Rome: Sunday

Although it only takes about three hours to fly between Israel and Italy, the door-to-door trip is a slightly longer ordeal. We left our apartment around 11 PM to catch an 11:30 PM bus to the train station, where a 12:40 AM train awaited. Around 2 AM we entered the airport, yawning, to find that it was as packed with people as we’ve ever seen it. None of them seemed tired, and I suggested to Rachel that maybe we should inform them that it was the middle of the night, but she didn’t think this was a good idea.

At this point, my memory becomes hazy. I believe we were sitting at the gate by around 3:30, and the plane finally took off by 5. By 8:45 Italy time we were in the Rome airport, bags in hand, waiting for 9:00, when the office selling our Roma Passes would open.

At 9 AM we witnessed a scene one would never see in Israel. The clerks entered the office, turned on the lights and their computers and – get this – opened the doors and let the customers in. If you’ve ever waited outside an Israeli post office, government office, or anything of the sort, you know the frustration of watching the clerks sit there behind the door for 10, 15 minutes, not letting you in until the very second they have to, or later. They do this all the time. So it was really nice to see those doors open so quickly.

Passes purchased, we boarded a shuttle bus from the airport to the main transit hub in central Rome, Termini. Along the way we met a chatty lady from Texas who was traveling with her less chatty husband and seven children. They were going to hit all the big religious sites before embarking upon a Christian cruise around the Mediterranean. I’d never heard of a Christian cruise before, but from what this lady described, it sounded like a Kosher cruise, only with more religious substance.

To get to our B&B, we needed to take one last bus from Termini, and since we didn’t want to activate our Roma Passes until Tuesday, we needed to buy real tickets. We knew that we were supposed to both buy and validate our tickets by ourselves. Rachel bought the tickets from a stall near the buses, but we couldn’t figure out how to validate them. We boarded the bus anyway, where a guy showed us the machine in the bus where people dip their cards and validate them.

It’s worth mentioning that the Rome bus system seems quite easy to take advantage of. The drivers don’t enforce squat, and it seemed like the only people actually validating their tickets were tourists. Presumably someone does periodic checks (like they do on the express buses in NY where you also pay outside the bus), but we never saw any.

Meanwhile, the guy who helped us validate our tickets chatted with us (mostly Rachel, really) along the ride. He turned out to be the first of two Egyptians we’d meet over our trip. This is a good time to point out that when people asked where we were from, we said New York and Philadelphia if they were strangers, and only Israel if we felt comfortable. Rome doesn’t have a particularly anti-Semitic reputation, but you never know.

Our B&B was in a building with giant, heavy Medieval-looking doors, behind which stood a giant, heavy Medieval-looking iron gate, which led into a hall with an iron, Medieval-looking elevator. We skipped the elevator, and thankfully the B&B itself was decidedly modern, albeit small. It looked like an IKEA display setup.

Our host, Pasquale, was not in. Instead, we were greeted by his enthusiastic, non-English-speaking Italian friend. Let’s just call him Antonio, since I don’t remember his name; I probably forgot to ask. Despite the fact that he was technically speaking Italian, Antonio communicated largely with his hands, which did a good job explaining concepts such as keys and such. For my own part, I quickly found that using Spanish as a substitute for Italian was surprisingly successful. Before long, I was fairly convinced I understood Italian and spoke it fluently.

By now, it was nearly 11 AM, and we had been traveling for almost 12 hours. Excited to explore this new exotic city, we promptly collapsed on the bed and took a nap. Three hours later, excited to explore this new exotic city, we set off on foot.

The center of Rome is surrounded by the Aurelian walls, and our B&B was right outside them. Most cities today are sprawling masses that peter out towards the suburbs and, therefore, approaching the city is less of a grand entrance than a gradual change. The real metropolis of Rome is no different, of course, but in our case entering through the wall provided a dramatic transition.

Inside the walls, Rome’s buildings are low, and its streets are wide and clean. There are no signs of urban decay, and little congestion. In other words, it’s a space that doesn’t play by the usual rules of the city. This is due to strict limitations; for example, buildings are technically not allowed to be taller than St. Peter’s Basilica. As we walked down Via 20 Settembre (named for September 20, 1870 when Rome was captured as the final stage of Italy’s unification), the choir music ringing out of the churches brought the architecture to life.

These exaggerated impressions would, of course, later be tempered with reality: not all of Rome is a pristine museum of a city. Later in the week we would find ourselves south of Trastevere, on the other side of the river, unsuccessfully seeking a kosher restaurant. The neighborhood we did find, as well as the neighborhoods we passed through on the train to our return flight, assured us that Rome has its fair share of dirty, high rise filled, graffiti touched urban landscapes.

We spent the mid afternoon hours strolling through the streets, heading towards the Jewish Ghetto, where food and a 6 PM tour awaited. On this first day of our trip, we were trying very hard to fit in and not look like tourists. That meant that we had to be very surreptitious about opening up our map in public, lest we Give Ourselves Away. It was also why we didn’t bring any sneakers, shorts, or baseball caps.

If you’re going to Rome, do yourself a favor and bring sneakers. Especially if you’re going in the summer, when the streets are full of tourists anyway. Your feet will thank you.

By the time we had strolled, gazed and photographed our way to the Ghetto, we had worked up an appetite, and so we sat down to a hearty not-quite-lunch, not-quite-dinner 4:30 PM meal at Nonna Betta (I will be writing restaurant reviews separately), after which we met up with our tour group in front of the Largo di Torre Argentina. The tour was led by Floridian expat whose tattoos and dyed, dangerously styled hair made her look like that Goth character from Empire Records. Thankfully, though, she was bubbly and not morose at all. She gave what was essentially a walking tour that started outside the Ghetto, passed through it, and finished up over in Trastevere. She was no dummy, but the information she conveyed at each stop seemed somewhat superficial – especially in the Jewish Ghetto, where we more or less came away with the following knowledge: Jews lived in the Ghetto for a long time, it was cramped and smelly, and they weren’t allowed to enter or leave after sunset.

Still, the tour was overall pretty good as an introduction to Rome. We learned that a lot of the ruins in Rome were caused by men, not nature. That is, for a long time there was little of our modern appreciation for history and ancient structures. Buildings were, essentially, recycled and their materials used to build new ones. This was true of ancient temples, and even the Colosseum.

As the tour ended and night fell, we tried to navigate a path back to the B&B that would swing us past a place with kosher gelato (of course). I promptly got us lost, and given our mounting exhaustion, we hopped into a cab which took us to the Palazzo di Quirinale, a quiet, moonlit square. We zigzagged through some alleys to emerge into the roaring noise of the Trevi Fountain. 10% of the noise came from the rushing water and the other 90% came from the flock of tourists that formed a protective layer around the entire perimeter of the fountain, making picture opportunities all but impossible, let alone a decent appreciation for what is a truly fine sculpture and fountain.

Inside the gelato place, we asked if the gelato was kosher. The server pointed us to a sign on the wall, and proceeded to refer to me henceforth as Mr. Kosher. The sign had a list of flavors, a la Baskin Robbins or Ben & Jerry’s, that were certified (most were). After buying some healthy portions of hazelnut, pistachio, honey and caramel, we swiftly and successfully negotiated for bathroom use.

Side note: If you’re walking around Rome and need to use the bathroom, pretty much your only option is to find a food establishment of some sort that has one, and buy something. I recommend espresso, which is only 1 euro.

After indulging our sweet teeth, we hopped on the bus, headed back, and called it a day.