Our Greek Isles/Mediterranean
Crown Princess Cruise May 2009
Roma Italy
Jerry
and I made it to Roma! Our plane actually got in a little earlier than planned.
As we got ready to get off the plane we heard our names announced to report
to the agent. We couldn't find the agent we had to report to for quite a
while. We went on through Immigration and then on to the baggage area. We
spoke to a guy in the baggage area who pointed us to an agent and told us
our bags did not come along with us.
We filed a report and then went on our way to meet up with Ron and Brenda, one of the couples Jerry had met online. We will be sharing the airport pickup and the tour of Rome for the next two days with us. We are all at the same hotel. They came in from Atlanta on a direct flight and were already hooked up with our driver, Marco from Rome Cabs.
Our bags will come in on the same flight on Saturday morning. The airport will deliver to our hotel by noon. We will be on a tour so we have already alerted the hotel staff and they will take care of it.
Our driver took us around to some sites today. Our first visit was to the Appian Way and the Catacombes where no pictures were allowed except when we were outside. Our tour guide was a priest from the Philipines. The guides are either monks or priests and the only ones to conduct the tour. You stand in a group waiting for your language to be called and then off you go with the guide.
What an interesting site. Our guide told us the history of the tunnels where early Christians buried their dead and held their services there out of the public eye. The tunnels we walked through were carved out with niches where the bodies were buried along with little niches for the oil lamps. It was very damp and humid there.
There are five levels there at the Catacombes. The only level open to the public is the second level. We wound our way through the labyrinth where the tens of thousands of people were buried.
The grounds when we made our way back up were beautiful. Marco was waiting for us in the parking lot with many other tour guides.
We
made our way through the traffic and Marco told us we didn't have mosquitoes
in the U.S. like they do here in Roma. As it turned out he was right! Their
mosquitoes are people on scooters. They are all over the place and like
a swarm sometimes. They are in and out of traffic and we all wondered how
the heck they survive! They drive between the cars and all. They do wear
helmets that is the one safe thing they do. You see all dress types on the
scooters, men in suits, ladies in heels, ladies sitting side saddle as a
passenger.
Our next stop was the Basilica di San Paolo Fuori le Mura. What a beautiful church. It is believed that this was erected over the tomb of St. Paul. It was huge by the standards of the cathedrals that we had visited in the United Kingdom but we haven't been to St. Paul's yet...and from what I hear St. Peter's is HUGE.
Here are our pictures of the basilica.
We stopped at the Circus Maximus where the chariot races were held. This was attended by 300,000 at one time. You can still see where some of the steps are.
Here are our pictures of Circus Maximus.
Palatine
Hill which is above the Circus Maximus where we stopped and looked through
a keyhole at the Malta Embassy where three countries can be seen from that
keyhole. They are Italy, Vatican and Malta.
Here's some pictures of Palatine Hill.
Our
last big stop of the day was Museo Nazionale Castel S. Angelo. We climbed
many steps to make it to the top where it was a magnificent view of the
city. I missed out on my panoramic shot with my film camera because it was
in the car but I think I got some really good pictures with the big camera.
While we were at the castel Marco tested us and told us to find the two baboons painted on the wall in one of the rooms. Brenda found the baboons and won the bottle of white wine! We will enjoy the wine with Brenda and Ron tomorrow evening.
Our driver, Marco gave us another test on the way back to the car by having us cross the street..in the middle of traffic this was NOT at the crosswalk the way we went over in the first place. We all made it and passed the test. Marco proclaimed we were all Romans now! I think the real test to become a Romans is to climb onto a scooter
Marco dropped us off just down the street from our hotel. We walked 
probably
what would be considered a block, to the Hotel Portoghesi. We checked into
the hotel and up to our room we went. We upacked what we had in our carryons
then relaxed a bit before heading down to meet with Ron and Brenda. We all
headed out to find dinner and a market to get a hairbrush since Jerry nor
myself had anything in our carry-on luggage to brush our hair with.
We wanted to have pizza so we found us a pizzeria the Pizza Cir, that was excellent and not far from the hotel at all. We thoroughly enjoyed the pizza. We ordered two different kinds of pizza and split it up amongst the four of us along with two half carafes of red and white wines. We really enjoyed the pizza and vino!
We then headed back to the hotel to get some rest we were on our who knows what number wind and was coming back down again. We had been up for more than 24 hours at this point and it was time for some rest!
When we got back to the hotel I jumped in the shower as I couldn't stand it any longer. It felt so good as I felt so grungy by this point because I had the same clothes on for more than 24 hours...YUCK!!!
Day 2
We
got up and headed to the rooftop of our hotel for breakfast. This was included
in our room charge so it was nice to not have to go looking for breakfast.
We met up with Brenda and Ron and one of the other couples saw us as we walked in and recongnized us, it was Georgia and Bob. They have been here two days prior to us.
We enjoyed our breakfast on the rooftop in the open air. It was very nice and comfortable. After breakfast we came back to the room and grabbed our things and headed down the street to meet up with Marco. We were a little early and he was already there and waiting.
