Our Excellent Italian Adventure – Part 5

Speaking the Language

As it is with any foreign country that you might visit, your ability to speak the language makes a big difference as to how you will enjoy the trip. Case in point: Barb and I have a passable command of French and as a result we have had much more interesting experiences in France where we could communicate with the locals more than we could have had without those skills.

When we went to Spain in 2003, we were probably the least prepared (language wise) of any trip that we had ever been on. There were several opportunities where we could have had a small taste of talking with local people but it was just never practical.

Keeping this in mind, when we were getting close to going on this trip to Italy, we had started to try our best to learn as much Italian as possible. Now we’re by no means fluent but we have managed to pickup a few useful phrases.

One of the biggest challenges with speaking Italian is how similar many of the words are to Spanish. Very often we have found that we give a reply or response to someone, we occasionally find ourselves substituting Spanish words by mistake. Some examples of Italian phrases and their counterpart in Spanish:

Thank you: grazzi / gracias
Please: par favore / por favore

It seems that sometimes knowing too many languages is not a benefit at all.

Red, Red, Wine

Barb and I normally don’t drink a large amount of wine when we’re at home – maybe a few times a month. As such, the contrast of how things end up when we’re on vacation is pretty striking.

As it has been when we have travelled to France and Spain in previous years, we have been enjoying the local red wine with abundance. With every dinner so far while we have been in Italy, the four of us have had the extraordinary (and inexpensive) local wines. It is often cheaper to drink this than it is to drink something like Coke.

As you might imagine, very little Coke has been drunk on our trip.

Documenting Our Adventures

I had mentioned a few times before how, starting on this trip, I would be composing these postings on my Dell Pocket PC instead of going out to Internet cafes where I would usually sit for several hours at a time typing. I wanted to comment on how that has been working.

On average, I believe that I am probably saving about 3 hours of real out of the hotel time every 2-3 days due to not having to do things the way I used to. I’m now usually spending a bit of time writing these articles when we get back to the hotel around 5:00 and are just relaxing before we go for dinner which is usually about 7:30 or 8:00. I may write a bit more before going to bed as well.

The good thing about this is that I’m doing my writing in times when I would usually just be reading or watching TV so it doesn’t cut into any *real* time out of the hotel and exploring great new places. The other benefit is that I can write as much as I always wanted to but never had the time to do so when sitting down in front of an Internet cafe computer. The third benefit that most people will have already seen is that I am now able to post pictures with the articles which I think adds a really cool dimension to the whole posting.

On the subject of pickpockets, we have not seen any of the gypsies even around the Coliseum – an area where they are notorious for stalking. In a strange way, it’s kind of disappointing not seeing any pickpockets given the amount of time we spent reading up on the different and varied ways that they pull their scams and how to defend against them.

I’m wondering if all of the pickpockets are all on vacation or something? 😉

A Church for Every Occasion

After having seeing St. Peter’s Basilica yesterday at the Vatican, you’d think that every other church we would see would just pale in comparison?

Well yes, it’s true that on one level St. Peter’s sets the bar for any other church to look up to but it never ceases to amaze me how many other churches there are in Rome that are really amazing.

Today while walking around the city we happened to walk into a church as it looked like a wedding was going to take place there later on in the day. So we walk in and are just floored as to how incredibly beautiful the church was. From the outside, it looked like an ordinary local church but it seems like any neighbourhood church that we happened to just wander in to, no matter how small, was going to be fantastic. I assume that there are no plain churches in Rome.

We were saying to each other that the amount of effort (and money of course) that had to have been spent on building these churches over the past few hundred years must be staggering.

Today was Saturday and we went over to the train station and picked up our tickets for our next leg of our trip down to Sorrento which we will depart to on Monday. We figured that it made sense to get the tickets out of the way today so that when we were leaving the hotel with all of our luggage in hand we wouldn’t need to worry about getting tickets at that time.

Sidebar: little did we know how good of an idea this was due to the problems we would end up have in getting a taxi to the train station.

From the train station, we ended up spending most of the day at the Villa Borghese park. This is a huge park inside Rome and with it being Saturday there were lots of families strolling about. Many people had rented these two-person bicycles where you sit side by side like in a car. It reminded me of the car that they had on the 60’s show Gilligan’s Island only the ones in the park weren’t made out of bamboo. 😉

We bought some sandwiches and drinks from a vendor and made a picnic out of it having our lunch on a bench in the park. We discovered a lake in the middle of the park where they were renting rowboats so we each took one out for a while. We rowed leisurely through the water watching the ducks and turtles swimming around us. It was a nice warm day and this was an amusing diversion from the usual walking around that we had been doing.

