After the pick-pocketing debacle in Brussels we were absolutely forbidden to ever leave the house again by one of my cousins, she thinks we are incapable of looking after ourselves so we set out to prove her fears groundless and Rome............brace yourself, here we come, ready or not!
As I’m no longer an airport employee I’m not allowed to use the V.I.P. car park and am downgraded to the normal staff (I didn’t know there were any!) car park. This involves obtaining a pass prior to your flight and returning it afterwards. Not difficult in itself but this was not a swipe card and there were no instructions on how to raise the barrier. A queue of irate staff quickly formed behind us as we followed the orders which were being barked at us by security. In we go, park the car, get on the staff bus and off we go to the Terminal. The flight is half empty and on time so what more could we ask for. The weather in Rome was wonderful and on our approach we could clearly see the Vatican and the Colosseum, so exciting. After landing we were very much relieved to see our suitcases had also arrived safely. Ciampino has the world’s worst record for stolen cases. It is even worse than LHR where they merely lose them. We had decided to go into town on the Airport ‘Terravision’ shuttle bus. We were the last ones to board the bus and the only seats left were at the back. I’m sure this bus had seen service in WW2 as a troop transporter for the allies. It was disgusting, filthy and there was no air conditioning so we boiled the whole way into town. After 5 minutes we both agreed that the return tickets were a bad idea and we would not use them even if WW3 was declared. The bus drops you at the termini district which everyone tells you to avoid if you value your life. They open up both sides of the luggage storage and start to throw cases all over the road on one side and onto the pavement on the other. Sitting at the back was now not such a good idea as we were stuck behind everyone else trying to get off. We were both convinced that we would never see our suitcases again but hey, surprise, surprise there they were. Maybe I had misjudged things and worried for nothing. Next thing is find a taxi to get to our hotel. There is a licensed taxi rank close by so we get into one and off we go. After about 5 minutes he stops and tells us that due to the narrow road which our hotel is situated on we have to walk the last few yards. We got out and hubs tries to pay him the extortionate amount he asks for but for some reason he hasn’t got enough money so the driver settles for what he does have and hubs, thoughtful as ever, insists on tipping him with the last of the loose change in his pocket. We cannot see a ‘Crowne Plaza’ but there is a very expensive and exclusive looking hotel nearby with a smart doorman talking to the chauffeur of an upmarket Mercedes celebrity limousine. We ask them to point out our hotel and they both just look at each other with a look I recognise. We have been taken for a ride, literally, and dumped! Why us, again?! Hubs asks me what we have tattooed on our foreheads but I don’t use obscene language so he will never know. The two men agree that we have indeed been dumped and say it happens all the time and how sorry they are. They have the same expression of pity that the animals in Cologne Zoo had when they looked at us, dripping in the rain. The driver confirms what I had now sussed out that our hotel was miles from here on the other side of Rome. We must have looked really pathetic because he checks his watch, has a short conversation with the doorman then offers to take us there for a set price which is a lot less than we have just forked out for a 5 minute trip. What choice do we have? If we ever get there at least it will be in some considerable style and a lot more comfort than either of us are used to. My cousin is right, we should be locked up for our own protection, we couldn’t even make it to the hotel without being robbed and hubs had even insisted on tipping the thieving little …….! On the way I quizzed him about why he had no money left and he thought he ‘lost’ some of the euro notes so when we gratefully arrived at our hotel I had to pay the driver which meant that it had cost a total of 130 euros just to go from the Airport to our hotel!!! The driver, who is called Massimo and is now our best friend, has offered to chauffeur us back to the Airport when we leave, gives us a set price, books us in on his blueberry computer, gives us his card and wishes us well.
In view of hubs inability to handle cash I have decided that he will be put on financial rationing so he is now on the fiscal equivalent of bread and water. Each day I give him a set amount and every night I go through his pockets and if I think there is too much in there I relieve him of some of it. If I don’t take it from him someone else will, so, better the pickpocket you know etc.