We all climbed in the van and soon we were on our way. The first thing we visited was the Area Sacra Di Largo Argentina translated The Sacred Area of Largo Argentina. There are ruins of the four temples there that was discovered by accident in 1926 when demolition work was being done. This dates back to the mid 1st century BC. More recently an organization has been aputting cats that have been nuetered and spayed there. We saw many cats there. They have been placed here to help keep down the "mouse" population. When the "mouse" was described it sounded much like rats to me!!!
Here's our pictures of the area.
Next
stops were the Roman Forum, the Colosseum, the Colosseum Square, and Trajan's
Markets. Around the end of the 7th century BC they started to lay all of
this out. It is pretty massive and so amazing to see what is left all these
years later. It is also mind boggling to think about how they were able
to build the tall structures. We did learn that what is known to us today
as the Colosseum was actually known as the Flavian Amphitheater. The Colosseum
was actually the huge statue next to it in the square.
Here's our Roman Forum pictures.
Here's our Colosseum pictures.
We headed toward City Hall and stopped at the Basilica di Santa Maria in Cosmedin where we put our hand in the mouth where you ask someone a question and if it's a lie the mouth will bite you. We came away with our hands intact.
We went to City Hall which has a large piazza. The buildings were decorated with statues that were done by Michelangelo. It was quite magnificent to see.
Next door to the City Hall is the building known as the Wedding Cake. It is dedicated to the Tomb of the Unknown soldier. It is beautiful with beautiful statues on either side at the top. We saw some couples getting married there and at City Hall. It must be hard to decide where you want your wedding when you live around such beautiful places.
Now we are headed to the Pantheon temple which was erected between 27 and 25 AD. It is circular with an opening at the top in the center. They would harvest the rain water that came through the opening.
Our Pantheon pictures are here.
We went to Trevi Fountain. There were lots of people crammed into that little area. It was a really quick stop. Our driver stopped, let us off to walk over to it, take some pictures and then we were back to the van and on our way to the next stop.
Marco dropped us off at the restaurant we ate lunch at yesterday. We will enjoy lunch and then Isabella will meet us to take us on the Vatican City tour.
Isabella
found us and let us finish our lunch. She headed over to the entrance. After
we finished lunch we walked along the wall to the Vatican City entrance.
We walked through the Vatican's many musuems with beautiful Roman scupltures,tapistries and the maps of Italy. The many popes have left their marks there. There was one tapestry that had an optical illusion. Jesus Christ is coming out of the tomb and when you walk from one side to the other his eyes and body follow you. It is like a mirror image. From the museums you walk into the Sistine Chapel where you are not supposed to take pictures because the rights to the pictures were sold by the Vatican to the Japenese for millions of dollars. It was quite interesting to walk into this chapel and see all the people taking pictures anyway.
Isabella stopped prior to taking us into the Sistine Chapel to give us some facts about Michelangelo, who was a sculptor not a painter and his being commissioned to work on Pope Julius II tomb. The pope commanded him to stop work on the tomb and to paint the ceiling. The first paintings he created had a lot of information in them but as he realized you couldn't see the details as well from the floor so he painted the rest with more detail. The work is quite beautiful. The chapel was very full of people studying the ceiling. Isabella showed us where when the cardinals do their voting and where they burn the votes.
We then headed to St. Peter's Basilica. What a massive place with all the beautiful ornate sculptures. It is unbelievable when you walk around and see everything here.
We made our way outside and Isabella showed us where the pope rides up when he is doing an audience and where he is at the window. We had finished our tour so Isabella showed us to a souvenir shop and we settled up with her and she was on her way. She was a great tour guide. Her English was very good and she told us she had come to the U.S. at 16 as an exchange student. She was in Rome, Georgia.
We bought some souvenirs then found the taxi stand. We were all pretty tired and sore from all the walking and climbing steps and in and out of the van for the past two days not to mention it was pretty warm outside. We had talked about walking back to the hotel as we were only 3 kilometers away from it.
Jerry handed the driver the card from the hotel with the information on it. He took off and drove quite a while. He didn't seem to speak much English and when he finally came to a stop he said we had arrived. We told him no that wasn't where we were to go. Ron had his GPS with him so he showed the driver. He started to get upset and finally everyone calmed down. The driver apologized and took us to the right place. We had already racked up 15 euros in fare but at the hotel he said it should have come to 10 euros so we paid that and were on our way to our room.
As we walked into the door of the hotel we saw our bags sitting there. The airport had brought them. What a relief!
We relaxed for a little while in our room and then went back down to meet with Ron and Brenda and enjoy the bottle of wine that Marco had given us.
After our wine we made our way down to the Spanish Steps. There were people walking all over the place on the street on the way to it. The cars were driving through the people it was a bit crowded down through there.
We wandered around trying to get back to where we ate dinner the night
before but walked in circles and finally headed back the way we had come
and stopped by the market and bought some wine and soft drinks for tomorrow.
We dropped those off in our room and then were off again to eat some dinner.
Dinner was fantastic. We ordered more wine and our dinners. We were there for a couple of hours before we headed back to the hotel.
Tomorrow we will head to the port to embark the Crown Princess. We are excited about our next adventure!