Our scheduled pickup (this time by a considerably more helpful and
personable driver, driving a nicer car) dropped us at the
Florence Rail station with nearly an hour to spare, which we
spent wandering and looking at magazines. The ride, through
some peaceful and pretty areas, took about an hour and a half, dropping
us at the Rail terminal in central Rome...
My Initial impression of Rome was that it was New York City in Italian...
it just seemed to have that claustrophobic urban feel to it that makes
at least me want to be somewhere else. It should be interesting to see
if I warm up to this the same way I warmed up to Florence by the time we
were done there. I'm writing this while sitting in the hotel, scoping out
today's plans. The Hotel Veneto was probably once upscale, but today it
feels as though it's past its prime. Our room is tall ceilinged, and papered
in flocked, patterned, pink Probably once nice, but now dingy. The room
is probably no smaller than the one in Venice, but it feels considerably
more confining and unpleasant, at least in part due to the fact that the
window opens onto a back alley instead of a courtyard with a fountain.
And there's so loung area of any kind to escape to, either. Clearly the
least pleasant of our stays.
We then worked our way around to Goia Mia restaurant, one that
Judie had found. The front desk at our hotel warned us about its high prices,
about $90 per person, but we wanted to check for ourselves. Too bad, the
restaurant was closed until dinner time. So we walked back to the hotel,
stopping in Piazza Barbarini to try to determine where our tour bus will
pick us up tomorrow.
We then headed down to Trevi Fountain, which is really a pretty amazing thing! Its also quite a tourist attraction, as evidenced by the several hundred folks around it. And every few tens of minutes, some idiot tourist has to walk out on the rocks toward the middle of the fountain, and get chased off by the Cabinieri. Still, quite a site to behold.
Dinner was very yummy (more so than the last place in Florence), despite the waiter fouling up both Judie's order and that of the husband at the table next to us (from New Jersey). Not to be cheated of her olives, Judie did a very respectable job of arguing for them in Italian, and ultimately getting them (though the waiter may have had the last laugh by providing them in green, not black). (And the bill turned out to be a princely $42, not the $180 predicted by our hotel's front desk.) Then back to the fountain at night, for an attempt at a few night shots, and finally, a walk back to the room, which seems to get less objectionable as I get more tired.
