My last post about the journey of a Maltese priest by sea to Rome reminded me about the reverse trip that Carol and I undertook almost two months ago. This post is a sketch of that September week of travel.
We managed to meet up as planned in the new jungle of Heathrow airport at terminal 5. I was grumpy from my British bout of flu and from my train and bus trip to the airport. On the awful journey down from Scotland a week or so before, I bought a seniors concession card that lasts for a year. This appeared to be saving me a bit of money but I forgot to read the fine print so when I left my brother's house with my cheap fare ticket nestled in my pocket, I left the concession card on my brother's kitchen table thinking I wouldn't be needing it again. This turned me into some kind of monstrous rail cheat as I discovered when the inspector came round and insisted that I had to buy a full ticket there and then. I couldn't even just pay the difference. So my cost-saving experiment turned out to be very expensive!
Rome
We landed in Rome about 8.00 pm without anywhere booked to stay and of course neither of us could speak the language. Carol had the Lonely Planet guide to Italy and located an area near to the Vatican that she thought would be a nice quiet area and when we got to the train terminal we spotted a tourist hotel booking agent and asked them to book somewhere in that area. Then we jumped in a taxi. The hotel was in via Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli just across the river within easy walking distance of the Vatican with a bus stop just around the corner. Our plan was to stay in Rome for a couple of nights and then go to Florence for a few nights before taking the train down the west coast to Sicily from where we could get a ferry over to Malta. But the hotel turned out to be such a convenient find that we decided we would stay in Rome for longer and just go to Florence for a day trip on the train. This meant that we could get a 3-day Roma pass that allowed us to travel freely on the buses and get free entry to our first two museums with reductions thereafter. It was well worth it!
This post is taking me longer than I anticipated as I'm surrounded by maps and all the memorabilia of our trip. It is taking me time to piece together the story and I'm enjoying the reflection but I need to find a picture and post this so I can take a break and come back to it again.
So our first day in Rome we found our bearings by walking using a map picked up at the hotel. We strolled along the river to the Vatican, took one look at the huge queues waiting to get into the museum and decided to leave that for another day when we felt stronger! I am always happy just wandering around and looking when I am in a new city. We decided to use our first free museum pass going in to the Castel S. Angelo which we got very attached to over the coming days as it grew into our very own local castle. I think it might be a little neglected in the wider surfeit of monuments, fountains and buildings that contribute to the tourist experience in Rome but I think it started out as someone's mausoleum and it has a long circular ramp inside the central building leading to great views across the river from the ramparts. It also has its very own pedestrian bridge across the river with monumental statues on either side all the way across.
We continued our Rome orientation by strolling across this bridge and into Piazza Navona for lunch. This piazza has the fountains that are essential in Rome, plenty of outdoor cafes vying for our custom and an art market in the centre where artists present their Italian landscapes and portraits. We also noticed several women, some with disabilities, who were begging along the cafe strip.
Walking back to our hotel via another of the many bridges, we located several of the classic Roman sites including the Pantheon, Trevi fountain and numerous palaces. Rome is stunning in that there are fountains, monuments and palaces at every turn but what we didn't expect to see was the astonishing number of people who were getting married in all these iconic places! We learnt over the next week that wherever you are in Italy and whatever day of the week it is you will find someone having their wedding photos taken. In Libya, I had come across several pre-wedding parties with people taking over a street to celebrate with cars honking their horns as the men in the family drove through in trucks. In Rome, there are gorgeous white wedding dresses, elaborate posing and the entire population driving past and wishing the couple well. In Catania, the couples followed each other into the main square, posed in front of their white vintage cars, and took a walk around the square.
With everyone in Italy getting married, it didn't surprise me that the ancient waiter in the small pizzeria around the corner from our hotel, addressed us as though he was madly in love and wanted to marry us! Even with our non-existent Italian we guessed that he wasn't just explaining why it was taking so long for our pizza to arrive after we had found a red-checked table cloth in the crowded restaurant. But we had our half carafe of red so it didn't seem to matter very much!
The next day we bought a ticket on a jump on, jump off, open-top, double-decker bus to extend our exploration of the city. The double-decker bus with English audiotape guide is a good way to get about the main tourist spots and enjoy the skyline of the streets. This time, we spent most of our jump off time walking around the amazing coliseum and circus Maximus. But looking back now at the maps, I think I will need to return to Rome and stay there for a month if I want to do more than flit over the surface.
On our third day, we walked over to the Vatican again and queued to go into the Museum. This time, on the advice of the man on the desk at our hotel, we went around lunchtime and the queue was small and moved quite rapidly. But the museum was still crowded and even by the time we got into the Sistine chapel and looked at that ceiling that is so familiar, it was still difficult to find space to sit on one of the benches and look up. By this time it was closing time so we had half an hour to finish off our crooked neck before being ushered out and back onto the streets of Rome.
The opera
The other thing that has to be done in Rome is go to the opera. We spotted a flier for La Traviata - not at La Scala, but at the Chiesa di S. Paolo entro le Mura. It was performed by the Orchestra e Coro i Virtuosi d'Opera di Roma and we booked two tickets. It was close to the Opera House and we gave ourselves plenty of time to get there on the bus and work out how to pick up our tickets. There is an Irish pub just across the street from the church where the performance was to take place so Carol set about finding us a table in the crowd whilst I went to get us some wine. When I got back, Carol was deep in conversation with a young man from Lebanon who was visiting Italy to teach in peace studies at the university. As we sat and chatted about the world in general, a woman came down the street dressed in her finery and I remarked "I bet she's going to the opera" as I looked down at our own travel-weary jeans and trainers. We watched her continue down the street and sure enough she joined the queue that was starting to form outside the church. Since it was unnumbered seating allocation, I jumped up to join her in the queue and left Carol to enjoy the pub and the young man. The queue grew rapidly and began to spread across a zebra crossing threatening to block off a side street and cause chaos so I suggested with hands and gestures that we should move it around the corner. Somehow, everyone got the picture and shifted so that the queue curved round but just as we were settling in a young German couple jumped in in front of me.
