Everyone knows something about Rome.
Center of a vast, powerful, and influential empire that lasted well over a thousand years? Check.
Center of the largest religion in the world, touching over a billion people? Check.
One of the most touristic places in the world, where millions of people come to re-live history? Check.
Rampant crime, poverty, and corruption? Also check.

Of course that's only scratching the surface, but the point still stands that Rome is a multi-faceted place of history and culture that was (and still is) important for the entire world.

Day 1 in Rome

We left the house around 8:45 to catch our 10:45 plane to Rome. Typical for Luxembourg around this time, there was a traffic jam, but we arrived at the airport in good time. After passing through security, we waited for our plane. The flight was pretty typical as flights go; there was a lot of turbulence but nothing serious. The flight lasted two hours, and they fed us on the way. Luxair has started serving locally-made sandwiches on board, which I think is much better than a package of peanuts. I had a cheese sandwich, which I was suspicious of at first because the cheese looked almost like a type of french cheese that I do not like. I tried it anyway, though, and was happy to find out that it was something completely different. I read a book for the remaining time. We landed in Rome around 12:45 pm.

Fiumicino Airport is huge, which wasn't too much of a surprise. We nearly got lost in the huge mass of people, hallways, shops, and signs. We found our way eventually, however, and boarded a special train named Leonardo Express that goes directly to the central train station. It lasted 30 minutes, and provides an interesting tour from the outskirts into the downtown area of the city. Like most European cities that I've been to, it is a mix of old and new, the rundown and the restored, all together with not much pattern to it. The difference in Italy seems to be more extreme, though.

Termini, the central train station, is of course, also huge. We nearly got lost there, too. We finally found a ticket counter, where Charel and Dick got several things we would need in the coming days: a 7 day metro/bus/train ticket and a Roma Pass for the ancient ruins/monuments. We boarded the A line of the metro and went off to find our hotel.

Our hotel was located near the Trevi Fountain, which, unfortunately, was closed for restoration and repairs. It was located in what appeared to be an old house once, along a main street about a block from the metro line. The hotel was small, but extremely nicely decorated. We had a minor issue with the lights, which required a second key on the room key chain to operate by plugging it into the wall, but Charel figured it out after several minutes of confusion. We rested at the hotel room for about 30 minutes, then left to go take a small afternoon tour.

One of the first things we walked through was the Piazza di S. Silvestro, a small place near our hotel. Not much to say about it as we walked through it rather quickly.

We began to walk along the via del Corso, a very populated street with several basilicas, many stores of varying type, and absolutely tons of people sitting, standing, and moving around. We stopped in 3 basilicas or churches on this street alone.
The first one was Basilica S. Ambrogio e Carlo al Corso. Construction began on it in 1610 and like many Roman churches, it features a stunning amount of craftsmanship and art. I found myself looking up a lot in every place we went to. It was pretty overwhelming at times.

This particular church, being the first, helped to establish that the level of beauty and artwork here is unlike anything else I have seen in the other churches around Europe. Being in the center of the activity and the culture certainly helps, but it's amazing how big the difference is.

Most Catholic churches in Europe require a certain level of dress code to be able to enter them. No hats, no sleeveless (shoulder-baring) shirts, no shorts/skirts over the knee. We got around this by wearing pants/capris and short sleeved shirts on the days we planned to go into them, but a common solution for many people seemed to be shawls and wrap-around skirts. There were no shortage of those, because there were vendors selling them every 5 feet or so. Some of the larger basilicas even provided their own.

(As I have hundreds of photos and don't wish to clutter up the main body of text with them, scroll to the jump break at the bottom of the blog to see them all)

We walked a bit further down the road and entered Basilica S. Giacomo.

This one wasn't as big or as impressive as the first one, but since the bar is so high in Rome, it is still beautiful with tons of detail. Even small basilicas like this list at least a few priceless and famous artworks in their information.

Right across the street was another Baroque era church, Gesù e Maria al Corso. This was also not a very large church, but the statues in this one were pretty impressive.

All of this walking was taking us straight towards the Piazza del Popolo, or the People's Plaza. The obelisk you see in the center was brought from Egypt in 10 BC and was originally in the Circus Maximus.

There was a ton of taxi traffic here, and of course, hundreds to thousands of tourists. It used to be a place where cars could drive but is now a pedestrian area.

This is also where we had our first contact with something that would become very annoying over the course of our stay here: Peddlers. They walk around with things like roses, shawls, small glowing or noise-making things trying to sell them to you. Some of them are extremely persistent and very hard to get rid of. The first one we encountered was this type. He was trying to hand out roses. We were confused at first, we even got a couple pictures with the roses, but when Charel just gave him some small change he found in his pocket (instead of taking out his wallet like the guy probably wanted him to), he got mad and took all the flowers back. Better for us anyway, we weren't entirely sure how we planned to carry them anyway. From this point, we turned them all down, from a terse "no" to threatening them with police if they got persistent and aggressive.

On the side where we entered the Piazza, on either side of the road, stand the twin churches of S. Maria dei Miracoli and S. Maria di Montesanto. The second one was closed, so we entered the S. Maria dei Miracoli. The church also houses the embalmed body of a saint. I didn't find much information about her, only that she, according to legend, was found in the Catacombs of Priscilla and moved to the church.

Next we walked through the Piazza and up the hill through part of the gardens of the Villa Borghese located on the Pincio, a hill overlooking the Piazza del Popolo and parts of Rome. We spent some time up here taking pictures before moving on.

We walked past the French Academy and the church Trinità dei Monti, which was under restoration, and then down the Spanish Steps. As you can see, they are very crowded.

We stopped for ice cream after this, because it was pretty hot and while in Italy, you should eat it every chance you get. We had it 2-3 times a day every day that we were there. We tried to pick places that made their ice cream in house and didn't have fake flavors. I found that it was all very good, especially while walking around in the sunny, hot weather.

After ice cream, we walked past the Mausoleum Augusto and Ara Pacis Augustae (in the glass building), which has been studied and restored and has a museum. We didn't go in, as most of us were quite tired and hungry by this point. We also saw the back of the first basilica, taking us in a large, ragged circle.

We finally arrived in the Piazza Navona, where we decided to eat supper at a restaurant overlooking the plaza. This plaza used to be a stadium made by Emperor Domitian, where the Romans watched games and holds the Fountain of the 4 Rivers. The 4 rivers represented are the Nile, the Ganges, the Danube, and the Rio de la Plata (an estuary in South America).

Supper was our first taste of real Italian food. I ordered a pizza with mozzarella and Parma ham. Now, I may or may not have mentioned this before, but real Italian pizzas are not really like the pizza Americans tend to eat. Pretty much every pizza I've seen at a real Italian restaurants are very thin, and eaten with fork and knife. Sometimes the knives provided aren't really sharp enough to eat the pizza with. I generally have some trouble with this way of eating, as I am used to our barbaric method of "pick it up and eat it." I made a valiant effort, but eventually I had to revert to my barbarism and I just picked it up and ate it that way. No one glared at me or threw insults in our direction, so I guess it wasn't that big of a deal. The pizza was amazing, though. I ordered a glass of white wine, while Dick ordered an Italian beer. I should have ordered the beer too, but the wine was just fine.

After supper we made our way to the Pantheon, but as it was late, we couldn't go inside for a tour. We never did get back to tour it. I guess that leaves it for next time.

We returned to the hotel after about 7 miles of walking, exhausted but happy with what we had seen.

Photos:

Basilica S. Ambrogio e Carlo al Corso