Back from Rome (adsum)

Well Rome was fun, brief but fun nonetheless.

I had very limited opportunity to look around the city, limited to Saturday evening but I made the most of the time anyhow.

The shuttle bus dropped us into the city on Saturday evening around 6:30pm. The bus stopped next to Piazza di Spagna, known to most tourists as the location of The Spanish Steps. This is some flight of steps for sure.

My bad knees would never make it all the way up so I didn't try it out. Just as we got off the bus it started to rain. Not normal rain, this was real cats and dogs rain, really chucking it down. We tried to get to where we were going, Piazza Navona, but the person asking for directions was getting mixed information. It could have been because he was Russian, asking Italians for directions in English. Maybe not the best mix there.

We ducked inside a cafe and ordered some coffees. The usual situation. 80 cent for a coffee if you stand just inside the door. But if your buttocks avail of the sparse furniture inside then your coffee will cost €1.80. That's life in cities that draw huge numbers of tourists.

The rain stopped after about 30 minutes, just like Ireland, and we headed back out to the street. Eventually we made our way to Piazza Navona.


It's a nice square but of course everything looks different at night time. All around the square were restaurants, with people dining al fresco under canopies. Not to be confused of course with canapés, there definitely were no people dining under canapés.

Anyway, these were all the kind of restaurants that are just made for tourists. Pizza, spaghetti, pasta and all the rest, with beer at €6 a bottle. Tourist trap is probably the correct expression.

We headed off the Piazza and around some nearby streets, where there were many better restaurants but each was quite small. We were a group of 6 so trying to find a nice small restaurant on a saturday evening for 6 people was always going to be tricky.

We eventually found a nice place, and a table for 6 had just become available. It was perfect. Except for one thing. Another Russian in the group didn't fancy the chairs. "These chairs don't look very comfortable" I think was the gist of what he said. General looks of "for god's sake.. is he serious?" shot around the group. We moved on. It was a bad move in hindsight.

We ended up back at the piazza Navona about an hour later, in some tourist trap place under a canopy. It was bland, over-priced and not so charming. It was a "get the order in, get the food out and get the table cleared" kind of place.

It was OK and after walking around for ages we just needed to eat. It started to lash rain again just after we sat down so at least that was good timing.

We ate, paid, and then moved on. We walked a little more around the Piazza and then decided to head back to the hotel.

This was the beginning of what turned out to be a night to remember, for all the wrong reasons.