November 7, 2015

Heading North

Here was the plan.  We will visit all of the most northern cities in September when we can expect sunshine and then save northern Italy for November when it will be raining everywhere.  At the further risk of jinxing the rest of our trip, the weather forecast for the next 10 days (our last) is for sunshine and 70 degree temps.  Go figure.

We have arranged for a slightly late check-out this morning.  We have a 1:15 train to Florence so we won’t check out until 11:30.  We do our usual calorie load at breakfast and bring our pot of coffee outside to enjoy the courtyard and sunshine.  We get a 5% discount for cash so earlier we attacked the ATMs to pay our bill.  We really enjoyed this place and would come back here for sure if we returned to Rome.  The ladies at the desk try to get us a cab but we assure them that we are self-sustaining and can make our own way in the world.

Actually that means that we are whipping out our Uber app.  Some people are touchy about Uber if they have any relationship to the taxi business, especially in Europe.  We think our best bet for having a driver find us is to move a couple blocks to the river instead of in our little warren of back streets.  Our driver, Marco, almost finds us but he is across the river on the other side of the pedestrian only bridge.  He does call, we update him on our location and pretty soon the Audi A6 whips to the curb and off we go.  Marco has bottled water in the back seat for us, the car is luxurious and we feel like we’re back in the private driver business again.  He is a good English speaker giving us a guided tour of the sites between us and the Termini station.  He is doing such a good job that we don’t tell him that we were here yesterday.  Easy as can be and we’re at the station before noon.  We love Uber when it works.

We sit down for a beverage at the station and meander out to the platforms about 12:45.  We are on an Italo train today.  They are a relatively new competitor to the state train system, Trenitalia.  They specialize in upscale service and are using that to steal riders.  We booked seats on their website where the economy fare was 38 euros per person and first class was 34.  Hmmm, let’s think about this.  They must have had a lot of first class seats left which is OK with us.  There is a rack to store our luggage, outlets for our electronics, big leather seats, drinks and snacks and a sunny day for our hour and a half ride north.  Much easier than dealing with an airport.

When we get to Stazione Santa Maria Novella in Florence the Orient Express is one track over.  It is gorgeous.  We peek in the windows and everything is rich wood and elegant touches.  The staff is lined up on the platform at attention as the riders leave for their stop in Florence.  Maybe someday, Agatha.  John calls our hostess, Miki, and Mary puts the address into the phone.  It is supposed to be a 7 minute walk to our apartment but we are no longer fooled by that.  We get there within 15 minutes so we consider that a small victory.

Miki and husband Franco (the apartment owners, about our age) go over all of the details with us for over an hour in barely perceptible English.  At one point Miki says to Mary, “oh you don’t speak any Italian but I see your husband does.”  That’s what happens when you keep your head down and just say, “Si si, bene, prego, grazzi.  The apartment is dead center in the middle of everything.  It is on a busy street but we’re on the third floor on the courtyard side so we have no noise.  There is a big bedroom and bath with laundry, 2 balconies and combo living room/kitchen.  It is high ceilings and marble floors so very old world Italian.  We like it a lot.

When we give Miki and Franco the boot we go out for a first peek at Florence.  We walk down to the Arno River just as the sun is setting.  There are hundreds of folks lining the river walkway and bridges soaking in the early evening vibe of the city.  We bounce around a couple blocks and get our first glimpse of the Palazzo Vecchio, the original homestead if the Medici family who ran Florence, most of Italy and the Catholic Church for a couple centuries.  There are thousands of people out milling around on this Saturday evening and it feels like Times Square in New York without the cabs. 

It is important that we stop for some groceries since nobody will be setting up a breakfast buffet for us in the morning.  We fill up the backpack and then take turns carrying it back to the apartment.  Along the way we find all sorts of fun things going on that we have to revisit later when we know where we’re going and what we’re doing.  The reason we have the apartment is that it will be our final laundry stop.  Mary sorts a few things and throws in the first load.

