Day 175: Tyndall Luck

It was time to walk. We were out the door pretty early, well Euro early, at maybe 9:30.

Our hotel is near Barbarini metro station, so it's very well located for pretty much any site in the city. The plan today was to walk all over the place, incorporating some Rick Steeves walks along the way, as he usually finds the coolest routes for interesting things to see in the city.

We headed east, towards Termini, the large central train station. It took about twenty minutes to get to a really cool, picturesque piazza, Piazza Della Republican. It has an older style church, the Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri on the North side.

The curved buildings that often surround two quarters of the larger piazzas are stunning.

Once we hit Termini, we turned South, meandering past where Beth and I stayed here back in October 2001. We passed by the back side of Basilica Papale di Santa Maria Maggiore where Robim snapped ts pic. As you can see, we had another sunny, beautiful day here in Rome.

We intentionally got lost for a bit on the down sloping streets that run away from Termini. The kids let out lots of gasps for seemingly simple, run of the mill Roman streets, but I couldn't blame them - everywhere you go is very picturesque.

I personally like the little cars that are parked all over the place. This little guy, a one seater, had no problems with parallel (or is it perpendicular parking.

Like walking in Bhaktapur and Kathmandu, you have to look down every little driveway and alley, and Rome is exactly the same. Every once in a while, we'd see a quiet little hidden courtyard.

We made a left on Via del Serpenti and we could see the Coloseum at the far end. Sweet. I remember when I first laid eyes on it, and the kids seemed to have that same excitement bubbling out of them. It's hard to grasp the size of the thing until you're there up close - it is huge. There was scaffolding on two ends of the coliseum - more well needed repairs I guess.

It wasn't our turn to visit this world wonder, we had an appointment booked for Thursday morning, but we continued to go around the base of it to the other side, where the Arch of Constantine sits.

We people watched for a little while. There were way more "gladiators" looking for picture opportunities than I remembered (in fact, we've spotted the gladiators in their cheesy plastic helms and armour all over the place in Rome). We were headed to the Jewish Ghetto area of the city, so we turned right at the Circus Maximus, which used to be a large chariot stadium that the Hippodrome in Istanbul was modelled after - there's not much that remains here, but it does look like they are doing some ongoing excavation and restoration work.

Our Jewish Ghetto walk started on the Ponte Fabricio, a bridge that cross the a Tiber River at a point which marked the farthest point upstream that they could bring npboats thousands of years ago. It was therefore the original heart of the settlement that predated the city of Rome.

There was a really talented electric guitarist on the bridge, which we watched for ten minutes or so. I think he may have inspired Robin to return to her guitar lessons with Dave with "mucho gusto".

We met an artist st the end of the bridge, at least we think she was the artist as she wasn't doing any of the work at the time. However, we did end up buying a few small watercolour pieces from her.

The view down the river was nice.

The Jewish Ghetto was a sad, inspiring tale of an oft persecuted people. Reading the story in the Rick Steeves walk really help connect the dots about how Hitler was able to use a historically ingrained "fear of the unknown" to work his evil.

The story of how the Nazis came in 1943 and demanded the people there give them 50 kilos of gold "or else", and when they delivered on the ransom, the Nazis still took the Jews away, was so shocking and sad. Crazy.

The synagogue that they insisted not be moved or demolished despite public pressure, is massive.

The Jewish quarter, though quite small, was pretty cool - a few Jewish bakeries and restaurants and streets with a ton of character.

Of course, there was a Gelato place or two there as well....

We finished that Rick Steeves walk, and headed towards Campo de Fiori to start his "Heart of Rome" walk.

The kids spotted a rockin' Papa shop along the way.

Beth spotted a sweater shop and the girls disappeared for twenty minutes while I hung out outside people watching.

Campo de Fiori is a small square packed with hip, small cafes and restaurants and filled with a daily food market in the middle.

It was fun browsing through the market and checking out all of the typically Italian products and a lot of nice looking fruits and vegetables that reminded us more of markets at home than we've been seeing in Asia for the last five months or so.

We grabbed lunch - the girls got squares of pizza and Beth and I got sandwiches from a local stand up place, and we sat airing the fountain and ate while being entertained by one of the vendor's cute dog.