"The back of the queue is down there," I pointed out politely to the young woman.
"Well you decided to change it, so I've decided to come in here," she replied
"Yes, we decided to change because the queue was blocking off the street," I explained piously.
"And we're in here now so there will be no more discussion," said the young man.
"Well that's very stylish of you," said I and we stood in awkward silence for the remaining queuing time as my organising Brit side fumed inwardly about Germanic arrogance.
In the meantime, Carol and the young Lebanese man were laughing merrily from the Irish pub across the zebra crossing. As it transpired, we managed to get front row seats in the church theatre and enjoyed the show but I find now I can't remember as much about it as I can about the drama of the queue! I know Carol found the positioning of the orchestra in front of the singers and without a pit tended to make the orchestra dominate the performers and I agree with her but I found it fascinating to sit so closely to the instruments and watch how things worked in together.
On the fourth day, we got a train to Florence for a day but I think I'll post that story separately tomorrow. I'll also come in again to this piece and finish off the train journey down the coast to Sicily.
Train to Catania
When we were booking the train to Florence, we also booked tickets for the day following to go down the coast and across to Catania in Sicily. We struck lucky with a charming older man on the desk in the booking office and he sorted everything out very quickly as we explained what we wanted to do. He suggested that we get a first-class ticket to Catania as this would give us more space but as it turned out, space was limited even in the first class carriages. We had already discovered how difficult it was getting our trundle cases up the steep steps into Italian trains but even once we were in and had found our seats, we quickly realised that there was no room for our cases as well as the six occupants of the carriage. So our two cases travelled to Catania stacked on top of each other in the corridor outside the toilet. At first we stood them upright side by side but as we got further south and the line deteriorated they kept falling over so we worked out a way of laying them flat.
Carol and I were jammed facing each other in the two middle seats with four middle-aged men, one in each corner. They were all very uncommunicative, but Carol very quickly slipped into working out who and what they were by their reading material and their conversations on the mobile phone. One was an architect on his way to a big job in Naples. Another had a wife in Rome as well as a wife in Sicily. A third was something big in the Mafia but we didn't look at him very much.
One of the men got out at Salerno and a young couple with a baby and piles of luggage took their place. It was impossible for them to fit into one seat with luggage space so they quickly negotiated more space on the rack piling a baby stroller on top of my laptop and spilling out into the two carriages next door.
South of Naples and Salerno, the train runs along by the Mediterranean sea with mountains on one side and beach with rocky groins on the other. The Lonely Planet guide describes the country south of Paula as "overdeveloped and ugly" but the sea continues to be turquoise and deep blue. There are lots of speed boats and paddle bikes for hire but not many people on the beaches. One or two people lie sunbathing on the coarse, grey sand.
Another of our men got off here so the young couple re-united in our carriage and the father played Game Boy and dozed whilst the mother held the baby on her lap. They were returning to Catania after visiting relatives. They managed to explain to us that after we cross over to Sicily, the train divides with some carriages going to Palermo and the rest going to Catania. As we got down towards the toe of Italy, the train comes down to a huge bay. There is a regional airport here with package tours from Northern Europe.
We weren't sure how the ferry crossing was going to work and were suitably amazed when we reached Reggio di Calabria and after a bit of shunting backwards and forwards the whole train simply ran onto the ferry. We were then all allowed to pile off and go up to the ferry decks. Then as we came into Messina we all got back on the train which ran off the ferry and carried on to Catania. The straightforward simplicity was stunning!
Arriving in Catania
All the way down on the train, we were anticipating that when we got into Catania it would be as easy to find somewhere to stay as it had been when we landed at Rome. This was not to be! We trundled our cases up and down the station trying to find a tourist office or hotel reservation desk that would be open at that time but there was nothing. Eventually when we were standing outside the tourist office because the sign seemed to suggest it should be open, two young men from one of the Scandinavian countries came up and we got into conversation about places to stay. They recommended their hotel, so armed with a name and a street, we ventured out to the taxi stand. Carol was keen to practice her assertive taxi skills in Catania. The taxi dropped us outside a backdoor in a very narrow street with only a very small plaque to indicate that it was anything other than a residence. We tentatively found our way up stairs to reception but the hotel was full.
We asked for their suggestions and they sent us down the road. At this point, Carol was much more adventurous than I was and lead us off trundling our suitcases down the extremely narrow footpath to find the suggested B&B. Again, the door opening directly onto the footpath but this time a series of apartment bells to try - two of them had the name of the B&B we were looking for. The young man who responded to our call, greeted us warmly and immediately started making arrangements for us to go up to our room until he worked out that we were not the people who had phoned him earlier! All three of us were devastated as we realised that the B&B was also full. We stared at each other. Then, as though he was a magician, the young man pulled out his trump card - if we wanted, he had a newly completed apartment that we could use at the same price as a room in the B&B. It was just down the road! So we set off again, trundling our suitcases and me feeling more and more anxious about being mugged in Sicily. When we got to the building which was similar to the others we had been into in that it was built around a courtyard and had lots of marble steps, my heart sank again as I saw all the builders' rubble on the steps and noticed the wobbly handrail, but Carol was valiantly proceeding so we left our cases at the bottom of the stairs and went up to inspect the apartment. It was great! Plenty of space, well finished with two huge settees and two bedrooms. So we had landed on our feet again!
I'll tell the story of our two days in Catania, one night in Modica and over to Malta when I write about Florence in my next post.
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