By Layla
Exactly six years after our civil
partnership and the start of this blog, Roz and I were finally able to do the
paperwork to convert it to a legal marriage. I got her a necklace to mark the
occasion. She has always been better than me at gifts… and got me a surprise
mini-moon to Rome. So on Friday afternoon we were Italy-bound. The last time I
was in Rome was with my parents for a few days over Christmas 2004, directly
after I had worked a traumatic set of seven 13-hour nightshifts in my first
year as a junior doctor. My memories of Rome were hazy. And Roz had never been
at all. What fun explorations awaited!
Having installed ourselves in our cheap but
very nice hotel in Prati, we strolled past the impressive-looking Supreme Court
and over the bridge to Plaza Navonna, a beautiful old square teeming with cobbled
backstreets of restaurants and cocktail bars. Having eaten on the plane, we
opted for cocktails and Roz took me to a fabulous hipster cocktail bar (Bar de Fico,
I think) overlooking the cobbled streets, where after celebratory glasses of
fizz and an outstanding Belle Epoque cocktail, Roz persuaded the waitress to
give us crisps, and thus launched the weekend in perfect style.
The next day we breakfasted in a cute
little Italian coffeeshop. After our coffee and juice and croissants, we hopped
onto the Metro. First stop: the Colosseum! We strolled around the upper and
lower levels of this really amazing building, imagined grizzly entertainments
of yore, and what it must have looked like when covered with marble, and made
disparaging asides about the lacklustre attempts of the people who’d dressed as
gladiators and stood around smoking and using their phones rather than staging
a gladiator fight or the like… then headed across the road to the Roman Forum for
fabulous views and more clambering over ruins, these ones old enough to make
the Colosseum feel almost brand new.
At this point, I expressed an urgent desire
for lunch, but Roz made me walk for it, wanting to explore the cool Trastevere
district. We eventually got there, found a cute local pizza lunch spot and
dined happily on margarita and artichoke pizza. Soon it was off again, this
time with a doomed promise of a coffeeshop and cake for me. Alas it was not to
be. The road veered steeply upward, through tiny lanes, and atmospheric Roman
architecture, to… a forest? Or at least a very overgrown section of park. As
Roz and I vigorously hiked up, hacking our way through the overgrowth,
delightfully encountering random Roman arches and suchlike, I did muse that
this sort of activity was not the hallmark of a typical first day in Rome…
Eventually we popped out at a great lookout
point (Rome is full of places with good views, it seems), and having peered
appropriately, I was promised a bus. It did not come to pass. Instead, my
fitness bracelet buzzed with increasing kudos as we hiked all the way to the
Spanish Steps, and installed ourselves in the literary café we had found in our
guidebook. Alas the guidebook had failed to make clear that said cafe was on one
of the most glamorous shopping streets in Rome – and the coffeeshop had prices
to match! A coffee was 12 euros, Roz abstemiously bought tea for a bargain 10
euros. And I thought well, if we’re spending 10 euros, it should clearly be
spent on a big slice of pavlova cake. Delicious. We lingered there for a while,
then relocated to a cheaper café for coffee and cake ahead of our 5:30pm free
walking tour.
We both really like free walking tours,
where you sign up in advance and pay the person a tip at the end. This one was
full of interest and history and character. We walked around the streets of the
historical centre of the city, through parts that are the Vatican, past the
President speaking to news cameras about the weekend’s terrible shootings in
Paris, into churches with amazing sculptures and paintings and a fake,
optical-illusion dome. We learned about Margarita, after whom the Margarita
pizza is named. We went into the Pantheon, and finished up at the Trevi
Fountain which has been closed for two years and only opened again last week.
What luck. It was swarming with tourists, but still looked beautiful.
One nice thing about Rome is that the
tourist areas are claustrophobically busy, but turn a corner and it’s
gloriously serene and cool and atmospheric, and all of it felt like we were
walking the streets of history. But for now, it was time to flee the touristy
centre. We headed back to Prati for dinner and after a little hunting, finished
our action-packed day at a hipster restaurant with one of the best cheeseboards
we have ever had! (the spaghetti wasn’t bad either…).
The following day we embarked upon a
slightly less trodden-path for a Rome weekend, with a bike tour of the Appian
Way, one of the great Roman roads that ran 600 miles from Rome to the coast,
and still exists. We had the glorious luck of beautiful sunshine. And so, after
breakfast, we set off, atop a glorious innovation that has officially spoilt me
for cycling forever: electric bikes! I’d always imagined an electric bike would
be a bit like a motorbike, but not at all! It essentially captures all the
niceness of cycling and just removes the unpleasantness associated with going
up hills by making each pedal revolution much more effective than it would
otherwise be. There are several settings. ‘Turbo’ is the setting of my dreams. We
viewed the Colosseum from the angle of one of Rome’s seven hills, and heard all
about the history of it. We passed through gates in the ancient Roman walls. We
cycled past the catacombs where the early Christians buried their dead, and had
a slightly creepy but interesting tour through the underground tunnels. We
bumped along the Appian Way itself, once lined with beautiful, extravagant
family memorial structures, juxtaposed with lots of dead criminals, left there
as a warning to those approaching Rome by this route. It was a delightful
cycle, with no cars and loads of Romans out for strolls and cycles along this
amazingly old road. Then, not satisfied with this little piece of
infrastructure tourism, we proceeded to a pretty park to view aqueducts – an
engineering miracle. We cycled all through that park, past locals sunbathing,
local boy scouts playing football, and the like, through another park, and
stopped for wine and cheese at a local farm (maker of said cheese), before returning
to Rome via the Roman baths. What a spectacular bike tour! We grudgingly
trudged back to the hotel to grab our bags and head to the airport. So cruel
that our holiday is over so soon – but it was a perfect mini-moon.