Check in is fine, room is lovely and is overlooking the gardens and outdoor pool. We have the biggest bed in the world. The rest of the hotel lives up to expectation so we decide to catch a bus into town and have a look around. The bus stop is just outside the hotel and takes you straight to the Vatican. Only problem is we don’t know which stop to get off for St. Peter’s. As usual, hubs goes all macho and refuses to ask anyone for help even though he can speak Latin which I think is the next best thing to Italian. The bus is full of nuns and there is also a priest on board so it’s not too difficult to work out where they are all going. He’s the first Father Ted impersonator I’ve ever seen who looks remotely friendly so I take the bull by the horns.
“Scusi”
“Si?”
“Vaticano?”
He then gabbles away in Italian but even we can understand that he is, amazingly, also going to the Vaticano so we should get off the bus at the same stop as him. Job done! How easy was that? We can now see the dome of St. Peter’s and the bus stops. All the nuns get off but not the priest, which means that we don’t get off either as we are sticking to him like glue. The bus sets off again and the Father Dougal (I’ve decided this chap is not as savvy as Ted) impersonator apologises to us. It seems we have overshot, the infallible is fallible. My Mother was right all these years, never trust a priest! We all get off at the next stop and God’s representative on earth realises that it was the right stop after all, so he is forgiven. Heaven only knows where the nuns ended up.
As it is now mid afternoon and the queues to get into the Basilica are not very long we opt to try and get in. One problem, as it is very hot I have changed into shorts and I know that my knees, which are now naked, are unacceptable to the great and good. As my top is quite long I pull my shorts down to a respectable level and shuffle through the security gates. I pull up my shorts again, having forgotten that we still have to pass the scrutiny of the moral custodians. I’m spotted before we get in and we are asked to leave, I decide against dropping my shorts again as I feel this will get us nowhere. We decide that we’ll try again tomorrow when I’m less provocatively attired. We spend the rest of the afternoon wandering aimlessly around planning our week and then head back to the hotel to change and have dinner.
It soon becomes obvious that everyone in the hotel, except us, and the staff are ageing Americans who have just got off a cruise. (Now, my American sisters, please do not take offence at my observations of our cultural and epicurean differences!) These delightful geriatrics have taken over and we feel like foreigners within the hotel never mind the country. They are all lovely and very friendly and we are constantly asked if we are on a cruise. We say no, (we’re not old enough) and the next question is always,
“What part of England do you come from?”
“Glasgow” throws them every time and without exception we are regaled with tales of how much they love London. They always seem delighted to hear that I am Scottish and are intrigued that Hubs is half English and half Austrian. You can see them trying to work out which half is which.( For the benefit of anyone else who has also wondered, like all Austrians he loves his food so I have decided that the half that eats is Austrian and you have to work out the rest for yourself.) Watching a room full of Americans eating is a rather spooky experience as they all, without exception, eat only with their right hand whilst their left hand remains immobile on their knee. The only cutlery used is a fork as though it were a spoon. It is like sitting in a stroke rehabilitation ward and I did wonder what would happen to any of them if they really had a stroke and it rendered their right side useless, I expect they would starve to death.
After a couple of days we are real pros at getting around Rome, to the point that people are now asking us for directions and we never fail to tell them where to go. Even on the buses we happily tell other tourists where to get off. The only down side is that with all this walking around my feet are suffering but then this always happens. I now am the proud owner of the worlds most travelled blisters. I have blisters that are bigger than the toes which they are growing on and some of my blisters have blisters of their own. One blister was even bursting out into third generation blisters. Normally I have quite inoffensive little feet, they are a neat size 4 no size 9 Clementine herring boxes for me. They don’t smell and most of my toes are at the front of my feet so there really should be no problems, but, oh dear, oh dear. My ankles are now swelling up and the pain levels are quite stressful at times but the worst bit is how they look. They are so deformed with fluid that next to the Elephant man, he would look normal. My feet and heat are not happy bedfellows.
When we finally make into St. Peter’s Basilica it is nothing less than breathtaking. The Catholic Church has never heard the style maxim that ‘less is more.’ As someone reared within the boring bosom of the protestant Church of Scotland I’m used to my religion being dour, drab and driech. God is grim up north. I’m not used to the panoply of colour and opulence and have seen nothing like it since a bad bout of norovirus.