Another tedious transition day which makes the little Trattoria Marione right downstairs seem like a good idea.  It was in Rick Steves’ book as well on Miki and Franco’s list and being 50 feet away makes for an unbeatable combination.  We get seated in the basement.  The place is bigger than we think and filling up rapidly.  They don’t take reservations so we were lucky to get right in on a Saturday night.  We order a Bruschetta Mista which turns out to be 4 crostini, 2 with the tomato/basil combination and 2 topped with a chicken liver pate that is pretty good.  John decided to get off the pasta kick and had the roast chicken and potatoes.  The chicken was desert dry but a nice sauce almost made up for it.  Mary stayed with the pasta with a basic tomato basil combination that was pretty good.

We’re tired but decide to go for one more walk after dinner.  This time we head away from the river for a couple blocks, turn a corner and stop dead in our tracks.  Right is front of us is the Florence Duomo that looks like an elephant was deposited in an ant farm.  The place is elaborate, busy, colorful and most of all, huge. We snap a few pictures by streetlight but nothing will do it justice.   We promise to come back in daylight to get a handle on this thing.

We go back down through Piazza Della Republica where a permanent carousel is still spinning and make the turn onto Via Della Spada, our new address.  Mary reads for 30 seconds and John watches TV for 30 seconds and that’s all folks.

What did we learn today?  Train travel, ours today and the Orient Express, can be a good way to get from place to place.

November 6, 2015

 

 

 

Relaxed Roma

Day three in Rome is set aside for nothing.  We thought we would just wander about a bit, check out some familiar and unfamiliar spots and just soak it in.  But, we have to hustle to do nothing today because the lights go off at 9:00 when the power company shuts down the hotel and actually the neighborhood.  We are showered and dressed and in the breakfast room a little after 8:00 so plenty of time for our daily calorie extravaganza.  We are sipping the last of our coffee at 8:50 when the lights go off.  The first time in the history of Italy that anything happened earlier than scheduled.

We relax a bit on our patio—no reason to start too early given John’s announced touring shelf life.  Our first stroll is to our neighborhood square to check out the Church of Santa Maria.  It is really hard to describe how we can walk into a smallish local parish church and find it with gorgeous inlaid ceilings, great sculptures and plywood size canvases of religious scenes that were painted by Italian masters 400 years ago.  The fact that we are 2 miles from the Vatican and this church has been visited by many Popes probably has something to do with it.

We go back across the river in the general direction of the sites of ancient Rome working our way up yet another hill towards the Colosseum and Forum where the masses are gathered for today’s onslaught.  There is a lot you can see from the periphery which is our plan—we have been inside before.  The Colosseum is undergoing a major renovation along with other famous Roman sites (see Trevi Fountain and Spanish Steps).  These are being financed privately by wealthy Italians who have accepted responsibility for continuing the connection with their ancestors.  The history of this civilization is a matter of pride with the Italian people, but since the Italian government can’t get its act together it is up to the individuals and Italian companies to step up.  Good for them.  It is fun poking around the walls and ruins among the streets that are not inside the fences.  Along one walkway we discovered a complete series of the stations of the cross carved elaborately into the stone wall. 

By the time we are finished it is after noon so we change directions and head off into the area of the Campo Fiori where the plan is to explore some of the back streets, do some shopping and have a bite of lunch.  We pass the hotel where we stayed last time here and it has had a very fancy renovation.  The small café and bakery/deli across the street are still here and apparently thriving.  We do a loop around the market, pick up a couple items and begin the search for lunch.  We’re still not very hungry but we’ll keep our eyes open as we do our backstreet exploration.  Once we leave the square there really isn’t much going on and no place that appeals to us for lunch.  Finally we find a little pizzeria with a table on the street just off the square to grab a beer and a tuna/tomato pizza.  It will do.

It’s after 2:30 and Mary would like to visit the Carrefour supermarket allegedly on our home turf which gets us back across the river.  Our search takes us up Via Trastavere but after walking up a mile we still don’t see it and it isn’t promising ahead.  We decide that the person who told us about it generally drove and since it only took ten minutes in the car it seemed right up the street.  Not so much when you’re walking.  It’s about 3:30 when we get back to the hotel and the lights are on, again, early.  Then we remember that it’s Friday—of course they’re finished early.

