Our apartment is on the 4° floor, which is really the 5th floor in the States. Luckily they have one of those tiny elevators. The apartment is like the one we stayed at during a previous trip to Genoa in that you open a door into a small lobby that has 3 apartments off it, each with their own doors. Ours is the largest of the 3 with a huge bedroom, big bathroom, and disappointingly small “kitchen - dining room - living room” combo. There’s a pullout couch in this room, but unlike the one in Florence, this one has no arm rests, so you can’t lay back and read a book on it. Oh well. The bed also has a headboard/footboard which is not good when you’re as tall as me. We’ll have to look into removing it.
Roberto was a gracious host and spent over an hour showing us the place and noting places of interest on the map. He pointed out 2 local eateries, gave us their cards with his name written on them, and said not only did they have good food but to mention him and we’d get limoncello after our meal. He also mentioned a good gelateria, called Old Bridge, in the neighborhood too. Since we hadn’t eaten much, we headed out the door as soon as Roberto departed, in search of pizza.
The first thing we noticed was the number of Smart cars. They were everywhere! In Florence we’d see them, and in some areas there might be 2 or 3 parked on a city block. But in Rome you’d see 2, 3, or 4 of them parked alongside one another. Every corner seemed to have 1-2 Smarts parked in any available nook. Rome also allows them to head-on park in areas where other cars have to parallel car, so they’re very popular. On a short walk to find something to eat we must have spotted 50 Smarts either parked or zipping around town.
So, after our disappointing dinner we headed off to find Old Bridge for some gelato. Cinzia’s deadly with a map, but the X that Roberto put on our map for Old Bridge had no gelaterias in sight. We saw a place called Blue Ice and had some there. Not very good, but we’re quite particular at this point in our trip. Cinzia’s foot was aching – probably from lugging our baggage from Florence to Rome, so we started home. We were back in the apartment just after 8pm and both felt exhausted, so we went to bed. After trying a few configurations I ended up sleeping on the small couch/bed in the bedroom while Cinzia had the big bed, the one with the headboard/footboard, to herself.
In the morning we headed out to the grocery store and market to stock up on supplies. We found a PAM Express and a Billa. We shopped at a Billa in Florence. We picked up prosciutto, mozzarella da bufala, tomatoes, and bread for lunch, along with wine for Cinzia and iced tea for me. Billa also had some of the €2,99 panetonne left on their shelves, so we grabbed one of those too. While we didn’t buy much, we did notice that the prices in Rome are actually more than those in Florence!
After lunch we took a walk with the Trevi Fountain as our destination. Along the way we stopped at St. Peter’s Square, Castel Sant'Angelo, Piazza Navona, the Pantheon, and Santa Maria dell’Anima. The temperatures were in the mid 70's. We noticed that there seemed to be many more tourists than we remembered from our previous trips to Rome…and many more Chinese. Everything seemed crowded. St. Peter’s cathedral no longer lets you just walk in. There’s a line where visitors have to go through a metal detector. The line stretched around the piazza until it reached the furthest end. We’ll have to pick a day when the lines aren’t too long to go inside.
As the day drew on we stopped for an Aperol Spritz for Cinzia. We were right outside the Trevi Fountain, so I asked how much first. The waitress seemed to make up the price and said €6. That sounded about right, so we had a seat inside. When she arrived with the drink it was in a tiny prosecco glass, the kind champagne is served in, rather than a big wine glass we’ve always seen a Spritz served in. Oh well. As dusk approached and Cinzia’s foot ache continued, we hopped a metro and were home in minutes.