On Sunday the Pope is due to appear at his window and bless the crowd so we are not going to miss that. We get there quite early and get ourselves settled on the base of one of the pillars that has a good view of his apartments. Everyone is excited and friendly, talking to each other and generally being pleasant. I bet the crowds that used to go to the Colosseum to see Christians fed to the lions behaved in a similar fashion. Out of the blue a pigeon poops on my foot, what is it about my feet? Everyone is amused, especially hubs and tells me how lucky I am. LUCKY? Is it really lucky to be bombarded by an incontinent bird? (Please do not e-mail me jokes about incontinent birds!) hubs is not so amused when 5 minutes later it’s his turn and his right leg receives a considerable pelting. I ask him how lucky he feels and get a withering look. The star turn is due ‘on’ at 12 o’clock and at 11.45 a window opens and two priests throw out a scarlet thing to hang from the window sill, a bit like they do at Buck House when Betty is doing a turn. The clock strikes 12 and there he is. It’s like at a football match, the crowd go wild. I ask if it’s the Pope, he says it is, I ask how he knows because from here it could be anybody. He tells me to shut up. The Pope says a little homily (Elton John or George Michael?) says the Angelus (?) and then blesses the crowd in 5 different languages. hubs says how good the sound system is and I reply that I think it’s a recording. For a confirmed agnostic he is taking this whole thing a bit religiously, but that said, we did feel privileged if not exactly blessed and we both admitted that we would not have missed the experience for the world.
Next day found us sitting at a table on the Piazza Navona having a drink before lunch when hubs said,
“Has Oliver Hardy (of Laurel and Hardy fame) just walked past?”
“Don’t be daft………… It was actually Charlie Chaplin.”
The human statues were arriving for work and getting themselves ready for a hard days artistic begging. It may look easy, just standing around and people giving you money but I really couldn’t do it, especially in the heat. We did see one which I admit I could do but hubs was adamant that he wasn’t a human statue. He said it was a tramp asleep on the pavement with a begging bowl. Looked good to me, he didn’t move a muscle and I thought his dog was very authentic as well.
Next stop, Circus Maximus where he had been banned from doing Russell Crowe impersonations. The temptation proved too great for him! On to the Colosseum where he has been banned from silly Monty Python quotes from ‘The Life of Brian.’ He was quite restrained here till behind my back I hear him mumble something about ‘Incontinentia Buttocks’ and ‘Bigus Dicus’. As a punishment I made him conjugate the verb ‘to go’ in latin. Clever clogs could do it. Believe it or not, nothing funny happened on the way to the Forum!
We tried a few times to get into the Vatican museums and the Sistine Chapel but you had to queue for about three hours. I cannot queue that long for anyone and besides it saved me having to listen to someone hum the theme tune from ‘The South Bank Show.’
After we returned home a friend asked if we had seen the flocks of cormorants which nest by Tiber Island. It seems they congregate there in their thousands and are known locally as ‘shags’! I’m afraid I found myself telling her that I’d not actually gone looking for a shag!!!! We did see some other memorable sights though. There was Hadrian’s back passage, Santa Maria’s crack and the backside of the Pantheon, which could have done with a bit of a tidy up if you ask me. Actually, as I stood inside the Pantheon and gazed up at the oculus (hole in the roof) where the rain just pours in I thought, “we used to have a roof like that!” It made me feel quite at home. There were fountains by the million and I lost count of the number of churches we went into. You quickly suffer from ‘Ruin Overload’ and you soon get used to the constant blaspheming, you know the sort of thing, “Dear God” and “Jesus Christ!” Mind you, you have to be in a church to catch them swearing.
We both loved Rome and hope to return to the Eternal city one day but if anyone from the Roman tourist board ever reads this we will be banned for life. We threw coins into the Trevi Fountain to ensure our return, actually, we threw money everywhere, but that’s us for you. Massimo picked us up as agreed and as we left the heart of the Roman Catholic Church I marvelled at the miraculous effect it had on me. I arrived able bodied and left crippled. Who says there’s not a God?