This was an easy day and very much as we intended with a few new experiences with some down time before we go back out for dinner.  We haven’t participated in the hotel happy hour yet and think this is the time to do it.  They have a nice spread of appetizers out free with a purchased drink.  Apparently this is the latest fad in Rome and a good way to eat relatively cheap if you don’t want a big meal.  We are planning to go out so we try to keep our nibbling to a minimum with a bottle of chardonnay.  The tapenade is great, the artichoke spread on garlic toast is fantastic, little cheese croissants are delicious—it’s hard to stop but we do.

We had a good experience our first night at La Freschetta so we’re going back for a pasta instead of a pizza.  We beat the rush again (it is about 7:45) but the place fills right away after we sit down.  One of us is going to have the carbonara for sure and we don’t know about the other—we’ll share whatever it is.  The waiter says he would order the grecia over the carbonara and would have something with a red sauce as the other for more of a change.  We sort of ignore him and order the grecia and carbonara. They are very similar but both are good, and a little more peppery than others we have had.  We conclude that the famous Roman carbonaras are not as good as the one we had in Amalfi, maybe our best single dish of the trip (although Mary may vote for the tomato-anchovy pasta, also in Amalfi).  We drag it out as long as we can, possibly because we have had so much food, but also because it is our last night in Rome and we love watching the scene.

On our way home the female member of the modern dance couple from the other night is performing in the square.  It is not glowing balls tonight but flaming things.  There are flaming rings and sticks and batons all twirling and swirling to the background music from her sound system.  Again, very entertaining, and this is just a little neighborhood square, not one of the monster entertainment venues across the river.  Our city planners should have paid more attention to the classics.  Off to bed.

What did we learn today?  Rome never stops attacking your senses.

November 5, 2015

 

 

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 7^th 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.

November 4, 2015

 

 

Getting Reacquainted

We’ve been to Rome before.  We were here in 2004 with Brother Joe and Dana for a 3-day whirlwind tour of the Colosseum, Forum, Vatican, Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, Borghesi Museum and all the other sites worth seeing in a short period of time.  We sipped some rooftop wine and dined on Roman patios and crammed as much as we could in a short period of time.  This time we’re going to go slower, skip the big sites and concentrate on neighborhoods and good food.

We’re on schedule for the above this morning as we settle in for breakfast at a little after 9:00.  There is a nice breakfast buffet reminiscent of others in the past but this time we have a couple serving guys who are concentrating on coffee.  We’re easy today and they bring us each our own pot of fresh strong coffee.  After we eat we move to the outdoor patio area where we find English language newspapers and, of course, smokers.  Nothing’s perfect.

Our mission today is the immediate neighborhood of Trastevere and we expect to know all of the nooks and crannies by the end of today.  We move towards the Tiber and figure we may as well walk across the bridge.  Another couple blocks and we’re back in the Campo di Fiori, our home square from 11 years ago.  We got sucked right back in to Rome.  The market is in good form this morning and we spend a good hour wandering among the booths and local shops.

While we’re here we may as well go up to Piazza Navona, an action packed center of activity on the east end of central Rome and we’re not disappointed.  We have magicians, musicians, headless and legless posers and hustlers of every sort, and it is barely noon.  Well, so much for our neighborhood tour.

As long as we’ve gone this far we may as well keep tripping down memory lane.  We move across the river again, moving south into Vatican City.  St. Peter’s Square is packed this afternoon.  The Pope did his Wednesday morning blessing this morning which we’re sure added to the crowds.  There is a really long line to get into St. Peters Basilica, but because it was not on our list of things to accomplish this trip we use our time just watching the action in the square.  There are of course Catholics and “nons” from all over the world who make this pilgrimage and fill the square every day.  It is a real hodge-podge of folks and certainly a lot of priests and nuns connecting with the home office.  All very impressive.

