgusted to find that the building had been desecrated in about 700 AD by the Catholic Church. In about 700 AD the Catholic Church wanted to demolish the Pantheon completely but the Emporer of the time managed to convince them to instead simply concecrate the Pantheon and turn it into a Chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary. What a huge disappointment to see the Pantheon treated in such a way, but at least it still stands today. There are no longer any references to the old Roman Gods in the Pantheon and the building is simply filled with shrines to Santa Maria and the tombs of a couple of Italian Kings. It is no longer the bastion of religious tolerance that it was originally intended to be.

After visiting the Pantheon, Mariya and I decided to stop in the Pantheon Square and grab a coffee before starting our walk out to the Roman Courthouse, as well as the Angel Bridge and Castle. We had seen the Roman Courthouse (that is still used today) from the bus, but seeing it up close was another thing. It is an incredible structure adorned with hundreds of sculptures of soldiers, judges, angels and demons. It's certainly very impressive for a courthouse and leaves the ones we have in Australia to shame.

Our next stop was the Angel Bridge and Castle. We also saw these from the bus but getting up close to them is an entirely new experience. The Angel Bridge is a huge bridge crossing the river Tiber, leading to the Angel Castle. The Angel Bridge has dozens of sculptures of angels in different poses holding things like the cross and the baby Jesus etc. The Angel Castle is a huge circular fort with a giant gold statue of an angel on top. Catholic legend says that the Archangel Michael appeared on the roof to declare the end of the bubonic plague, and shortly after the gold statue was erected to represent this.

A hundred meters further down the river is a much more impossing and impressive bridge. This bridge has 4 huge sculptures, each of an angel, on each corner of the bridge and I'm sure they're representative of something but we weren't provided any information. The angels are all in different poses and carry different objects, one has an olive branch, another the ceasar's wreath, the third a set of scales and the last a sword and shield.

After taking many pictures of both bridges and the castle our next destination was Vatican City. It is regulalry spruiked that The Vatican has a population of 1, this is actually wrong and it's really in the ballpark of about a thousand. The police presence here was significant and there are many security barriers and checkpoints to ensure that nothing "untoward" enters Vatican City. Mariya and I decided our first port of call was to be Saint Peters Basilica (or Santa Pietro's Basilic in Italian), the resting place of Peter the Apostle, who has now apparently been appointed the world's first Pope, I would imagine this was done posthumously. This Basilica is enormous, I don't believe I've ever been in a building this big. The sheer value of this structure would be completely priceless. There are, once again, scluptures everywhere of things like the virgin Mary, Christ, Saints and previous Popes. If the world ever starts to run out of gold, I think we've found a huge supply available in the middle of Rome. No word of a lie, I think there'd be hundreds of tons of gold in this Basilica. Much of the marble adorning the floor in this building was actually scavenged from The Colosseum and The Pantheon and there is no shortage of it here. The presence of an enormous Egyptian Obelisk out the front of the Basilica was also quite interesting, apparently this was placed there by a ceasar almost 2000 years ago. The Basilca is still used for Mass every week and people can attend services here weekly. In the middle of the Basilica is an enourmous black monument which seemed quite out of place. It's not until you actually get much closer that you realise this is the tomb of Peter the Apostle.

We were going to go up to the Cupola of the Basilica (which we assumed was the big domed area on top) but after finding out we had to climb over 300 steps we decided to head off to the Vatican Museum and Michaelangelo's Sistine Chapel (or Sistina Capella in Italian). You walk around the outside of The Vatican for about 2 kilometers and come to the entrance of the Vatican Museum, the entrance to the Sistine Chapel is inside the museum. Mariya and I were primarily interested in visiting the Sistine Chapel and thought we might brown the Vatican Museum briefly afterwards ... or not. Apparently The Vatican believes you must see all of the Vatican Museum before you are allowed entry in the Sistine Chapel. As such, we spent about 2 hours walking through the museum in a strategically designed one way path to ensure you see every nook and cranny of the museum before gaining entry to the Chapel. As bad as I've made it sound, it was actually pretty good. The sheer volume of art and sculptures that has been collected by The Vatican over the centuries is simply breathtaking. The museum is filled with sculptures, art, woven rugs, architecture and many treasures of a time past and I can understand how art lovers could easily spend days walking the halls of this museum. After about 2 hours we came to a sign that read "The short route to the Sistine Chapel", score both Mariya and I high fived and scooted down that hallway. Entering the next door, we were greeted with a booming female voice on the PA system in various languages stating that all photography in the Sistine Chapel was forbidden. Bummer guys, looks like if you want to check the place out, you're gonna have to go there yourselves. The Sistine Chapel was actually quite small, but the roof was very high, probably 10 meters or so. The entire Chapel was adorned with Michaelangelo's art and was a spectacular sight to see. The walls were painted with curtains, and they actually looked real, you only realised it was a painting once you got up close. They have saved themselves a fortune on their laundry bill! Mariya and I spent about 15 minutes viewing the art in the Chapel before we decided it was time to move on.