Ballerina x
As I’m no longer an airport employee I’m not allowed to use the V.I.P. car park and am downgraded to the normal staff (I didn’t know there were any!) car park. This involves obtaining a pass prior to your flight and returning it afterwards. Not difficult in itself but this was not a swipe card and there were no instructions on how to raise the barrier. A queue of irate staff quickly formed behind us as we followed the orders which were being barked at us by security. In we go, park the car, get on the staff bus and off we go to the Terminal. The flight is half empty and on time so what more could we ask for. The weather in Rome was wonderful and on our approach we could clearly see the Vatican and the Colosseum, so exciting. After landing we were very much relieved to see our suitcases had also arrived safely. Ciampino has the world’s worst record for stolen cases. It is even worse than LHR where they merely lose them. We had decided to go into town on the Airport ‘Terravision’ shuttle bus. We were the last ones to board the bus and the only seats left were at the back. I’m sure this bus had seen service in WW2 as a troop transporter for the allies. It was disgusting, filthy and there was no air conditioning so we boiled the whole way into town. After 5 minutes we both agreed that the return tickets were a bad idea and we would not use them even if WW3 was declared. The bus drops you at the termini district which everyone tells you to avoid if you value your life. They open up both sides of the luggage storage and start to throw cases all over the road on one side and onto the pavement on the other. Sitting at the back was now not such a good idea as we were stuck behind everyone else trying to get off. We were both convinced that we would never see our suitcases again but hey, surprise, surprise there they were. Maybe I had misjudged things and worried for nothing. Next thing is find a taxi to get to our hotel. There is a licensed taxi rank close by so we get into one and off we go. After about 5 minutes he stops and tells us that due to the narrow road which our hotel is situated on we have to walk the last few yards. We got out and hubs tries to pay him the extortionate amount he asks for but for some reason he hasn’t got enough money so the driver settles for what he does have and hubs, thoughtful as ever, insists on tipping him with the last of the loose change in his pocket. We cannot see a ‘Crowne Plaza’ but there is a very expensive and exclusive looking hotel nearby with a smart doorman talking to the chauffeur of an upmarket Mercedes celebrity limousine. We ask them to point out our hotel and they both just look at each other with a look I recognise. We have been taken for a ride, literally, and dumped! Why us, again?! Hubs asks me what we have tattooed on our foreheads but I don’t use obscene language so he will never know. The two men agree that we have indeed been dumped and say it happens all the time and how sorry they are. They have the same expression of pity that the animals in Cologne Zoo had when they looked at us, dripping in the rain. The driver confirms what I had now sussed out that our hotel was miles from here on the other side of Rome. We must have looked really pathetic because he checks his watch, has a short conversation with the doorman then offers to take us there for a set price which is a lot less than we have just forked out for a 5 minute trip. What choice do we have? If we ever get there at least it will be in some considerable style and a lot more comfort than either of us are used to. My cousin is right, we should be locked up for our own protection, we couldn’t even make it to the hotel without being robbed and hubs had even insisted on tipping the thieving little …….! On the way I quizzed him about why he had no money left and he thought he ‘lost’ some of the euro notes so when we gratefully arrived at our hotel I had to pay the driver which meant that it had cost a total of 130 euros just to go from the Airport to our hotel!!! The driver, who is called Massimo and is now our best friend, has offered to chauffeur us back to the Airport when we leave, gives us a set price, books us in on his blueberry computer, gives us his card and wishes us well.
In view of hubs inability to handle cash I have decided that he will be put on financial rationing so he is now on the fiscal equivalent of bread and water. Each day I give him a set amount and every night I go through his pockets and if I think there is too much in there I relieve him of some of it. If I don’t take it from him someone else will, so, better the pickpocket you know etc.