It is now mid-afternoon which means we can still get in a little tour of our neighborhood before packing it in for the rest of the day.  Our first mistakes is going out the side exit of St. Peters Square.  Even though we have found this street on a map we have become disoriented with the change of direction and start the wrong way.  After a couple rechecks of the map we are still on the right street going in the wrong direction.  In fact we are off the map.  We ask the phone for help and Sami tells us that we are now 30 minutes from our hotel in the other direction.  We get the lay of the land and follow the little blue line on the phone until we have a good idea of the direction.  Sami burns a lot of juice on the phone so we let her rest while we get started.

We walk for about 15 minutes looking for the river which will be our final clue and then fire up the phone again to reconfirm.  We are now 22 minutes from the hotel going in the wrong direction again.  To cut to the chase this routine goes on for another hour before we finally get to our neighborhood and we’re both tired and hangry, one more than the other.  There is a little bar right around the corner from our hotel where we plop down at 4:00 for a quick beer and bruschetta.  We wanted to explore neighborhoods and we have certainly done that.  The guy at the little bar even tried to overcharge us for our beer and snack—wrong day to do that.

Finally our feet are up for a couple hours before our reservation at Taverna Trilussa.  This place is the first recommendation in the Rick Steves Rome book for our area, and when we asked the staff here for the best in the neighborhood they all agreed this is the spot.  We have a 7:30 reservation and get a nice table on their terrace.  John picks a reasonable wine and we order the Arancini (rice balls with melted cheese in the middle) as an appetizer.  This is followed by the Bomboloti Carbonara for John and the Spaghetti Amatriciana for Mary or the other way around.  Either way we will swap plates halfway through.  Can’t wait.  After our first couple tastes we both agree that these are about the 19^th and 20^th best pastas we have had in the last two weeks.  The carbonara sauce is not the rich creamy texture it should be and the pasta is way short of al-dente, almost starchy.  The spaghetti is merely ordinary at best.  We wish we would have gone back to the great little local spot from last night.  We will add our voice to the on-line reviews.

The good news is that it is a short walk home and we know the way.  We curl up in our little urban hacienda and will sleep really well tonight.

What did we learn today? When we take off our sweaters and drape them over our shoulders, people speak Italian to us.

November 3, 2015

 

 

See Ya Santorini

Our nifty 5 day vacation from our travels is over.  This was a nice break with no big agenda, good food and laid back atmosphere.  Would we come back?  No.  There is a unique vibe to Santorini, but it isn’t different enough to see again.  Sometimes the t-shirt that says “been there, done that” pretty much covers it all.  For this sort of break we could find somewhere closer to home with a nice cultural scene and maybe without the cruise ships.  The back side of a Hawaiian Island would work nicely.

We have spaced our breakfast items to come out even this morning.  We have plenty of time to get ready and packed before Tim, the porter, shows up at 9:15.  Again, he throws one suitcase over his shoulder and grabs the other by hand and up the flights of stairs he goes.  We each have one small bag and as usual we are puffing when we get to the top.  Tim is doing fine.

We are at the meeting point for our pick-up to the airport at 9:20 and our ride doesn’t show up until 9:45, 15 minutes late.  That gives us plenty of time to chat with Tim.  He is a native Albanian (name all the native Albanians you know) who has lived here for 15 years.  He still has family in Albania but seldom gets to visit there with his children in school here and him busy all summer.  The economic situation seems the same here as in northern Minnesota with everyone in the tourism business in the summer and then scrambling for other jobs in the winter.  Tim starts his construction job next week that will continue at least through February.  He has had an interesting life, and it is some of these brief encounters that are the most educational as we travel.  We wish we had more time to chat but then we would miss our flight.

These travel days are a pain.  Yes, it is whiney once again, there are a million worse problems, but compared to the rest of our travels these are at the bottom of the heap.  The bad news is that there are long check in lines at the Aegean desk for our flight to Athens when we get to the Santorini airport.  The good news is that the desk person can get our bags checked all the way through to Rome with all boarding passes even though we booked the continuing flight separately.

