Rome

“When in Rome, do as the Romans do”..., When we were in Rome, we did as the tourists do.

Upon arriving at the train station, and walking through the crowd of people telling us that they worked for the tourism office and could find us a hostel, down the road and into the real tourism office where we got directions to the camping ground in Ostia.

Ostia is a quiet seaside suburb of Rome, (formerly the port city serving rome) we were well out of town, at a spot that appeared as though it would be packed with drunken, sunburnt tourists during the peak months of the year, but all the resorts were empty in Autumn. The camping ground was pleasant, not too expensive, and not at all busy, unfortunately the bus from the train station only came every 45mins, so we caught it once, and made the 25min journey by foot every other time. By the time we found the camping ground, pitched the tent, and left again, it was 5:00, so we caught the train into the centre of Ostia, where we found a supermarket, bought the essentials; bread, cheese, beer, chips, and more bread, we took a brief look around town, and found that the beach was fenced off by various resorts, one of which had a small soccer field in a net. Of course, the beaches were empty, and all the locals were sitting on the pier, the closest one could get to the water without paying.

On our first full day in Rome, we went to Ostia antica (the ruins of the port town of roman empire times.) Entry to the city, (which is still an active archeology site, with ruins being exposed and preserved continually) cost about half what we would later pay to go to the ruins in the centre of Rome. The old city is fascinating, and while the buildings are smaller than those preserved in the centre of Rome, they were, mostly more intact, you could see the streets as they used to be, and know what the purpose of each building was. Of particualr note, (and engineering interest) were the baths, with underfloor heating and beautiful tiled mosaics on the floors, and the various temples and theatres.

After many hours of exploring the ruins, and almost passing out in the heat.., (whilst enjoying our lunch of potato chips) we decided that we would pass out if we stayed any longer, so we ventured into Rome. This seems to be a good moment to mention the tradition we established for our time in Italy..., one home made gelato or icecream every day. It may have been expensive, but hey.., when in Rome..., After our mid afternoon pick-me up, we went on to see a lot of the sights from the outside, get a feeling for the place, and realised that it is actually relatively small. We were getting hungry, so found a lovely restaurant, where we had a three course meal of pasta, chicken and dessert. The pasta was delicious, why does no one in NZ understand “al dente” the chicken was disappointing, being a re-constituted crumbed “fillet” but the cheesecake dessert made up for it. Shortly after we finished our meal and left the restaurant, we saw further evidence that Rome is rather small... my couchette buddies from the journey to Florence... In their somewhat inebriated state, they convinced us that we should follow them to the spanish steps, a walk that took us around the block twice and resulted in one of the girls buying a bag that she later didn't remember buying, We finally arrived at the spanish steps and found them plastered with tourists waiting to go on “the legendary spanish steps pub crawls”.., it's funny how if you call them legendary, people will go. We soaked up some of the night views of the city and agreed to meet the girls in the morning, to see the Jewish ghetto. When we met them in the morning, the girls were a little the worse for wear, so after a couple of hours of wandering around aimlessly we parted company, and headed into town to see the Colosseum, and other ancient ruins. starting with the other ancient ruins, we saw a lot of history, money and slavery sitting around us, but couldn't really get much of a feeling of what the place would have been like in its day. Unfortunately, we left after it was too late to use the other half of our ticket and go to the Colosseum. After a walk across the river, a chance to see the most streamlined island I've ever laid eyes on, and more gelato, we headed back to camp via Ostia to collect some ingredients for dinner. Which turned out to be Gnocchi with a tomato, courgette, Aubergine, and mushroom sauce, covered liberally with parmesan cheese. A little experimenting after dinner and I discovered a delicoious new way to prepare gnocchi. I'm not going to share my secrets online, but if you ask me nicely, I may just be inclined to cook it for you.

Our final day in Rome saw us head to the Vatican, where we

skippet looking at St Paul's (?) and headed for the Sistine chapel and museum. The museum was amazing, and the various small chapels we passed through on the way to the sistine were also beautifully decorated, but I was sad to say thtat the sistine chaple was a disappointment from being packed with tourists who wouldn't shut up... despite the signs banning talking, and took flash photos, despite the bans on any photography.

Rome is full of shops offering pizza, cut to length to order, delicious, and at a reasonable price, this was also true of the place we found in the vatican.

Our last meal in rome wis pizza from the camping ground, and we got up early the next day to catch our train to zurich with great expectations of cheap and tasty swiss chocolate.