Today was another day of highlights we’d missed on previous days. They were on opposite ways from the hotel. I suppose if we had planned better we could have had more contiguous sites. But whenever we tried to plan out our trip back home we got all glassy-eyed reading the guide books. It all makes much more sense seeing it IRL.
I finally got up early this morning to get pics of St Peter’s at dawn. I was out on the street by 6:30am! It was only 2C so I was heavily bundled up.
Realized the sunrise wasn’t as far east as I expected cause it was winter, so I’d have to find a different location for pics. Walked about 30 minutes down the Tiber for a south-facing view. This is the place to be for sunrise pics in winter.
Took a more direct path back to the hotel, passing through Piazza Navona. The lighting was still good and the piazza was empty so took a bunch more pics.
Got home and was awake; Heather was still trying to sleep so I caught up some more on my blog in the brunch room with a pot of tea.
Later we had breakfast and then walked over to Castel Sant’Angelo. There was a ten minute wait to buy tickets. The self-guided tour is excellent, following the ‘itinerary’ arrows. I was rather impressed with the castle. There’s great views from the top of the Vatican and other Rome highlights. I was disoriented from the perspective and it took a while to place all the sights in my head. There’s also a café near the top with tables in the crenels (probably not the right term as these were a couple feet wide) which was a cool place to have a coffee and check out the views.
It took over an hour to get through the castle. Next for today was Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, 3km east.
It was a fairly direct route to the Basilica. The route took us past some of the more famous sites, with casual down-street views of the Colosseo and other places we’d seen earlier.
The basilica was framed in the last street we took for about 1km. It was already 2pm so we decided to have lunch first.
The hotel phone’s battery was dead so we couldn’t look up reviews, and had to resort to how things were done in the old days. We looked at menus and how busy places were and picked a spot.
We ordered quite a bit for lunch. The anchovies in the starter were very salty. The pasta was quite good - pappardelle with artichokes and mushrooms (we’ve been looking for the pasta labeled ‘homemade’ on the menu). The grilled lamb wasn’t so great. The espresso was so-so.
Maybe there is something to this internet and crowd-sourced review thing.
So onto Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore. There was a short five minute line up for security. It looked like there was a mass starting shortly so we didn’t spend much time inside. There was also a mass in progress in one of the side chapels.
The basilica was huge but probably 3rd out of the three papal basilicas we’ve seen.
The walk home was straightforward. We’re starting to get to know our way about with all the walking we’ve been doing :)
Our hotel wasn’t able to get us in for dinner anywhere (we wanted an a la carte dinner for NYE). The hotel was having a little soirée on the rooftop terrace, with small bites. We were still full from our big lunch so just small bites for dinner sounded good (and is more typical here).
Quickly showered and headed up to the rooftop. Most outside areas in Rome are enclosed in wind breaks and covers, with heat lamps, and are quite pleasant even with it being only 7C or so outside.
Grabbed some key seats between two heat lamps. Had our free prosecco, then some wine. The small bites were tasty and enough food.
There was a good turnout (I think there’s only 15 rooms in the hotel so we recognized most of the guests). People started to peter out so we did too.
Around 11:30pm the fireworks started, lasting for almost an hour. There were three locations, we were at the epicenter. We were tired from the long day of walking and fell fast asleep after the fireworks were done, we didn’t hear any late revellers at all!
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