A Presto!

Ciao Roma!

Our last morning in Rome, and in Europe.

We rode to the airport in a taxi with the windows down, Italian pop blaring on the radio, threading through the heart of the city past the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, the Aurelian Walls and Circus Maximus. It was an entirely unplanned farewell tour, and it was perfect.

And just like that, the Festival of Fifty comes to a close.

Is it frivolous? Perhaps, on paper. But we are acutely aware that we live a privileged life, and we take none of it for granted. Firmly in the second half of our lives now, the sense that time is finite and genuinely precious is harder to ignore. We can't take anything material with us in the end — so we committed, instead, to memories and to the people we make them with. This trip delivered both in abundance.

Today we begin the long journey home. Barring disasters, we'll leave it right here.

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For the detail-oriented reader: a taxi from central Rome to Fiumicino is a flat €55 and runs 30 to 40 minutes. Airport security was swift — five minutes, with the new machines that mercifully allow everything to stay in your bag. The dreaded EES at Fiumicino on a Sunday morning, queue joined at 9:10am, took thirty minutes despite looking considerably worse. It kept moving. There is hope.

The gorgeous breakfast room

I've never had a fountain with my breakfast!

A few reminders that you are in Italy

Nutella

 

A Roman Sojourn

Is it a capuccino? No! It was a savoury dish made of pork, potato and cod! Yes it played with the time but tasted fantastic!

Happy to report that disembarking at Bari was a dream. Cabins were available until 10am, breakfast ran at the usual time, and suitcases only needed to be out 45 minutes before collection — after which they appeared, as if by magic, on the pier. No fuss, no overnight luggage anxiety, no queuing in corridors waiting. A model disembarkation.

What we didn't realise until too late was that we could have stayed for lunch, stowed our bags on board and explored Bari before returning to collect them. A genuinely fantastic service — and one that would have been considerably more useful had it been, at any point, communicated clearly. Finding information about anything on this cruise, it must be said, required more effort than it should have.

Walking off was exactly that, walking off. No checks, no queues, nothing. A taxi was called for us and we were at Bari Centrale by 9:45am, which was earlier than expected and left us sitting on a shaded platform bench in what was already, at that hour, a genuinely aggressive heat.

The train to Rome was, unfortunately, well populated with Australians. Travelling with children. In first class. The noise levels were considerable, the suitcases were enormous and strategically positioned to block carriage entry, and we had to walk around to the other side to board. We survived four hours. Barely.

What we almost didn't survive was the 300 metres from Roma Termini to our hotel. Thirty-four degrees, no shade, full sun. By the time we checked in, we were comprehensively drenched. Any plans involving shopping had melted, quite literally, somewhere on the cobblestones outside the station.

Our brief overnight in Rome was sponsored by Amex. We had travel and dining credits to fund our stay as well as an evening at All'Oro, a Michelin-starred restaurant a short taxi ride away from the hotel. The meal was a playful, elegant take on Italian classics — exactly the right way to mark the end of a very good trip.

Docked at Bari

Bari Centrale. So grateful for seats and shade

Hurray for freebies?!

Our very minimalist room in Hotel Palazzo Montemartini, funky interiors in an old building

Bathroom

Restaurant All'Oro

Rome-ing Around

 

The Pantheon. I must be back in Italy

There's something nice about being in a place that's familiar. The most telling is when you're familiar with what to order to get your coffee how you want it!  We do love how even the coffee machines in Italy dispense decent coffee.

We had one day to make the best of our day in Rome. We were hoping that we could catch at least one of Jonah's concert but it was not to be. So we did the next best thing, enjoy the food that the Eternal City could offer. After dispensing with the important matter of Jonah's dirty socks and undies, it was off for a food tour with the Berlees. What else would you do before a degustation dinner at a Michelin star restaurant in the evening? We went into it blind. The menu was online was not the most detailed...we decided that we could cope with "5 stories" and hoped for the best. The Amex platinum charge team kindly took care of making the reservation for us, in our bid to maximise our benefits from the card. In this case, fine dining credits!

Dinner at Per Me Giulio Terrinoni was outstanding. Not only was the food superb but the service was wonderful. Informative but casual and friendly. Best of all, we were able to share the meal with friends. I wish I had taken note of what I was actually because the memory failed by the time I had to write this post...

No more local guides, back to old fashioned paper maps and google to work out the most efficient and cost effective laundry strategy

Oh real bacon, how I've missed you so

The exterior facade of our hotel. Convenient location without having the hordes of tourists

First stop of food tour. Deli. Could be in any store in Leichardt...

But having everything explained with that Italian accent and experiencing it with friends elevates the experience lol

In seriousness though the food was good 

Next up local bakery

For Roman style pizza. The guide was very specific to explain how it was very different to those in Naples

Super delicious potato pizza

As it often happens in Italy, you walk into a random passageway

And find yourself walking through an entrance of an ancient 1st century theatre

The restaurant that we were taken to used part of the original walls of the ancient theatre in its rooms downstairs

Local specialty

Pistachio tiramisu. Apparently Johnny Depp walked past us...but we all missed except for Alex who didn't tell the rest until 6 hours later...