That afternoon, Peter stopped into a store as he had seen some neck ties in a window that he liked and wanted to buy one. The woman who owned the store had this flaming red hair and was a real character. All of the ties were divided by the company who made them and when Peter expressed some interest in one she would start talking wildly (in Italian) about how great that brand was. We could only understand a few words but she was so animated and colourful that it was amusing just watching her talk.

In the end Peter bought two ties as the woman offered a discount for buying the second one (of course a huge discount was offered if he bought a third tie).

The weather started to cool down on Saturday and while it was still sunny, it was no longer so humid. As a result we didn’t come back to the hotel after a being out during the day needing to shower before going out for dinner later on.

That night we went out for dinner to a place Barb had found on the Internet before leaving home. It seemed close enough to walk to but it took us about an hour trying to find the place. This kind of thing seems to happen a least once on every trip as sometimes the street signs are not clear of a street starts with one name and in the middle changes to another name.

In the end we found the restaurant but unfortunately it was full and we didn’t have a reservation. As a result we walked a few blocks and found another place that ended up to be a great find. The place was called La Vecchia Conca located at Via Carlo Alberta 26.

We had an another great dining experience here and so far we haven’t found a bad place to eat for dinner. We’re all hoping that this streak continues for the rest of the trip.

It’s interesting that we have found that all of the restaurants that we have been to so far have had No Smoking signs in them. I have commented in the past about how prevalent smoking is in Europe but it’s not something that I have really noticed in Rome.

Today is Sunday and most of the stores will be closed so our plans are to just have a leisurely stroll around the city on our last day here. Tomorrow we leave Rome and head south to our next destination which will be Sorrento.

Today was even cooler still than yesterday (maybe about 20-22 degrees) and the sun disappeared early in the day and it started to rain on and off throughout the rest of the day.

One of the places that we wanted to take a look at is the Pantheon. Originally a Roman temple built almost 2000 years ago and was converted to a Christian church about 1200 years ago. Inside of the Pantheon is essentially a huge dome with the usual trappings of a Christian church. The unique feature of the Pantheon is the fact that there is a large hole in the top of the dome. During sunny weather, the sun shines in as a distinct ray of light which is very striking. I assume that during the rain that the floor will just get wet. I don’t think that this is a problem considering that they would had to have dealt with this “leaky roof” for a few thousand years.

One interesting fact about the Pantheon that I found out about just recently is that up until 1960, the Pantheon had the largest unsupported dome in the world. It wasn’t until this date that the Super Dome in New Orleans took over that distinction.

We wound our way north to the edge of the Tiber river. With it’s many bridges crossing from one side to the other, Barb and I couldn’t help but be reminded of the river Seine in Paris. Under better weather conditions it would probably have been a much better experience but it was starting to rain and we decided to find a place to eat lunch.

We ended up finding this really nice Sicilian restaurant called Taverna del Duca (via id Panics 83). The restaurant was absolutely jammed with locals – most of whom were having a Sunday lunch together.

As always, a restaurant filled with locals is a good sign.

We all had a great meal and it was a nice way to get out of the rain and relax. Barb, Liz and Pete had an Italian desert called cannoli which was a pastry shell stuffed with cream and nuts. I had heard of cannoli before but never knew what it was. I’m sure that the Italians in our reading audience are probably gasping in horror at this statement.

Leaving Rome

It’s Monday morning now and today we will be leaving Rome to take the train to our next destination: Sorrento. We will be taking the train to Naples and then connecting to a train to Sorrento which is just south of Naples along the Amalfi peninsula.

We had arranged to get a taxi from our hotel in Rome to the Termini train station – about 10 blocks away from our hotel.

We asked the night before and the woman at the hotel front desk told us that arranging a taxi would not be a problem just before we needed to leave.

Unfortunately, there was a problem.

Unbeknownst to us (and obviously the hotel clerk whom we spoke to the night before), there was an anti-terrorist emergency planning session being done in the piazza next to our hotel. As a result all streets were blocked to traffic and no taxis could get to our hotel to pick us up. Also, because it was pouring rain, we really wanted to get a ride there.

Unfortunately, no taxis were able to be secured and we all prepared ourselves to walk to the train station in the rain. We got out our umbrellas and rain jackets and made our way along the streets to the Termini station.

We ended up getting a bit wet but it only took us about 15 minutes to walk there so we probably couldn’t have made it there any faster by cab.

I’m writing this on the train headed to Naples. Next stop: Sorrento.

Baden

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