Capitol City
Written: Oct 29 '05
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Pros: The Eternal City has plenty for the compulsive shopper and the curious tourist alike
Cons: Baking heat, lethal traffic, and your own personal pickpockets - but I still love it.
The Bottom Line: The Eternal City is called that for a good reason. It's always in fashion.
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| arktos's Full Review: Rome |
If you're too sexy for Milan and think Florence belongs on the Magic Roundabout, perhaps it's time you took a Roman holiday. Italy's capital city offers monumental sights, stylish shops, delicious food, wall-to-wall sunshine, lethal traffic, death-inducing pollution and your own personal pickpockets. I love it.
Having visited Rome several times, I got a different view of the city on my most recent trip when I played tour guide for my cousin Michelle – better known as the shopping queen of Ireland. Not one to waste time, as soon as we arrived she hit the ground shopping. First on her hit list was the enormous mall beneath Termini, Rome's central railway station. There’s plenty to divert the runaway shopaholic here, including familiar names like Mango and Etam, as well as an upmarket beauty store called Sephora, a supermarket and plenty of bars and restaurants. Michelle's keen senses directed her to a store called Motivo. She was quite taken with this trendy emporium (which also has branches conveniently located in Azerbaijan and the Ukraine). Being a woman, of course, she was multitasking all the way. While examining Motivo’s scarves, tops, skirts and shoes, she made sure I knew that the coming season's colour was orange, that ponchos were back and that I should shield my eyes in readiness for the reappearance of the puffball skirt.
Our initial bombing raid complete, it was time for some sightseeing. If you have only a few days in Rome, one of the best ways to take in its many delights is on an open-top bus. Just beyond Termini’s modern facade, we joined a very long queue. While waiting, our attention was diverted by a chatty woman from California. She liked us so much that almost immediately she offered to do a holiday house swop. I must say, the idea of exchanging my little flat in the east end of Glasgow for a 16-bedroom mansion in San Diego, with 3 swimming pools and a bouncy castle was very tempting. But when the woman’s husband returned with the bus tickets, he gave her a honey, haven’t we talked about this before look, and I realised my dreams of cocktails by the pool would have to go unrealised.
Eventually we reached the head of the queue and boarded the next bus. The route covers most of the areas first-time visitors to Rome would want to see. You can hop on and off as often as you like, taking in sights such as the Piazza Navona, the Pantheon and Trevi Fountain. As the bus swung into the Piazza Venezia, we got an eyeful of Rome’s most horrendous monument. The Victor Emmanuel memorial isn’t so much eye-catching as retina-detaching. This white marble monstrosity is totally out of synch with its surroundings and completely obscures the ruins of the Roman Forum behind it. American GI’s called it the wedding cake, while the locals refer to it as the typewriter. I prefer its Latin name: uglyus maximus.
We had intended to hop off the bus at the Colosseum, but the route had been changed because of an Elton John concert taking place there that evening. Muttering the kind of obscenities that would have done Elton proud, we de-bused at the Vatican. St Peter’s Basilica, of course is one of the major sights in Rome, and it never fails to impress. Inside, it’s a riot of marble and stone, stained glass and bronze, and even with legions of milling tourists, its gleaming, smooth floor seemed almost empty, leaving me just itching for a skateboard. To the left of the high altar, there’s a gruesome marble statue of a skeleton holding an hourglass. The message seems to be that man’s time on earth is passing quickly – or it’s possibly a reminder to take your boiled egg off the stove. Before leaving St Peter’s we descended the steps to the grottoes, and paid our respects at the tomb of John Paul II. Others weren’t quite so respectful, smiling happily while they had their photo taken in front of the recently-departed pontiff’s tombstone.
Emerging into the bright sunlight, we made our way across St Peter’s Square. Fortuitously for Michelle, Via Ottaviano leading up to the Vatican’s nearest metro station is jam packed with shops, and as she progressed through them like a one-woman swarm of locusts, I could only stand back and admire a professional at work.
It’s hard to get a bad meal in Rome, but it’s easy to get ripped off. Near St Peter’s we had a modest lunch that cost each of us an arm and both legs. Which is why I was relieved to see that my favourite restaurant in Rome is still flourishing. Li Rioni is in the Laterano district, and its thin-crust pizzas are worth both the reasonable price of the meal and of the plane ticket to get there. We ate at Li Rioni on our first night, but had to look elsewhere the following evening because it was full, such is its popularity among local foodies. Further down the street, we found another place where the food was almost as good, but the fringe benefits less so: Michelle found herself the target of unwanted attentions from our overbearing waiter. We wolfed down our food, paid the bill and I whisked her off to a place just around the corner, where I knew she’d be safe from his lusty looks. The unpretentious little gay bar had the uncompromising title of “Coming Out”. As we sipped our drinks, in the relaxed company of young locals and tourists, Michelle surveyed the scene. “This a terrible place”, she said morosely. “I’m surrounded by gorgeous men and none of them fancy me”. I knew exactly how she felt.
