Once again we had a rather uneventful 8 1/2 hour plane ride with Air Canada direct to Rome from Toronto. Uneventful is good. The food service was not one-two with Air France but there you go. Everybody had the seat back entertainment system so there was plenty of distraction.
Once we landed and collected our luggage - still not light packers - we were met by our driver who managed to accommodate all of our bags in his Mercedes and we were off for the heart of ancient Rome. The drivers are of course nuts, but miraculously we ended up at the Hotel Campo de' Fiori unscathed after passing numerous Rome sights like the Spanish Steps and being awed by the magnificence of some of the ancient buildings.
Fortunately our room was ready when we checked in, so after going to a local corner store for wine,water,cheese and bread, we went up to the roof terrace of our hotel for a great view of the city, including our first look at St. Peters below. Then we went to our beautiful room and crashed for around 4 hours.
Before dinner we took a wee walkabout from the hotel, with which by the way, we are extremely impressed - location and appointment. The city is teeming with tourists mostly young college types looking to discover Europe. It does make for a pretty safe, full of people, city.
The only disappointment so far, is that the city fathers have not been able to control the proliferation of graffiti - it is everywhere!
The closest Piazza to our hotel is Navona. It seems to be the local artist hot spot and has a spectacular Bernini fountain - Four Rivers.
As short walk from here was the oldest monument in Rome - the Parthenon. The square has an obelisk at its centre and the dome of the Parthenon has an open oculus. The bricked facade is quite intriguing with various subtle patterns in the brick that I'm guessing was further faced with marble at some time.
When we'd wandered back to our neighbourhood, we had dinner at a restaurant on the Campo de' Fiori - pasta of course. The day was warm so the evening in the outdoor cafe was most pleasant with various guitar virtuosos adding to the atmosphere.
When we returned to our hotel, we grabbed a glass of bubbly and headed up to the rooftop terrace again for another amazing look at Rome - a pretty nice end to Day 1.
No comments:
Post a Comment