With our time in Rome coming to an end, we decided to head to the Rome Termini Train Station to buy our train tickets do our next destination, Venezia.

Our last tourist activity for the day we decided to visit the ruins of The Forum (you remember The Ceasar's Palace I mentioned earlier right?). We walked down to the ruins at about 4:45pm and unfortunately found them closing up for the day, how disappointing =(

Ah well, off to dinner and another ordinary dining experience. On our first evening in Rome we spotted a big street with dozens of restaurants, it looked awesome and we made a mental note to head back there for dinner one evening, tonight would be that night.

After checking the menus and prices of half a dozen places we settled on a restaurant that offered to throw in a free drink for each of us. We took a seat and decided to order the platter for 2 as our entree and Mariya chose Spagetti alla Matriciana and I selected Penne Arriabatta as our main meals. Our free drinks arrived and unfortunately they were a tasteless, watered down, dry, sparkling white wine. Needless to say, neither of us ended up drinking them, I wish they'd just let us pick a coke or something =) Bread also arrived on the table in their usual sneaky fashion and we spent 10 minutes trying to get them to take it away as we said we would not eat it. Strangely enough, people accross the room at another table were trying to order a wine with their dinner and the restaurant owner argued with them for about 10 minutes on their wine selection saying it was far too sweet to accompany a main meal and even forced them to taste a wine he thought they should have (a dry red, which clearly they didn't like). It seemed that after about 10 minutes of trying to get the wine they wanted (a muscato), they gave up and just ate their dinner before promptly leaving. but enough about them, on to our dining experience! In the menu pictures our platter looked amazing, in reality it wasn't so great. We payed 15 euro per person (which is quite alot for a menu item in Italy) and ended up with a plate containing about 4 thin slices of salami, 4 thin slices of prosciutto, 4 small bits of mozzarella, a couple of pieces of what looked and tasted like parmesan, a couple of slices of tomota and some lettuce. Obviously we were very disappointed with the platter based on the price we had payed. Our mains were at least better value for money. Mariya's Spagetti tasted scarily like Heinz canned spagetti. It appears Heinz have done an amazing job at reproducing an authentic Italian Spagetti alla Matriciana at only a dollar a can. However, my penne was actually pretty good. We were then asked if we wanted to try some dessert and we told the waiter, "Hell no biatch, I'm off to the Amazing Awesome Sauce Gelati Lady!". I probably didn't use those exact words, I'd imagine it was more along the lines of "No thanks."

Could the Gelateria save our evening once again?! Do I really have to ask that question? Of course it could! This night Mariya lost her mind and decided not to sample gelati, crazy right?! She went with 2 different tarts, an almond and cherry tart and a sour berry tart. Mariya thought they were awesome, but why would you not selecet a gelati, dear god?! I think she had a fever that night. As usual, I made the wise decision of selecting a gelati or 2, but this time I went with a little cup rather than a cone. I went with 2 flavours, an amazing Cassata gelati which was a vanilla gelati with cherries and peels in it and the other flavour I went with was Baci. Mariya was green with envy at my gelati selection and was desperate to swap her tarts for my amazing gelati-ish deliciousness.

With our last night in Rome saved by Gelati once again we went back to our hotel for another early night and to prepare for our trip to Venice.

Our time in Rome was amazing and it's an experience we'll never forget. As much as I bagged it out, I really loved the place and we probably could have easily spent another 3 or 4 days there. There is plenty to see and do, and aside from the dining experience, it is certainly one of our better European destinations we have visited so far. On to Venice!