Roma is wonderful, but likes to scare us. Tivoli grants us succor.

As usual, the first stressful thing about arriving in a new city was figuring out how to get to the place we were staying. We'd corresponded with our Airbnb host a couple of times and he was going to meet us at the airport with a sign with my name on it, and for the cost of a typical taxi ride, he'd take us to our apartment. We thought that was great as it got us to the location and in touch with our host at the same time. We were also coming into Rome at about 11:20 at night, so we were pretty grateful for a "no hassles" ride to town. We landed a little bit early, so Jay and I weren't too surprised or worried when there was no one out there with a sign for us. We walked back and forth between the arrivals gate and the exit to the terminal (about 10 yards, Ciampino is not a large airport) looking for a sign but didn't see anything. 11:20 came and went, and we were starting to get a little worried. Jay got on to the not-very-good Ciampino wi-fi (my phone is fussy about getting on to wi-fi that requires you to log in through the browser. I have no idea why) and I kept walking back and forth. We were starting to worry, entirely clueless as to what we would do if we didn't find him soon (aside from take the phone off airplane mode and incur massive charges on an international roaming call). Right at the point where I was starting to come up with alternative plans, I stepped out of the terminal exit, and there it was, scrawled in sharpie: "Sarah." I grinned and sighed with relief and said hi to him and then went and got Jay. After a fast and blurry trip through Rome past many sites and old things, we got to our apartment, which was a very nice loft studio with an incredibly comfortable bed that we're pretty sure was a King size. Either that or we've really gotten used to full size futons. We crashed fairly instantly and slept wonderfully.

When we woke up we realized a couple of problems. We had no food, we had no wi-fi and I hadn't saved anything like a grocery store or bakery to my offline map on my phone. We rented a wi-fi hotspot for our time in Italy. It was so useful in the UK that we decided it was worth a little splurge to have that security when we were going to be road tripping from Rome to Venice. So before we could really do anything in Rome, including eat breakfast, we needed to go pick up the Wi-Fi. Fortunately, the pick-up location was on a big road, so I was able to find where it was on the map the old-fashioned way (with my eyes, rather than a search bar). We had a few left over gluten free crackers (thank you Paca!) to hold us over. We headed out, stopped briefly for an espresso each, and then made our way to the location where our wi-fi hotspot would be waiting for us. I knew that the place we were picking this up was a TNT point. TNT is like DHL in the US. It's a shipping company. However, this wasn't a TNT store, rather it was a stationary store where you could drop off TNT shipments if you needed to. I went to the front desk and asked the woman about our hotspot. She looked at us blankly. So then I said "TNT?" and then she started trying to sell us a shipping envelope for TNT. So I waved her off, said un momento, and spent a minute with google translate figuring out how to tell her that we were there to pick up a wi-fi hotspot from the TNT point. I showed her the translation, she seemed to understand, but she also looked at us with a puzzled look which made our hearts skip a beat and said "No…"

I think the panicked looks on our faces again came to the rescue, because she went to talk to one of her colleagues. Meanwhile I'm cussing out Italian companies in my head and preparing to demand a refund from Wi-tourist (the hotspot rental company) and wondering where the hell else we can snag a wifi hotspot, and then the first woman's colleague understands what's going on, pulls out a shipping envelope from a basket to the side, asks my name, and there it is, our hotspot. Big sigh of relief. We found a park to sit down in and happily realized that our hotspot already had a full charge. We realized there was a gluten free bakery nearby, marked a few things on the map, and, feeling much more confident, ventured into Rome.

The gluten free bakery had the best gluten free bread I've ever had, and also lots of yummy cookies and treats that were safe for me. It was a nice change from France. In France I'd go into a gluten free bakery and ask for dairy-free and they might have three things that were safe for me. In Italy, I go in and ask for dairy-free and the might have three things that aren't safe for me. It's lovely. As we explored Rome we realized that there were far more historically significant looking buildings than there are marked on the map, so Jay and I got in the habit of just saying "Hey look, there's a thing." Occasionally we'd actually be able to find out what the thing was, but when we couldn't we just assumed it was really old, admired it, and moved on. On our walk we saw the Pantheon, Trevi fountain, and a couple of beautiful old churches. 

Look! A thing! If I remember correctly, it was the ruins of several old temples, an active archaeological site, and home to MANY cats.

The ceiling of the Pantheon

The impressive dome of a church. For the life of me, I couldn't tell you which one

Trevi Fountain

My favorite was a Jesuit church with the coolest ceiling ever. When they began building St. Ignazio's they had intentions to have a big and beautiful dome, but the money ran out before they could get there. So one of the Jesuit priests who had some talent with a paint brush painted the ceiling as an optical illusion so that if you stand in the right spot (marked by a star in the floor), it looks like the ceiling is an impressive arched thing (with gorgeous frescoes to boot) with an impressive dome towards the back of the church. It's an absolutely beautiful work of painting, and also a pretty entertaining story. You can see a better picture of it here.

