Strolling the Via del Corso
We’re not going to bring it up, but we have had a couple
weeks of perfect weather. High sixties
to low seventies every day with blue skies.
Not that we hadn’t earned it with our first 6 weeks of rain and cold,
but it is very appreciated. It is 60
this morning as we head over to the breakfast room on the other side of the
courtyard. John gets the usual pot of
coffee and Mary changes up with a cappuccino—when in Rome. We are back in an apartment next and will
miss the spread waiting for us when we get moving in the morning.
Our mission today is to walk the Via del Corso that splits
Rome in half from south to north (our direction). Many of the big sights of Rome are within a
couple blocks, one way or the other, from this major avenue. It starts near the ancient forum and
colosseum on the bottom and ends at the Piazza del Populi at the top. The Vatican is a mile or so off to the west
and the Termini Railway Station is off to the east.
We are on the street by 10:00 going east for a few blocks
before crossing the Tiber at the Ponte Garibaldi. That leads us through the Jewish Quarter
wrapping around the first of our hills today (There are 7 in Rome as you know),
and up past the National Museum to the Victor Emmanuel Monument and the Piazza
Venezia. There is a big difference
between looking at a flat map and looking at a real road that goes straight up
hill. These hills are our excuse for the
big breakfasts.
Every vista in Rome is highlighted by a ruin or a monument
or a building of monstrous proportions.
All of those will have elaborate stone or metal sculptures as constant
reminders of where you are. Rome is
newer than Athens—Romulus and Remus and their wolves founded Rome in the 7th
century BC when Athens was already thriving—but in our terms the major sights
are ancient and everywhere. Our
familiarity with Rome is significant because of the inter-relationship between
Rome and Christianity and certainly Catholicism for the past two millennia.
If we would have gone east from the Piazza Venezia we would
have been in the Roman Forum but we go the other way towards Via del
Corso. On the way Mary is drawn down a
short side street where rope barriers are up and someone is screaming into a
microphone surrounded by local police and carabinieri. Of course we can’t understand a word the
fellow is saying but he is quite passionate about it. He finishes in a flourish to smattering of
applause from a few folks nearby and that’s that. Well, we have plenty of time.
We’re only on the VdC for a couple blocks when we need to
veer off to the Trevi Fountain. This is
where if you throw a coin over your shoulder into the fountain it means you
will return to Rome. We did last time we
were here and here we are. The fountain
has been closed for a long time, years we think, for cleaning and renovation
and it reopened last night. Good timing
for us. That also means that hundreds of
folks are here today to celebrate the reopening and there is plenty of pushing
and bumping going on. We take note of
how clean it is and move along.
Our next detour is further north on VdC past the Italian
Parliament to the shopping triangle near the Spanish Steps. There are a few little streets, each several
blocks long that house everybody that is anybody in the fashion world. As we walk back and forth we try to think of
who is missing and obviously we can’t come up with anybody except maybe Target.
As we weave back and forth we emerge at
the Spanish Steps which are now closed.
The renovations and cleaning of the Trevi has now moved on to the Steps,
and they will be closed for the foreseeable future. We weren’t going up there anyway.
As we come back to Via del Corso we feel our first few drops
of rain. We should never have mentioned
it at the top of this blog. It is 12:30
and close enough to lunch time for us to duck into a little café with covered
outdoor seating. Just as we get settled
it starts to pour, so without umbrellas or even jackets we might be here for a
while. It is a beer and anchovy pizza
again today but the prices are a bit higher in this part of town. We aren’t overly concerned about the weather because
we have been able to see blue sky around the edges of this rain cloud. We’re moving again by 1:30 in sunshine.
We finish the northern route at the Piazza del Popolo, the
people’s plaza. It is centered by a
10-story obelisk (shrouded in scaffolding) that once graced the temple of
Ramses II in Egypt and was moved to the Roman Circus Maximus racetrack. Ben Hur raced around this monument. The piazza also has massive fountains on
either side, one of Neptune and one of Roma.
Nothing is small here. In
addition to the VdC there are two other main streets that angle into the piazza
from the south (all roads lead here?).
We are taking one of them as we begin our way back south.
The street we are on now, Via di Ripetta, is much more
current Rome. It is businesses, buses
and kids getting out of school. Our only
detour on this route is to go a couple blocks to the east to the Pantheon. Again, we visited here on our last trip but
this is a whole new thing for us. We
remembered the Pantheon as a big empty domed building with a hole in the
roof. Today it is filled with massive
statuary, marble floors and religious icons of every sort. It has always been described as Rome’s most
impressive building, and while we didn’t get it before we certainly do
now. As a final treat there is one more
rain cloud moving overhead and it is raining down through the hole in the roof
in the center of the building and through the drainage system in the tile floor
provided by the Romans. It’s pretty
cool.
We wait for the rain to stop and begin our walk back
south. It is after 3:00 and John
announces that he has a touring shelf life of five hours and it is time to go
home. When we get back across the bridge
he gets a gelato cone which has a calming effect. It is a total of 6-hours by the time we get
to the hotel but we’re all still alive.
Dinner tonight is at Trattoria da Lucia, a little family run
place a few blocks away that is high on Rick Steves’ list. John orders a plate of grilled and pickled
vegetables as an appetizer that Mary isn’t excited about. She gets a gnocchi that is pretty good and
John takes another pass at the bobolotti pasta with a veal based sauce that is
much better than last night at half the price.
The house wine is fine and we’re back on track with good food and cheap
prices. The crowd is about half tourist
and half locals with some obvious regulars mixed in. That’s probably the right mix of customers
for us.
A quick walk through the square and back to our hotel. When we pick up the key the lady as the desk
tells us that the power will be off from 9:00 AM until 4:45 tomorrow. We’ll have to factor that into our plans.
What did we learn today?
2,000 year old stone sidewalks and steps preceded OSHA.
No comments:
Post a Comment