After lunch, we headed north up to Piazza Navona, one of the bigger mostly pedestrian squares in the city and on that is always full of artists and performers. The girls and I checked out another spray paint artist as he worked away. The guy was creating a new painting in about ten minutes, and it seemed like every painting he made, he sold right away for 10 euros... That would be a pretty good wage, however I think these guys have challenges staying in the same place for two long - while we were there, a policeman came by and gave him a "last call" notification, so he packed up and left.

We followed the walk east out of the Square towards the Pantheon. It was time to sit at a sidewalk cafe for a nice afternoon drink and do a little people watching.

The square in front of the massive Pantheon was packed full of tourists, vendors, touts and horses. This is one of the big destinations in the heart of Rome. It had one of the 14 Egyptian obelisks in the city placed in the square out front, which was topped by the later added Christian cross.

The Pantheon was as I remembered - a real surprise. The front looks typically Roman (or Greek!) with its forty foot, single piece columns....

.....but the inside is a gigantic domed ceiling with an open portico at the very top. It's very impressive.

Have I mentioned the number of selfie stick touts around Rome? It is crazy. You can't go twenty meters without a guy trying to sell you a selfie stick. "Cheap price sir.... You don't even know the price, why you walk away?". Abby took this random picture - three selfie stick guys and two leather bag guys. They are all over. I can't imagine they make much money, so there must be something else afoot here with these guys....

We continued the walk, sampling the world famous gelato at some place (we wre already almost sick of gelato...) and sitting down near this nice government building to polish the little cups off.

The walk continued past another building and through an old covered road section that had been turned into a fancy, glass filled shopping mall.

We popped out into the Trevi Fountain square, and there were tons of people surrounding the monument that had now had the fencing removed and the bottom filled with water. There was some kind of procession getting ready, and we figured they were turning the fountain on soon.... Tyndall Luck, we called it. We waited around for a while, but we figured we could catch it later and moved on.

We dropped in at Carlo's place to pick up Abby's artwork. He gave each of the girls a little framed, printed window picture. We exchanged email addresses and he promised to look me up if and when he made it to Toronto. Great guy.

We had a siesta back at the hotel, but only a short one... We had more exploring to do! At about 6:00, we headed out North of the hotel, up and past the top of the Spanish steps (they hadn't reopened that for us, wtf!?!) and towards the huge Piaza del Popolo. The night view of the city from the hill at the top of the steps was great. I shall be sure to video, take a family pic, screen shot a google map and lookup a nearby business website and screen shot that in case the Versly come to Rome! :-)

Rick Steves again suggested a nighttime "Dolce Vita" night walk from the big Piaza del Popolo and down the Via del Corso, which is closed for pedestrian only traffic every night from five until seven.

The street starts out as a hipper shopping area, and gradually turns into a more upscale shopping street as you get to the more southern end of things. Beth quickly formulated a desire for a few hours of alone time, so we will make that happen Wednesday or Thursday.

Closer to the Trevi, we found a little restaurant in an alley for a serviceable dinner - we had all reached the point of not caring too much where we ate, and the first friendly face that found us won our business. Abby had Penne Arabiata for the second straight night.

When we left the restaurant, we saw another one of the many anti-gay marriage signs we'd seen in the city. Once we noticed some of the language on the first day, we started spotting them everywhere. Roughly, the sign translates to "Babies cannot be bought / No descrimination / No uterus for rent / No marriages and gay adoptions". In a way, it's kind of cool that they can have an open debate now about gay marriage and adoption, yet it still really points out how behind the times the Catholic Church is.

For Christmas, I decided to give the kids a fully operational Death Star...er...Trevi Fountain. We passed by the monument for the fourth time and bingo, it was in full flowing action. It is so beautiful, and so surprisingly big. It's also costing us a small fortune in Euros... We've had to make a wish and throw coins over our shoulders three times now for christ's sake! Oh well... The girls were happy!

The thing really is grand.

Beth was ecstatic (read in heavy sarcasm voice) that Carlo showed me a cool, quick photo editing tool. I present the "Tyndall Christmas Trevi Fountain Greeting Card" (trademark, patent pending) that people will be receiving in the mail this year! Thanks Carlo!

Beth clocked us in at 23,300 steps for the day, or roughly 16km walking. What a great first day in Rome. We've got just a bit more walking planned for tomorrow!