My husband Nick and I went to Italy this year for our much-belated honeymoon. How late, you ask, dear reader? Well, try nearly FOUR years!! But we were able to sock away a good amount of ducats and vacation time in those four years, allowing us to spend two amazing weeks in beautiful, crumbling, hectic, sun-drenched Italy.
We left Portland eeeeearly in the morning on April 24 (our flight left at 8am, so yeah...we had to be out to PDX by 6am - another big HUGE thanks to my BFF, Christy, for taking us!) for our trip to the land of vino e pizze. First stop: Dulles National for a two-hour layover, where we ate overpriced burgers at Gordon Biersch in Terminal B, and I exchanged a book I'd bought in Portland (and finished on the 4 hour flight...I read fast, so what?). Then it was off to Roma. Our flight was an overnighter, so we got into Rome at 11am on April 25. After much confusion about which Hilton was ours (unfortunately NOT the one right next to the airport with a free shuttle bus to the center of the city...boo) we managed to get checked in, spongebathed in the hotel bathroom since our room wasn't ready for us, and head back to the airport for a train into Rome's Termini station. Fun fact: the Leonardo da Vinci airport is about 40 mins from Rome proper...so if you don't want to drive to the city - and believe me, driving in Italy was the LAST thing I wanted to do - you have to take a train, called the Leonard Express, into the city. It leaves every half-hour or so and costs 11 Euro per person, per way. Needless to say, we were glad to only spend two days there! Spendy!
In Rome, despite our jetlag, we walked from Termini to Ristorante del Giglio, a lunch spot Rick recommended (NOTE: "Rick" refers to Rick Steves, whose guide was our travel Bible while in-country), and it was wonderful! All the fatigue and walking around in circles was soooo worth it when we ate our first meal of authentic delicious Italian food: melone e proscuitto, penne alla carbonara, pane. Amazingness...it sounds really trite to say that REAL Italian food is so much better than what we get here in the States, but it's true!
After lunch we headed to our destination du jour - the Roman Colosseum and Palatine Hill. Nick's only request for our trip was to see the Colosseum, and since we planned to be there for two weeks, I thought it wasn't much for him to ask, so why not? :) Plus, the Colosseum is an icon of Roman engineering, so I was pretty stoked to see it as well. TIP: when you get to Rome, go to a TI (tourist information center, we visited the one at Termini station) and get the 25 Euro Roma Pass. Best deal ever! It covers your Metro (subway) trips and gives you paid admission to several sights, including the Colosseum, which means you don't have to stand in those looooong ticket lines.
After the Colosseum, we headed over to the Palatine Hill, just across from the arena, to see some ruins of ancient Roman palaces. The largest there belonged to Caesar Augustus, son of Julius Caesar. Even the ruins were enormous! It's hard to imagine people living in such massive homes, but then when you see how think the walls had to be to keep the temperatures tolerable, then you know why. The actual rooms aren't very large at all, really.
We left the Forum area and headed back to Termini because we were pretty tired. I don't even remember what we ate for dinner that night, but I do remember the spontaneous parade that greeted us as we walked thru the city that day - it was their Liberation Day or something, and the parade we saw had a distinctly anti-Fascist theme to it, which was pretty interesting to see. The marchers were shouting but they all looked happy and the police just kept escorting them thru the streets, and nothing out of the ordinary happened.