The flight to Athens is fine although crowded (exit row) and then the 4 hour layover.  We get a couple bad sandwiches and good beers from a lunch counter and then take turns walking around the concourse and sitting and reading to break up the time.  John threatens to buy a pair of skinny jeans and a black leather jacket to look truly European but chickens out.  That’s how these stores do their business, boredom.  Again, our flight to Rome is crowded (exit row again) and John volunteers for the center seat.  Bad timing as the guy in the aisle seat is wider than he is tall.  We get a snack on the plane and John eats with his face on the tray as his upper right arm is pinned against his torso.

Our bags show up in Rome as promised and our driver (last one) is waiting in the arrivals area.  He has a nice Mercedes wagon for a smooth ride to the Hotel Santa Maria in Trastavere.  This guy is no Kostas from Athens—he is not communicating with us but does keep up with friends on his cell.  We weave through the center city narrow streets and get dropped about 20 feet from the reception door.

What a surprise.  This hotel is a former cloister and is a low slung hacienda right in the middle of Rome.  The 21 rooms are spaced around a central courtyard filled with orange trees and ours is tucked in a back corner away from the rest with its own small patio area.  Really, this is like something you would see in rural Spain or Arizona and would normally be impossible in a big city.  We’re a couple blocks from the Tiber River, a 30 minute walk to the Vatican on one side and the Colosseum on the other.

Our check-in lady tonight is welcoming if a little hurried.  She takes us through the map routine and gives us a recommendation for a nice easy casual dinner tonight before walking us to our room.  There is a chilled bottle of Prosecco waiting for us with a couple glasses and bowl of nuts because we had mentioned Tripadvisor when we made our reservation.  Very smart of them.  We unpack and move to our little patio with a small table, two chairs, our bottle of wine and our bowl of peanuts and the day seems fine once again.

It is 7:30 when we go down the street to find our restaurant for dinner.  This takes us through Piazza Santa Maria where there is a couple performing a modern dance routine using a glowing baseball-sized ball that is tossed and glided back and forth between them as part of the dance.  One of the best street performances we have seen anywhere.

Our restaurant is La Freschetta, a local trattoria and pizzeria.  The place is pretty crowded when we arrive and it is fun with a lot of energy.  The fellow who seems to be in charge is moving around the room taking orders, hustling the staff and entertaining the customers all at the same time.  We order a 7 euro vino rossa della casa and a 6 euro anchovy and tomato pizza.  The wine appears in a minute and the pizza about a minute later.  There is a large wood-burning oven in the front room (we’re in the back) and the pizzas are cooked in less than two minutes.  It is mostly locals and then a large group comes in to sit all along the back wall.  It looks like a tour group but all Italian. 

Now the place is really hopping and there is a line waiting for tables.  Our pizza is one of the best we have ever had—much better than the premier pie we had in Naples.  We love watching the show and nurse our wines long after the pizza is gone so we can keep our seats.  A little rude but we’re having fun.  This turns out to be a great recommendation from our hotel person and just what we were looking for tonight.  We love being back in Italy.  Molto Bene!

There are only the young folks hanging out in the square on our way back through.  The entertainers have all gone home on a Tuesday night.  We get buzzed back into the gated hotel complex and were off to our little corner of Roma.

What did we learn today?  Our first insight into the long-time communist and isolated Albania.

October 26, 2015

 

 

Arrivederci Roma

Good-bye to Rome for now.  Here’s the deal, dear Blog.  When planning this trip we said sometime we should figure out how to get to Greece.  Maybe not on this trip, but wait.  Let’s check airfare from Rome to Athens, and at $120 apiece round trip we decided we would never have a better chance.  I mean who wouldn’t fly to Athens for 120 bucks round trip.  So that’s the plan for today.

We have a 6:00 AM wake up this morning that we blow off for an extra 20 minutes.  When we appear in the breakfast area at 8:00 we’re packed and ready to go.  Frederico has a nice little spread of fruits, cereals and pastries but it is certainly not B&B quality.  B&Snack maybe.  Anyway we grab coffee and some nourishment and we’re in the van to the airport by 8:45.

