Saturday night.. an Aurelian saga

We finished eating dinner at about 9:30 PM at the restaurant on the Piazza Navona, as I mentioned previously. It was disappointing food but we were hungry so it didn't matter too much.

We left the restaurant and headed across the Piazza back towards the direction of the river Tiber, or Fiume Tevere as it's called by the locals.

We arrived at Corso Vittorio Emanuele, a wide thoroughfare that runs through the middle of the city. There was a bit of hemming and hawing as we worked out what we would do with the rest of the evening.

After a few minutes we had arrived at the conclusion that the Russians wanted to walk about in the city for a little while longer, while my two other female colleagues and I were keen to head out of the city.

We joked for for a few minutes about walking back to the Hotel and the Russians thought we were mad. That must have hardened our resolve because that's what we decided to do. Walk to the Hotel.

We had a map and an experienced map reader (not me) and it didn't seem unreasonable so we went for it. I mean how hard could it be to walk home to the Hotel?

Step 1 - cross the river Tiber
We started off heading west, looking to cross the river as our first milestone. It took some time because this is one city of mazy twisty streets and you just can't walk in a direct line on every street. We walked for a while, stopping every 5 or so minutes to squint up at the plaques adorning almost every street corner.

We crossed the river at Ponte Garibaldi and travelled north along the river bank for about 500 metres turning into via de Cinque or something like that. It was packed with people, narrow twisty little streets really bustling with life. And restaurants everywhere, much better than we had seen earlier in the centre of the city.

This was where it started to get confusing. The text on the map was so small you could barely make out the names of the streets. We turned left, maybe then right and before we knew it our two options were two poorly lit alley ways. Although my in-built cautious instincts told me that neither was a good option, the fact that there were loads of couples streaming in and out of both of these alleys suggested we'd be ok.

We made our way through the alley and ahead lay a flight of stone steps up to what sounded like a busy road. At the foot of the steps was a little bar, filled with locals. It was one of those bars that is really someone's garage and inside there were maybe 5 or 6 chairs, all different types, and a really old television showing a football match that nobody was watching. We knew we were well away from the tourist area by now.

Step 2 - the climb
Up the steps we climbed and arrived at a wider street, but pretty quiet nonetheless. The odd car whizzed past but it was not busy. There was no footpath.

Just a white line at the edge of the road. We were on via Garibaldi. This was a long, winding road, with options to go up or down.

We had come from down so we decided to go up. Up we walked, passing the occasional car as we climbed up the hill.

Rome is built on seven hills, so a bit of climbing is inevitable when exiting the city.

We passed a police land rover at the top of the hill, right next to the Fonte dell acqua Paola. This was right at the top of the hill.

At this stage the jackets were off because we were all sweating. It was 10 PM and still 23 C.

Not the best weather for a night-time walk but what can you do.

Step 3 - Head for Via Aurelia
Now that we had climbed the hill we needed to head down the other side and head for via Aurelia. Our Hotel was located on via Aurelia, albeit some way out of the city on this road. We descended the hill and should have headed due west but for some reason we followed via Giacomo Medici and then via Pietro Roselli.

We were in the wrong place because we had headed south instead of west. This was turning into a long walk and a tiring one at that and we weren't even close to the Hotel yet.

We finally got our bearings correct again and made a quick turn onto Via Giacinto Carini knowing we were very close to via Aurelia. We came to a junction and could see no signs so I went and approached some flower sellers, all set to ask for directions.

"Buona sera" I said.

"yes?" the flower seller said.

He wanted to speak English so that was fair enough, even though I was ready with my question in Italian. That is frustrating when you travel in Europe and you're all set to ask the taxi driver a question in his language but he wants to practice his English.

Anyway, we were right next to it, via Aurelia.

Well not quite as it turns out. You see Rome has these old walls that act as boundaries for the old city. Via Aurelia in fact runs right alongside the Aurelian wall, built some time around 270, and is almost 12 miles long. In more recent times a new via Aurelia was built, in the form of a motorway, to take traffic in and out of the city.

Thus the road we were standing at was via Aurelia antica, with antica clearly meaning ancient or antique...

We were heading down what was pretty much the ancient roman road that led out of the city since the year 270.

And another thing it was dark. Dangerously dark.

We had a long way to go yet...