August 1, 2004
ROMA -- My road has finally led to Rome. Only three short days already spawned such a large number of impressions that it's hard to know where best to begin. But one of the things I will remember most about Rome, I think, is how crazy the hostel scene is there. In my three days there I slept in three different beds, with a decreasing amount of patience with each move. I arrived in the main train station, Termini, which is in the center of one of the bigger conglomerations of budget lodgings I have seen. Termini itself is kind of an oddity: not only does it contain the train station, but also more than a few department stores, an entire shopping complex in its basement on the way to the subway, and also I believe it has a small museum tucked away somewhere. I also seem to have a very hard time telling which side of it (north or south) I am on, which is both kind of surprising and kind of annoying owing to its size.
I walked straight out the doors of Termini, hung a quick right, and waltzed up five flights of stairs to Pensione Fawlty Towers, recommended by my travel book and very easy to find. The management was certainly aware of the TV series, and, one can only assume, of the connotations that go with the name, so I believe the name was chosen with a certain measure of irony (though I did happen to read a horror story about the hostel on the web just before I left the States). With some amount of luck, perhaps, I walked up while they still had a 25 euro bed left -- not the best deal in town, but maybe as good as can be expected at 4 p.m. with no reservations.
I spent the rest of the daylight on a walking tour of the centro storico. Beginning at the Colloseum, I walked past the Fori Imperii, a group of ancient forums currently being excavated. One of the striking things about the fori is how deeply buried they are. I estimate something like five meters, which raises a question I have been wondering about since: where did all that dirt come from? I know it happened over a span of more than 2000 years, but I still find it hard to imagine how all those structures could have been covered so thoroughly. The other remarkable thing about the fori is the number of cats sunning themselves on the ancient stones. One sees a dozen or more at a glance, and I suppose there must be many more prowling around the various darker nooks.
Passing beyond the excavations, I reached the monument to Vittorio Emmanuele II, the first king of unified Italy. In a city of monuments, this one is truly monumental. I guess with so much competition, any new items have to be really big to stand out. I then visited the Piazza Navona, with its hordes of street vendors, human statues, and other hucksters. It also sports the Fountain of Four Rivers on one end, with an allegorical figure for the main river on each of the four then-known continents. Next I went to the Pantheon. This place is simply amazing. I don't really know what it is about the place, but it's really unique. Perhaps it's the mammoth concrete dome that modern architects still haven't figured out, or its rare status as a circular church. Under the original Romans it was a temple dedicated to all the Roman gods. Later it was converted to a church, and rededicated to all the Catholic saints. In addition it's the site of Raphael's grave. Quite a happening place by any standard. I got to admire it for about 15 minutes before closing time.
The next main stop on tourist row is the famous Trevi Fountain. This is one of several monuments in Rome that was actually built specifically for tourists: sometime around the 18th century (I think) it became fashionable in high society to make a Grand Tour around the major sites of the Renaissance, and Rome began a building project to stake its claim to a place on the itinerary. The Trevi Fountain is clogged with tourists at any time of day, and almost everyone ends up tossing a coin into the fountain. Legend has it that anyone who does is assured a speedy return to Rome. (N.B.: The legend is actually quite true. See entry of August 8.)
Having made it to Trevi, I only had to go around the corner to find San Crispino's, lauded by everyone from Let's Go to the New York Times as the finest gelato in Rome. I'm no expert on Roman gelato, but I can attest that Crispino's is especially fine. The house flavor is honey, which is somewhat unusual, but I'm certainly not complaining. Thus fortified, I trekked out to the famous Spanish Steps. It has a nice view from the top, but at the end of the day it's a really big staircase. I admit to being underwhelmed.
Saturday morning began with the discovery the Fawlty Towers was booked for the night, so I would have to go elsewhere. The very friendly English tourist office sent me to the very nice Friendship Place. With only three rooms plus a kitchen it's a very low-profile operation, but they have the lowest price I found in Rome, include one of the best complimentary breakfasts I've seen on the continent, and are extremely friendly to boot. The owner checked me in and gave me an excellent piece of information: that evening, July 31st, at about 9:30, a free concert in front of the Colloseum was to take place, featuring Simon and Garfunkel in their Italian debut, their final date of the present tour (and who knows if there will be another??), and the Everly Brothers to boot. My timing could not have been better, as there was also a large group from the hostel planning to go early with a picnic dinner and stake out good spots. I agreed to meet up with them again at about 4, and set off for the Vatican.