Espreso the Italian way

No food tour is complete without gelato. I chose pino mugo which I imagine what eating a Christmas tree would be like

Waiting for the restaurant to open...

Shrimp carpaccio. One of the best dishes I've had. 

Fish sandwich

Pear dessert. Sorry that's all the brain retained!

These liquid filled balls just burst with flavour

What you get when you order espresso

Rest in Rome

I'm afraid today's post will be rather boring. My PMLE (polymorphic light eruption or fancy term for sun rash) has progressively worsened with the continued sun exposure which unfortunately had me looking like I had permanent severe goosebumps all over. My mother also didn't want to walk too much any more. With that, we had to cancel my plan to do a foodie walking tour of Trastevere which was rather disappointing. Oh well I suppose it gives me a reason to return to Rome. It probably was also  a good opportunity to catch up on some rest as it will be straight back to work on landing in Sydney. So let's enjoy the good life now!

Trevi Fountain not in action

We did a short stroll to shop in the nearby streets and walked past the Trevi fountain which was being cleaned/renovated. No coin toss for us. I don't remember if I coin tossed last trip...but I'm here now! With great shame, I have to admit that we lunched at McDonald's. We were back in the hotel shortly post lunch to avoid the sun and heat. A nap, a book at the hotel lounge followed by a quick dinner ain't too bad in my books.

Tivoli

Oma went on strike. She vetoed my plans and refused to take public transport to our intended day trip to Tivoli. Thus it was that late last night I booked the most reasonably priced tour available at the last minute to take us to Villa Adriana and Villa D'Este. To be honest, I couldn't blame her. The trip would have required several bus trips and would not have been pleasant in the heat combined with the hours of walking.

The tour left the pick up point right on 9am and surprisingly it did not take us long to get to Tivoli because there was no traffic! Lara, our guide for the day, was great. She was knowledgeable, fun and had the tour going at a good pace. The tour itself was not rushed but that was probably due to the fact that there were MUCH less tourists around. Even though our group was at the maximum of 32, we never felt cramped or crowded at any point.

Our first stop was Villa Adriana (Hadrian's Villa) and as the name suggested was the home of the Roman Emperor Hadrian in 117 AD. "Home" was not your average home but hectares of land with sprawling complexes of buildings. Here was where I had to thank my mother upon insisting on a tour as it would have been hard to fully appreciate the structure and function without our guide. Amongst other things, the mighty ancient Romans had heated floors, two libraries (one for greek and one for latin), "gyms", heated baths, cold water baths, as well as a network of underground tunnels for servants and transport of goods because Hadrian wanted everything to appear seamless and nothing out of place (like Walt Disney Worlds utilidoors!).We spent our first few hours here before the day heated up and headed up to the higher town of Tivoli where it was a few degrees cooler for a lunch break.

The scale of the complex. The original estate had even more land for activities such as hunting

The pecile, a "pool" where people can enjoy the surrounds and tranquility. It had a covered walkway surrounding it which was custom  built for "after-meal walks"

To give you some idea of the scale of the "walkways" surrounding the pecile!

Some of the olive trees on site are ancient being around 1000 years old

Heliocaminus, as the name suggest "way of the sun", these baths are heated by the suns rays

The servants' quarters, what you can't see is that the building holes to indicate where the timber floors would have been (ie it is an ancient apartment block!)

Rare remnant of existing original stucco in the corner

Canopus, inspired by Egypt likely from Hadrian's travels. One of the areas that was a direct inspiration for Villa D'Este

He would have been marble in his original glory

Greek inspired architecture. The current statues are replicas of copies of famous Greek statues that surrounded the pool. 

At the town of Tivoli itself was Villa D'Este, another UNESCO world heritage site. Villa D'Este was built to revive the magnificence of Villa Adriana and it was hard to imagine how much grander Villa Adriana would have been in its heyday because Villa D'Este was mighty spectacular! Being much "younger" at over 400 years old, it was in much better condition with fountains that were still working driven by the power of gravity fed by the River Aniene. The organ fountain ingeniously uses the waters to play an organ. Yup you read correctly. The further downhill you went, the more spectacular the fountains got.

Same features of openings to let light into lower levels found in Villa D'Este were also found in Hadrian's Villa

Some of the marble from Hadrian's Villa were used for Villa D'Este. When they didn't have enough, they would paint the rest. Done so well that you would have to look very closely to tell the difference.

The original marble, some still at Villa D'Este whereas Hadrian's Villa's marble all stripped

Rometta Fountain, dedicated to Rome

complete with she-wolf and twins

Hundred fountains

The oval fountain

The famous Neptune fountain with the organ fountain at the top

Amazing views

Not that people there! 

Our tour ended on a good note, with a bus snooze included as we drove in the air-conditioned comfort back to Rome. We showered and drank our "aperitif" at the Hotel Lounge like the Romans. The finger food was more than enough for our dinner and we were glad to be able to call it a day.

The hotel roof top terrace

Mocktails that came with olives, peanuts and chips

And some smoked salmon!