After coming out of “Coming Out”, we meandered through the streets of the lively Laterano. Even at this late hour, people were enjoying alfresco meals, and from beyond the beautifully illuminated Colosseum we could hear Sir Elton bashing out his greatest hits. We could easily have lingered there a lot longer, but with a full day’s shopping ahead, an early night was in order.
The following morning, before resuming our tour of retail Rome, I thought it wise to make an early start at the Vatican Museums. Even at 9am, the queue was already snaking round the Vatican’s massive walls for a good quarter of a mile. But it was moving quickly, so we joined it in the hope of reaching the museum by midnight. As the minutes passed, some in the queue dropped out, while others lost the will to live. But three English ladies behind us were made of sterner stuff. "We queued for five hours to see the Queen Mum lying in state", said one. "Ooh yes," her sidekick agreed, "That the was the best day out we’ve had for a long time!" Enlightened by the news that queuing to see a dead queen could be fun, we moved
steadily on until within half an hour we had reached the entrance, ready to be swallowed up by the world's biggest museum complex.
The Vatican Museums are truly overwhelming, and trying to see everything inside will only mean you'll need a holiday to recover from your holiday. So it’s a good idea to map out the bits you definitely want to visit, then let yourself be surprised by the unexpected along the way. Our highlights included the Map Gallery, the Raphael frescoes and the modern art collection. Even the exit to the museum is a work of art – a gigantic, bronze helter-skelter of a staircase winds its way down and spits visitors out into the street, like a giant game of snakes and ladders. Just one more thing about the Vatican Museums: if you ever want to see the Sistine Chapel in peace and quiet, you’ll have to become Pope.
After this cultural diversion, it was back to the main business of the trip. We took the metro over to the Piazza Repubblica and made our way down one of Rome’s great shopping boulevards – Via Nazionale. Much to Michelle’s delight, there was another branch of Motivo here, so while she immersed herself in haute couture, I nipped round the corner to Feltrinelli, a fantastic bookshop, with many titles in English, as well as Italian, and a good selection of CDs too.
Retail passions temporarily sated, we took a pit stop at the lovely George Byron Café, near the Repubblica end of Via Nazionale. I got on the right side of a Guinness, while Michelle had a cappuccino. Ever the style-spotter, she developed an unhealthy attachment to her chic little coffee cup and I had to tie her ankle to the chair so she wouldn’t make off with it. And so, as the sun beat down on the Eternal City, we relaxed at our pavement table, and watched stylish Italians sweeping past in their orange jackets, their ponchos and their puffball skirts, not one of them breaking sweat in the blistering heat.
Back in the Laterano we had an unexpected encounter with a VIP. I spotted her first, as the police escort arrived at the Irish Pontifical College. It turned out to be Mary McAleese - the President of Ireland - and her family. Confronted with two strange tourists, the President could not have been nicer, and her daughter kindly took a photograph of her mother (fresh and fragrant), Michelle (graceful and glamorous) and me (pumping sweat). True to form, Michelle didn’t let the VIPs get away without apprising them of Rome’s many shopportunities, a topic which I’m sure the President raised when she met the pope later that week.
On our last day in Rome, we took a tour of the Vatican Gardens. Led by Nicoletta, our formidable guide, we set off from inside the Vatican Museum for a look behind the scenes of the world’s smallest state.
As Nicoletta guided us through the tranquil walkways behind St Peter’s, it was hard to believe that we were in the middle of a busy European city. The gardens are incredibly beautiful, taking up nearly half of the Vatican City’s 44 hectares. With 32 gardeners tending to them, it’s hardly surprising that their lawns, flowerbeds, groves and fountains are in such immaculate condition. There are other diversions too, including a lifesize replica of the Lourdes grotto, the headquarters of Vatican Radio and the lovely John XXIII tower, with its own built-in apartment for VIP guests. And no, we didn’t get an invite. It would have been nice to spend more time there, but Nicoletta was on a tight schedule, ever-ready to lasso any stragglers back into line with her tongue.
At the furthest reaches of the Vatican Gardens there used to be a tennis court, where the Swiss Guards played with each other. In the 1980s, this had to make way for the papal helipad, which was probably for the best: it’s hard to serve and volley when a Sikorsky’s about to land on your head. After gazing lovingly at this strip of concrete, we moved on to witness the Vatican’s very own parrots swooping among the cedar trees Wisely, these colourful birds stayed in the upper branches: you never know when Jean Paul Gaultier might come along in search of ideas for his spring collection.
Before boarding the train to the airport, there was just time for one more retail fix. The indelicately named Upim store at Termini stocks everything from fashions to garden furniture. I toyed with the idea of squeezing a deck chair into my hand luggage, but instead raided the kitchenware section.
Michelle, meanwhile, discovered the very style of cup that she had been about to half-inch from the George Byron Café ; “My prayers were answered!”, she beamed: Proof, if proof were needed that God is a woman.
Recommended:
Yes
Best Suited For: Couples
Best Time to Travel Here: Anytime
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Epinions.com ID:
arktos
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Member: Craig McAndrew
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Reviews written: 30
Trusted by: 2 members
About Me:
A librarian who's rediscovered reading - well whaddayaknow!
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