Check in is fine, room is lovely and is overlooking the gardens and outdoor pool. We have the biggest bed in the world. The rest of the hotel lives up to expectation so we decide to catch a bus into town and have a look around. The bus stop is just outside the hotel and takes you straight to the Vatican. Only problem is we don’t know which stop to get off for St. Peter’s. As usual, hubs goes all macho and refuses to ask anyone for help even though he can speak Latin which I think is the next best thing to Italian. The bus is full of nuns and there is also a priest on board so it’s not too difficult to work out where they are all going. He’s the first Father Ted impersonator I’ve ever seen who looks remotely friendly so I take the bull by the horns.
“Scusi”
“Si?”
“Vaticano?”
He then gabbles away in Italian but even we can understand that he is, amazingly, also going to the Vaticano so we should get off the bus at the same stop as him. Job done! How easy was that? We can now see the dome of St. Peter’s and the bus stops. All the nuns get off but not the priest, which means that we don’t get off either as we are sticking to him like glue. The bus sets off again and the Father Dougal (I’ve decided this chap is not as savvy as Ted) impersonator apologises to us. It seems we have overshot, the infallible is fallible. My Mother was right all these years, never trust a priest! We all get off at the next stop and God’s representative on earth realises that it was the right stop after all, so he is forgiven. Heaven only knows where the nuns ended up.
As it is now mid afternoon and the queues to get into the Basilica are not very long we opt to try and get in. One problem, as it is very hot I have changed into shorts and I know that my knees, which are now naked, are unacceptable to the great and good. As my top is quite long I pull my shorts down to a respectable level and shuffle through the security gates. I pull up my shorts again, having forgotten that we still have to pass the scrutiny of the moral custodians. I’m spotted before we get in and we are asked to leave, I decide against dropping my shorts again as I feel this will get us nowhere. We decide that we’ll try again tomorrow when I’m less provocatively attired. We spend the rest of the afternoon wandering aimlessly around planning our week and then head back to the hotel to change and have dinner.
It soon becomes obvious that everyone in the hotel, except us, and the staff are ageing Americans who have just got off a cruise. (Now, my American sisters, please do not take offence at my observations of our cultural and epicurean differences!) These delightful geriatrics have taken over and we feel like foreigners within the hotel never mind the country. They are all lovely and very friendly and we are constantly asked if we are on a cruise. We say no, (we’re not old enough) and the next question is always,
“What part of England do you come from?”
“Glasgow” throws them every time and without exception we are regaled with tales of how much they love London. They always seem delighted to hear that I am Scottish and are intrigued that Hubs is half English and half Austrian. You can see them trying to work out which half is which.( For the benefit of anyone else who has also wondered, like all Austrians he loves his food so I have decided that the half that eats is Austrian and you have to work out the rest for yourself.) Watching a room full of Americans eating is a rather spooky experience as they all, without exception, eat only with their right hand whilst their left hand remains immobile on their knee. The only cutlery used is a fork as though it were a spoon. It is like sitting in a stroke rehabilitation ward and I did wonder what would happen to any of them if they really had a stroke and it rendered their right side useless, I expect they would starve to death.
After a couple of days we are real pros at getting around Rome, to the point that people are now asking us for directions and we never fail to tell them where to go. Even on the buses we happily tell other tourists where to get off. The only down side is that with all this walking around my feet are suffering but then this always happens. I now am the proud owner of the worlds most travelled blisters. I have blisters that are bigger than the toes which they are growing on and some of my blisters have blisters of their own. One blister was even bursting out into third generation blisters. Normally I have quite inoffensive little feet, they are a neat size 4 no size 9 Clementine herring boxes for me. They don’t smell and most of my toes are at the front of my feet so there really should be no problems, but, oh dear, oh dear. My ankles are now swelling up and the pain levels are quite stressful at times but the worst bit is how they look. They are so deformed with fluid that next to the Elephant man, he would look normal. My feet and heat are not happy bedfellows.
When we finally make into St. Peter’s Basilica it is nothing less than breathtaking. The Catholic Church has never heard the style maxim that ‘less is more.’ As someone reared within the boring bosom of the protestant Church of Scotland I’m used to my religion being dour, drab and driech. God is grim up north. I’m not used to the panoply of colour and opulence and have seen nothing like it since a bad bout of norovirus.