The ceiling of San Ignazio. Dome not included. Click the link above to see the dome. It's pretty cool. 

By then it was lunch time so we went to a place that we'd read was great for gluten free. Turns out, in Italy, the AIC (Italian Celiac Association) actually goes around and accredits restaurants as safe for celiacs. Most restaurants are pretty good at accomodating gluten free (they usually have a stash of GF bread and pasta on hand), but the accredited places are something special. First thing when we walked up, they asked if we wanted a gluten free menu or a normal menu. I got the GF menu, Jay got the normal. As far as we could tell, there was absolutely no difference between them. Anything I could possibly want off the normal menu was also available gluten free. I decided to have some pasta with eggplant, Jay had a pizza, and it was wonderful.  

After that we headed to Palatine hill, where a bunch of old Roman ruins reside, and the Colosseum. We'd read in advance that since the tickets to the Colosseum also include the Palatine hill and the Roman forum (and vice versa) if you get your ticket at Palatine hill you can skip some of the line at the Colosseum. So we went to Palatine hill. I had a wonderful time exploring. You could spend all day there, easily, but Jay wanted to make sure we got to the Colosseum, and it was also raining. I didn't care, but Jay is apparently worried he'll melt. So after Palatine hill we went to the Colosseum. Turns out we weren't the only ones who read that thing about skipping the line if you get your ticket at Palatine hill, because the line for security for people who already had their tickets was longer than the line for those who didn't. 

An arch at Palatine Hill, with the Colosseum in the background

The Colosseum, up close.

Once we got through security we got to explore the Colosseum, including the most painful set of stairs I've ever climbed. They were super steep. It was no surprise that the elevator to the second floor of the Colosseum had quite the line. The Colosseum was very cool and impressive, as you might expect, but Jay and I were getting pretty tired: this was Day 6 of heavy duty city tourism, and we were wiped. So we headed back to our apartment in Trastevere, stopped at a grocery store, had salad for dinner and chilled out till bed time.

The next day Jay and I woke up early to go to the vatican. I should add before I go any further, that Jay and I were getting a little burnt out on tourism in the city, so my patience may have been somewhat less than usual. We dodged the people trying to sell us "skip the line" tickets at St. Peter's Basilica and waited in line. The Basilica was beautiful and I have no complaints.

Opulence at St. Peters

The Dome of St. Peters

After that we headed to the entrance to the Vatican museum since that's the way to see the Sistine chapel. We settled in for what we knew would be a long wait and continued to ignore the "skip the line" people. This is harder than it sounds because those guys are aggressive. After about an hour of Jay listening to a podcast (thanks to my forethought in bringing a set of headphones) and me reading a book on my phone, we finally got in. We weaved around the crowds as much as we could, but it was still pretty slow going. 

We were pretty museum'd out, so we didn't spend much time in the museum part and booked it straight to the Sistine chapel (it still took about 20 minutes of winding to get there), because I felt like I needed  to see it. After much winding and dodging of slower moving tourists we finally got there.

And?

  

Meh

I know it's a big deal, but honestly, the story of Michelangelo painting it is much more interesting and compelling to me than the painting itself. It was pretty underwhelming. Again, it doesn't help that I was feeling pretty misanthropic by then. At that point, the next person who backed into me without at least a cursory apology was going to get punched, and I was ready to grab the phones from the people sneaking pictures, smash them to the ground, and scream, "NO PICTURES." Maybe in a different setting I would have enjoyed the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel more, but it really just didn't do it for me. I liked St. Ignazio more.

After leaving the Sistine Chapel, we still had another 20 minutes of winding before we got out of the museum, and I was close to panicking and thinking they were never going to let me leave and I was going to die there. Once we got out, I saw the "skip the line" sellers and thought with dread "If one of them tries to sell me something I won't be responsible for what happens." I believe this sentiment was translated into my expression and no one bothered us.

Fortunately, after that, we went to a gluten free friendly restaurant nearby where the waiter was utterly charming and took great care of me. I had a delicious porcini fettucine with fresh made pasta, Jay had pizza. It was great. After that we went back to the room to rest for a bit. Then we went to the Knights of Malta Keyhole to get a cool view of St Peter's and explore a part of Rome we hadn't seen yet. It was mostly residential and up a steep hill, but the Keyhole was pretty neat. I have a couple of pictures of the view through the keyhole, but they need a little work in photoshop before they're ready for public consumption, so it'll have to wait. After the Keyhole we quickly ate a salad for dinner so that we could meet up with a coworker of Jay's who lives in Rome with her boyfriend. We enjoyed a couple of hours of lovely conversation, antipasti, and wine before heading home to bed.

