In October we
decided to conquer the city we haven’t visited before. The City was the eternal
town Rome. We had three complete days
(from Wednesday noon to Saturday afternoon) to do it. We hired a bed and breakfast
place for our purposes and used metro for our actions.
Visiting
Italy, we of course had to try local pizzas. The first one was a pizza slice in
a suburban take away pizzeria. It was a boletus mushroom pizza and I asked the
sales girl if she had heard of Dalla Valle, the man who imports these mushrooms
from Finland to Italy and told her I pick them too. She shook her head and
replied these cannot be such, and asked the chef what’s the name of the
mushrooms. She then came back and said there were something like bolet…
The first
day we did only the preliminary scouting in downtown. However he result was convincing:
Lots of lovely views and nice contact with Roman hospitality in a tiny shop.
When we told our interest in some dresses we were immediately guided downstairs
to dressing room areas where we commented our findings with local ladies. The
total result was a dress with a bolero for both of us, however very different
in style.
In the evening
we went for supper near our hotel. I wanted to eat something small and tried to
explain I only wanted some fried vegetables. The waitress replied he’ll have
something nice for me. When he served our meals I noticed I did get some fried
vegetables – with a huge beefsteak!!
On Thursday
day we had Vatican as our destination. We visited the St Peters Church and the Vatican
museum which was an astounding experience: How on earth did the popes want to
collect, rob or commission such huge treasures. I heavily doubt it was not done
in the honor of the God… Anyway it was a great lesson of art history,
including ancient art and the renaissance and later masters, as Rafaello,
Michelangelo, Chagall and Dali.
Our pizzas
of the day was claimed to be a huge one but we get a normal size and quality
under the average. So we decided to have something better in the evening and went
to a fish restaurant near Via del Tritone. We ordered a gilthead bream with
some vegetables. The taste was a bit like our bream but much richer in flavor. On our way back to hotel we still saw a nice
fountain, one of the numberless fountains in Rome.
On Friday
we concentrated on ancients places like Colosseum and Pantheon. Unfortunately
the Forum Romanum was closed because of the strike. Because of the strike also
the buses and trams didn’t go but fortunately our mode of transport,
underground wasn’t striking.
After the
Pantheon visit we still did some shopping tour and accidentally ended up in
front of the shop we have visited two days before. I went in and found the
sales lady who had served us to thank her and tell we were satisfied for our
dresses. She was very delighted for that.
On Saturday
we still had a lot of time to find new … I mean ancient places to see. So we
went to the Circus Maximus area and from there we walked to Caracalla bath. The
dimension of the places were huge, the old Romans really had room for having fun.
We walked even further along the Roman wall through the nice villa region to see
Roman pyramid which was unfortunately under construction. So we returned to
Rome main station area to have our last Roman lunch – and it was not a pizza.
On our way
back to Finland our concern was we had tickets with only hand packages, maximum
8 kilograms. There were very strict rules to regard almost any other items as
an extra package with extra charge. Fortunately it turned out the ladies
handbag was not included to that category so we could divide our things neatly
to two bags per person J
The
temperature in Rome was between 15 and 27 Celsius degrees. When we got to
Helsinki airport it was a bit below zero and the streets were a bit icy after a
rainy day. So I was very happy that I had already changed the snow tires.