On Sunday the Pope is due to appear at his window and bless the crowd so we are not going to miss that. We get there quite early and get ourselves settled on the base of one of the pillars that has a good view of his apartments. Everyone is excited and friendly, talking to each other and generally being pleasant. I bet the crowds that used to go to the Colosseum to see Christians fed to the lions behaved in a similar fashion. Out of the blue a pigeon poops on my foot, what is it about my feet? Everyone is amused, especially hubs and tells me how lucky I am. LUCKY? Is it really lucky to be bombarded by an incontinent bird? (Please do not e-mail me jokes about incontinent birds!) hubs is not so amused when 5 minutes later it’s his turn and his right leg receives a considerable pelting. I ask him how lucky he feels and get a withering look. The star turn is due ‘on’ at 12 o’clock and at 11.45 a window opens and two priests throw out a scarlet thing to hang from the window sill, a bit like they do at Buck House when Betty is doing a turn. The clock strikes 12 and there he is. It’s like at a football match, the crowd go wild. I ask if it’s the Pope, he says it is, I ask how he knows because from here it could be anybody. He tells me to shut up. The Pope says a little homily (Elton John or George Michael?) says the Angelus (?) and then blesses the crowd in 5 different languages. hubs says how good the sound system is and I reply that I think it’s a recording. For a confirmed agnostic he is taking this whole thing a bit religiously, but that said, we did feel privileged if not exactly blessed and we both admitted that we would not have missed the experience for the world.
Next day found us sitting at a table on the Piazza Navona having a drink before lunch when hubs said,
“Has Oliver Hardy (of Laurel and Hardy fame) just walked past?”
“Don’t be daft………… It was actually Charlie Chaplin.”
The human statues were arriving for work and getting themselves ready for a hard days artistic begging. It may look easy, just standing around and people giving you money but I really couldn’t do it, especially in the heat. We did see one which I admit I could do but hubs was adamant that he wasn’t a human statue. He said it was a tramp asleep on the pavement with a begging bowl. Looked good to me, he didn’t move a muscle and I thought his dog was very authentic as well.
Next stop, Circus Maximus where he had been banned from doing Russell Crowe impersonations. The temptation proved too great for him! On to the Colosseum where he has been banned from silly Monty Python quotes from ‘The Life of Brian.’ He was quite restrained here till behind my back I hear him mumble something about ‘Incontinentia Buttocks’ and ‘Bigus Dicus’. As a punishment I made him conjugate the verb ‘to go’ in latin. Clever clogs could do it. Believe it or not, nothing funny happened on the way to the Forum!
We tried a few times to get into the Vatican museums and the Sistine Chapel but you had to queue for about three hours. I cannot queue that long for anyone and besides it saved me having to listen to someone hum the theme tune from ‘The South Bank Show.’
After we returned home a friend asked if we had seen the flocks of cormorants which nest by Tiber Island. It seems they congregate there in their thousands and are known locally as ‘shags’! I’m afraid I found myself telling her that I’d not actually gone looking for a shag!!!! We did see some other memorable sights though. There was Hadrian’s back passage, Santa Maria’s crack and the backside of the Pantheon, which could have done with a bit of a tidy up if you ask me. Actually, as I stood inside the Pantheon and gazed up at the oculus (hole in the roof) where the rain just pours in I thought, “we used to have a roof like that!” It made me feel quite at home. There were fountains by the million and I lost count of the number of churches we went into. You quickly suffer from ‘Ruin Overload’ and you soon get used to the constant blaspheming, you know the sort of thing, “Dear God” and “Jesus Christ!” Mind you, you have to be in a church to catch them swearing.
We both loved Rome and hope to return to the Eternal city one day but if anyone from the Roman tourist board ever reads this we will be banned for life. We threw coins into the Trevi Fountain to ensure our return, actually, we threw money everywhere, but that’s us for you. Massimo picked us up as agreed and as we left the heart of the Roman Catholic Church I marvelled at the miraculous effect it had on me. I arrived able bodied and left crippled. Who says there’s not a God?
Ballerina x
someone should pay you to travel and then tell the tale 
)
I find it very difficult to eat with my left hand when I have tried it.
