Rome 2023 (Part Two)

Day 3 and 4 The Colosseum and The Roman Forum

This was our time to do the most incredibly iconic sights of Rome, and to slip further back in time from the Christian Renaissance Italy to classical antiquity: the Colosseum and the Roman Forum awaited.

We did – perhaps a little ambitiously – decide to walk again, and stumbled across the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore and had a quick look around there at various papal relics.

Incredibly beautiful but somehow my Church of England and Methodist upbringing does find it terribly ostentatious and costly… especially considering the plight of the poor both then and now, and in the intervening centuries!

But onwards and we suddenly turned a corner and there was that most iconic building, the Colosseum.

There was some confusion regarding tickets – it must be said – but we ended up queuing for tickets at about midday. Yes, it was hot and there was no protection from the sun; yes, the street vendors roaming the queue were a minor irritation… But it was in no way as long as people warned: we parked the little one in the shade with a phone as I queued and it took long enough for me to read three chapters of my book… or 45 minutes in other words. One word of warning for other visitors: after queuing,  the attendant needed to see all members of the party before letting us in to buy tickets, and they were some distance away and I was alone! Fortunately, he said he would remember me if I skipped off and back again and I didn’t need to queue again!

The Colosseum is without doubt iconic, but for me the experience was a little over curated: everyone shepherded into a one way system, following a set route… Obviously, I understand the reason but even so… and it was hard to contradict our daughter when, having explained what happened there, she says “But that seems mean…” Yes, chick, history often is mean, brutal and cruel…

By this stage, we set off back to the hotel: the Colosseum tickets included the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill entry, and are valid for 24 hours, so we came back the next day to visit them.

For me, this was by far the better experience of the two: there was no set path, far fewer crowds, a wider expanse… and it genuinely was the sort of place that let you feel the everyday history, let you picture a life from the past, that felt that it held stories. I loved the umbilicus urbis – the heart of the city where the division between this world and the underworld was finest. And the quasidetto carceri – three small subterranean rooms beside the temples that have been speculated to be either a jail or rooms of a brothel, because the mundanity of them being probably storerooms for grain was too… prosaic!

By this time, we had had enough of walking and had reverted to the metro, so enjoyed a shorter day and an earlier return to the hotel. Our return route to the metro took in the somewhat overwhelming Piazza Venezia and a distinctly underwhelming and very expensive lunch.

Day 5 Trastevere

Although today began with the plan to head back to the Trevi Fountain and then the Spanish Steps, a somewhat spur-of-the-moment decision on the Metro changed our plans. Rather than getting off, we stayed on until the Circo Massimo and headed west for the Tiber and Trastevere. And, as these spur of the moment decisions often turn out, we had one of the best days of the trip.

Trastevere is beginning to get rather popular thanks to TikTok but has neither the iconic sights nor direct Metro access and is an area that felt so much more relaxed and authentic. It is also home to at least two of the bookshops on my Top Ten bookshops in Rome … even if they were closed for the summer holiday, or the Asumption of Mary, both of which our break coincided with! But the atmosphere was so wonderfully Roman throughout the whole area.

Randomly coming across the botanical gardens was lovely.

And we also had probably the best meal of the holiday – not in Tonnarello’s, which gets all the love on TikTok and therefore both the queues and prices that match – but at La Scaletta, a little, friendly, welcoming place around the corner from it. Gorgeous penne amatriciana. Fantastic pizza con prosciutto e funghi – which sounds much nicer than ham and mushroom!

I am so incredibly proud of our daughter: for all the anxiety and nerves prior to the flight, she seemed to feel completely at home in Italy almost from the first day, certainly the second. Nowhere where we ate questioned her wish for plain pasta – even if I wish we could have got some more protein into her! I was recording 15,000 – 25,000 steps a day here, so her little legs have kept up so well and she has been incredibly good company. Yes, once or twice, we had minor meltdowns; yes, our days were shorter than otherwise; yes, there were some things like the Vatican that we thought would be too overwhelming. But she has been interested and engaged and happy throughout… and now is slightly annoyed at my telling her how proud I am of her.

And that was a wonderful way to finish the trip. So much so, that if we return, we would probably look for a hotel in Trastevere rather than over the river.

Bags are now packed ready for an early check out tomorrow from the hotel – hoping we can still grab some breakfast before the taxi arrives! And what does my daughter miss from home? The cats (which is understandable) and the rain!