Rome is a big airport but not difficult to navigate and security is a breeze.  The checked baggage belt has broken down so there is a guy from Aegean Airlines hauling suitcases on a cart which somehow increases confidence that they will eventually arrive.  We’re way ahead of schedule for our 11:00 AM flight which gives John some kindle time and Mary some browsing time.

We snared exit row seats for our flight which is good—the plane is packed.  We don’t know much about Aegean but everything seems alright.  They even feed us a little pasta thing with a dry roll and a packaged lemon pie.  Sort of the same quality as breakfast.  We fly down the coast of Italy before we get into high clouds and lose our visibility.  Flying in to Athens is beautiful.  The skies are now clear and as we approach Athens from the water we get a great view of the thousands of little islands off the coast.  Bump-bump and we’re in Greece.

The airport is only 14 years old and feels pretty slick to us.  We grab our bags and when we exit to the arrivals area our driver Kostas is waiting for us.  This private driver thing is getting a little over the top, but Kostas is really just a taxi driver who works for an on-line service that costs about an extra five euros so you don’t have to negotiate with Greek cabbies.  He is a chatty guy with good English so between the airport and center city we learn about the Greek economy, Greek geography, German efficiency, the Greek higher education system, his kids and Greek personality disorder.  You don’t get that negotiating with a cabbie in a foreign language.  His key point was that the airport was built by a German firm for the 2004 Olympics on budget and on time.  The road to the airport was built by a Greek company, three years late and triple the budget.  That, he says, defines the current Greece problems.

We’re at the Hotel Attalos in the middle of everything in Athens.  The hotel was recommended on line and by friends we know who are Greekophiles.  After we settle in we go up to the rooftop bar and get our first view of the Parthenon on the hill above us.  As a lady said to us later, “Is that what I think it is?”

We take it to the street and wander around our neighborhood, into Monastiraki Square and up the Acropolis hill into the Plaka neighborhood.  We thought Naples was an assault on the senses but this is even more, that is, better or worse depending on your point of view.  Right now it feels pretty exciting to us.  As the old saying goes, you can’t swing a cat by the tail without bouncing off some sort of ancient archaeological site.  It is like Rome in that regard. The streets are lined with graffiti, restaurants and little shops selling whatever you want to buy.  And. It is noisy.  Car horns, shouting café owners, people arguing (maybe), kids hollering and overall traffic and city sounds.

Our first couple hours of wandering give us a preliminary overview of the neighborhood which we always consider to be a good first step in a new place.  We have a little trouble with street names that sound like fraternities—take a left at Tau-Kappa-Epsilon--but there is fine print underneath in letters we sort of recognize.  Learning curve.

Our front desk guy recommends a restaurant a few blocks away, Taverna Tou Psiri, which we locate after a couple false starts in this little warren of tiny angled streets.  The Psiri neighborhood looks like a disaster but we understand it is up and coming and THE place to hang out for all the hipsters.  We’re early for dinner (7:30) which gets us an outside sidewalk table.  Our waiter is very patient with us and walks us to the hot table inside and explains the dishes on display and available for dinner tonight.  There are other things on the menu but these are the stars of the show.  Mary picks out a Mousakka and a plate of some sort of big baked beans in a spicy sauce while John opts for the roast chicken and potatoes with a lemon/herb sauce.  We start with a ½ liter of red wine that is served in a little metal pitcher with two small glasses and tell the waiter to serve the dinner however he thinks it should be served.  We find out that means the beans are a first course.  When in Athens…..

The food is good, the people watching is great and there are a couple guys playing traditional music on a patio a couple doors down.  It is yet another magical night for us in a brand new place.  We go around one block out of the way and decide that is as adventurous as we need to be tonight.  Hotel Attalos, here we come.

What did we learn today?  Athens is a fascinating mix of ancient classical and modern scruffy.

October 25, 2015

 

 

Southern Italy Tour Finale

We don’t have enough time to get to know our new digs in Naples.  Breakfast is served in the room by Manuella.  We hung a little list on the door last night with a time and items and sure enough it shows up right on time.  A nice selections of cold stuff and mostly fresh so it is OK.  We check in with Gabrielle before we leave and he is good with getting us a taxi at noon for our 1:00 train out of town.