In one respect my timing in Rome was really sub-optimal: Roman museums have reduced hours on Saturdays, and the Vatican Museum closes its doors at 1:45. So I was able to spend only two hours in a collection that surely merits double that, if not all day. So I got through the picture gallery, some sculpture collections, the truly remarkable and truly lengthy hall of maps, and the rooms with Rafael's frescoes (including the School of Athens, which, good as it is in reproduction, is really good in real life) without having to hurry overmuch, and then I was ushered through the collection of modern religious art at warp speed; in another life I'd have spent at least another hour there, but all I got was about ten minutes because closing time was immanent. A brief stay in the Sistine Chapel, an enormous room occupied by an enormous number of tourists, finished off the all-too-short visit.
After the Vatican museum, the obvious next stop (after another gelato pit-stop) was St. Peter's Basilica. This is, I am quite sure, the biggest church in the world. "Awe-inspiring" comes close to describing it. Vast, beautiful, dignified, and (most conveniently) not very crowded on a Saturday afternoon. In the chapels are a collection of Renaissance masterpieces, and in the crypt lie more than a few popes, including St. Peter. Outside, the slightly goofy Swiss Guard keep an eye on the crowd in the enormous Piazza S. Pedro.
Not much later, I met up with the concert-goers from the hostel. The whole group of eleven of us was American, with several on summer vacations, two just done with summer school in Florence, and one on a cross-continental concert tour with an a capella group. The concert was due to start at 9:30. We arrived at about 5:30 with baguettes, mozzarella, prosciutto, and some five bottles of wine, sat down on the street where the audience was to be (Via delli Fori Imperii, see above), and didn't move for nearly four hours. Then, finally, there were some people coming onto the stage! Everyone sprang to their feet and pushed forward as far as they could, even though this whole commotion was caused by some lowly sound-tech guys. Only about 15 minutes behind schedule, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel strode out to massive applause, and immediately launched into the tour's signature song, "Old Friends." One can pretty much imagine what happened after that: they went through most of their most popular songs (with the surprise inclusion of one from Simon's solo career), the Everly Bros. did a couple of their big hits, the four of them did one song all together, and a couple of lines of mangled Italian were attempted. They closed out with two encores, featuring "The Boxer," "Mrs. Robinson," and "Cecilia." A good time was had by all.
The mayor of Rome later estimated that 600,000 people turned out for the concert (about 100,000 more than were there for Paul McCartney last year). I estimate that we were somewhere in the first 75,000. That means that, when leaving the venue, we had about half a million people ahead of us. With some judicious barricade-jumping we made it far enough for a gelato break in only about half an hour. Much later at the hostel, I was happy to sink into bed and call it a night.
The reader may recall that I had one more hostel in Rome at this point. I awoke, got dressed, and ate breakfast slowly, since nothing in Italy is ever open on Sunday before noon at the earliest, except train stations and churches, and was just about to head out the door when the hostel owner bustled in, and explained to me that, somehow, a written reservation had been misplaced, the person who had made the reservation was at the hostel and upset, and since I had not yet paid my second night, he hoped I would understand that he had to turn me out. So off I trekked to the famous Yellow Hostel of Rome. Yellow Hostel is big and the common room is noisy, with movies playing at all hours and nightly pub crawls, but at least the dorms were on different floors (mine was four stories up). Once again secure in accommodations, I spent the afternoon lounging in the park of the Villa Borghese and reading, which is the most suitable use of a hot Sunday afternoon in Rome. Having finally landed again in a hostel with a full kitchen -- it had been almost two weeks -- I celebrated with a hot dinner of pasta and scrambled eggs (one gets a craving for American breakfast foods in these barbaric lands). I resolved to leave the next morning before I could be kicked out of another hostel.