Friday, Rome tried to scare us to death one more time. We started the day by hiking across town, with our backpacks, to the train station where we knew we'd be able to catch a bus to Ciampino airport, where our rental car was waiting. It was an exhausting walk, with a much needed stop for espresso in the middle. We found our bus without any trouble and settled down for the ride to Ciampino. We got to the rental car place, and I was feeling a little anxious, cause I knew we were late to pick up our car, but I hadn't run in to problems in the past because of that so I had my fingers crossed. We got there, said we were there to pick up our reservation and they told us that we were too late and the reservation had been cancelled and they had no cars for us. Panicked expressions and an explanation that we had no cell phone and couldn't have called ahead at least got them on our side. I spent the next 30-45 minutes being incredibly mad at myself and frustrated, and I think that's the only thing that saved me from Jay be really mad and frustrated at me (Great thing about Jay, once he sees me beating myself up over something, he doesn't feel the need to add to the load. It's appreciated. And I'm not being sarcastic). That guy at the rental counter worked hard for us, looking at cars, writing down dates, trying to find a way to juggle things so that we could get a car. Finally he speaks up "We have a solution." They've found a car for us, it's a SmartCar 4-door. The only catch is that the check engine light is on, despite the fact that the mechanic has checked everything three times and the car is perfectly fine. Normally they wouldn't rent a car out with that light on, but this is a special circumstance. They were very apologetic about the light being on and tried to assure us the car was fine multiple times, we were just grateful to get wheels. So it all worked out. Around 2 we ate the sandwiches we'd been carrying around with us all morning, and then we headed to Tivoli, still recovering from the adrenaline of nearly not having a vehicle. Tivoli is where wealthy Romans used to go to get away from the city, way back when, so it seemed an intriguing interlude between Rome and the rest of our Italian road trip.

The drive to Tivoli was uneventful. We got to base of a very large hill and Jay said, "We're not going up that thing are we?" and then we went up that thing. In curves and switchbacks that were remarkably reminiscent of my youth in New Mexico we climbed the mountain until we reached the little streets of Tivoli. I was trying to direct us to a specific parking lot but googlemaps apparently didn’t know where the entrance to this parking lot was, cause we ended up blowing by it and ending up among tiny one way roads where pedestrians walk in the middle and buildings encroach on your personal space. Also, since many of these little streets don't even show up on Google maps, our GPS has NO idea where we are. Eventually we made it out of the little streets and onto a bigger road, at which point we realized that we had to go all the way down to the bottom of the hill and try again. So we did the curves and switchbacks for a second time, but this time we managed to find the entrance to our parking lot, found a spot, grabbed our bags and walked to the B and B that we'd booked for the night. This is the first place we've stayed that wasn't an AirBNB or the home of a friend (or friend of a friend etc.). The room was gorgeous, they promised to have things for me to eat at breakfast, we had our own bathroom, and Tivoli was absurdly idyllic. 

The waterfall you cross over getting to the town center.

We walked around the town center and admired the waterfalls and Jay discovered something new about me for probably the first time in five years: the sound of running and falling water makes me incredibly happy. It's like instant meditation for me. I can spend five minutes staring at a waterfall and come away feeling relaxed and content and happy. Across the waterfall canyon from the plaza was an old Roman temple on the hill, called, alternatively, the Temple of the Sibyl or the Temple of Vesta. At the food of the Roman temple is what is apparently one of the oldest restaurants in the world. At first we were intimidated, but we decided that this was where we would eat dinner. So, we got dressed up and headed to the restaurant right as it was opening for dinner. They asked if we had a reservation, we said know, and they promptly led us out to what I think was the best seat in the house. Perhaps they thought it wasn't, because we were far away from the live music that would be playing night, but we  were as far out on the promontory as we could be, I sat so that I could see the waterfall, Jay sat so that he could stare up at the Roman temple (which was, approximately, 10 feet away), it couldn't have been better.

My view at dinner. Apologies for blur, it was getting dark

Jay's view at dinner

Not a bad view, if I do say so myself. :)

 I looked at the wine list, looked for the cheapest bottle, and was pleasantly surprised to see that it was a Lacrima di morro d'alba, which is a grape that Jay and I have enjoyed in the past which is relatively unknown. When I told Jay the they had a Lacrima, and that it was also the cheapest bottle on the menu, his eyes got real big. When we placed our order with sommelier he got a look that told us that he highly approved of our choice. It made us feel a bit like insiders on a secret. It was cool. The wine was fantastic. We ended up getting a bundled menu that included a delicious pasta (mine gluten free), perfectly roasted chicken, and dessert. Something involving cream and puff pastry for Jay, and a hazelnut semifreddo for me (I should mention at this point that, for reasons that aren't entirely clear, I seem to be able to eat the dairy in Italy without too much difficulty and this place is my paradise). It was an absolutely perfect night and the perfect follow up to what had been a very action packed week.

The next day we headed to Villa d'Este, which is a renaissance Villa used by a cardinal to charm his political allies and the like. It's a big a beautiful home, with lots of interesting frescoes, but the real treasure is the garden, which is brimming with water features (pictures below). We had a wonderful time walking around for about an hour, took lots of pictures, and then mosey'd back to our car to head to the next stop on our trip. 

Up next: Bagnoregio and the Civita. And DONKEY RACES.