It is a nice morning for a walk along the harbor.  We stroll past the restaurant where we had pizza last night for another mile or so.  Once again there are thousands of people walking the waterfront this morning.  There are no couch potatoes in Naples.  It may have something to do with the clear blue skies and high sixty temps but it is still impressive to us.

We get back to the B&B just before 12:00 and Gabrielle is not there.  We have a little trouble making ourselves understood over the speaker system from the outside door to the cleaning lady inside.  Someone else comes into the building and we pig–tail through the front door with them to get to the apartments.  Gabrielle shows up a couple minutes later, calls a cab and all seems OK for our connections.  The problem is that a tunnel is closed so traffic is backed up and the cab takes another 15 minutes to get to us.  Still OK.

When the cab arrives we sense a little timing problem with our driver—he seems more worried than we are.  He drives like a madman (Neapolitan) for about ten minutes and then we get stuck in a major traffic jam.  At one point he goes up on the sidewalk to pass two cars in front of us at a traffic light but the first one doesn’t let him back in so we pass one stopped car for the effort.  Finally we get to the train station at about 12:35 for out 1:00 train but we still need to get tickets.

We have prebooked tickets but we have to go to the ticket counter to have them printed.  We would normally have printed them at one of the kiosks in the station but we think because of the refugee crisis all on-line sales have to go through the counter.  When we look confused a fellow tells us that we have to get a number from the ticket machine.  It is #448 and they are currently serving #405.  We’re in trouble.  Another older fellow comes over and tells us that we can print from the machine, but then realizes that we can’t.  He then takes our phone confirmation up to one of the ticket guys (front of the line) who promptly prints out our tickets in spite of the shouts of all the people waiting behind us.  The guy then takes us to our train platform and points us in the right direction.  John gives him 4 euros and the guy indicates that that is a pretty small price to pay for the service so John digs a little deeper for all the coins in his pocket and the fellow takes it, shrugs and walks away.  He probably has to split with the guy who printed the tickets. Gabrielle has told us that with the unemployment in Italy now people have to invent new jobs and this is one of them.

The ride to Rome is pleasant through a valley east of the mountains that lie between us and the west coast of Italy.  We pull into Rome Termini right on schedule and have about a half hour for the train to the airport.  After some confusion by the terminal personnel about which track we will use, we are in the right place when our train pulls in and we’re off to the airport.  Our driver from our B&B is not there to meet us which is not unexpected.  We have been emailing him and receiving form letters in return so we don’t really think there is 2-way communication involved.  John calls him and he says he will be there in 15 minutes, and is.

The Villa Rosita is a little B&B in the town of Fiumicino, the home of the Leonardo da Vinci Airport, Rome’s principle international airport.  Frederico, our host, does a brisk little business with travelers who need a place close to the airport but want to avoid the big hotels.  His fee base transfer service works well for the guests and very well for Frederico.  The villa itself is a nice little oasis in the middle of a high traffic, highly commercial area near the airport and the room is pleasant.

Frederico directs us to the little town square, really a traffic circle, about a ten minute walk away for dinner.  After our usual break we find the recommended XXXXXXXXXXX for pizza and wine.  We order a couple appetizers and a tuna arugula pizza to split.  They sell pizzas by the meter or half meter.  They’re all about a foot across and then either 19” or 39” long.  Our server brings our wine, forgets our appetizers and then brings a pizza that we couldn’t finish in two meals (we got the half meter).  She got very busy and is very apologetic about forgetting the aps but we are thankful she did.  It would have been a waste of money and food.  We probably should have just stayed at a hotel for tonight but this is yet another new experience.

It is a brisk but clear and pretty night with a big moon on our walk back to our place.  We set an alarm for a semi-early wake-up tomorrow morning.

What did we learn today?  When the odds are against them, individuals always can find a way to use their ingenuity to figure out how to make a buck.