The sun is out today. In full force. Hovering around 65 degrees for the better part of the day with not a cloud in sight. Two days after easter and Rome seems like the Daytona Beach of Europe. Want to see the forum? 1 hour wait. Want to see St Pauls? 2 hour wait. We’re not suckers. We know that being here for three weeks will pay off when the students head back to their respective countries. But I’m not going to pretend that the crowds will disappear.
We have a new plan of action starting tomorrow. Keeping inline with the rest of the Romans we’ll be up early to take care of business, then lounging in the apartment during the heat of the day. Finally we’ll hit the town at night to soak up some good times.
Having only seen images of Rome in movies and books, it’s hard to grasp that I’m here. We walked for four hours today. Around the Coliseum(our apartment is a mere four blocks away) around the Forum, around the Circus Maximus, up to the Pantheon, stumbled upon the Trivoli fountain, down to the Tiber, and finally back home. Casual walking, no destination in mind. Turn one corner and you find yourself in front of a 800 year old church. Turn another and you’re in front of the French Embassy. Living in a small town like Portland is nice, but this is the big city.
We are really looking forward to our trip to Paris. With Cancellara pulling the Ronde out of his hat I’m betting Boonen will be in prime form. As much as I’d like to see Hincapie finally win this damn thing, I think the ego blow Boonen took last Sunday will fuel that fire. Either way, we’ll be there shouting at them at their faces.
The bicycle situation is pretty interesting. We saw a group of about 20 german tourists on rental bikes hauling balls and a few die hard riders, but in the old city, biking is pretty rare as far as we can tell. And I don’t blame people for not riding here. The traffic is crazy, but predictable. It’s the tourists that would lead me to avoid this area. The sheer number of people and their unpredictability that is scary. We did see this bike sharing system though.
As we walked home from the Tiber, we made our way through some ruins with no name. Kind of like the Forum, minus people. In the twenty minutes we spent there we passed maybe 10 people. And we were only across the street.
I’m still finding new beers to try as well. Mostly everything in a bottle or can is a lager of some sort; most of which are pilsners. My favorite so far is Peroni, but Faxe is pretty intense(might just be the 1000ml can).
Also good is Tuborg. I’ve got a couple more in the fridge getting cold which I’ll share in my next post.
For now we’re headed to dinner. Apparently we’re in store for some authentic Roman seafood. I’m going for the squid ink.