Today is our last full day in Rome, and the last day of our trip except for our travel day home tomorrow. We slept in this morning, we needed some rest after three straight early mornings. I lasted until 7:00 AM before I got up and had a small coffee from our Nespresso machine, it makes single, small, but powerful cups of concentrated coffee. I guess that is what the definition of an espresso is.
Stephanie slept in while I did some computer work trying to catch up on the blog posts before we got any further behind. It has been a little bit of a challenge keeping up, especially lately, we just have not had a lot of down time during the trip. I have generally persevered and at least mostly kept up with the writing. Photos are another story. Keeping up with the blog is really sink or swim, we do not want to lose the details if we get behind, but also do not want to take up valuable time when we could be doing something else. It is the details of our experiences that we enjoy reliving when we go back and read about our trip(s) later. It is those details that help us to remember the special time we had.
We will have to add all of the small pictures into the blog write-ups after we get home, that part is just too time consuming. It was good that we could at least upload some of the photos to the photo albums.
We enjoyed a peaceful breakfast in the room, we had the same rolls and croissants, today’s fillings for two of the croissants was some type of fruit/jelly filling. I missed the chocolate filling that we had yesterday, it was better. Once Stephanie got up and got motivated, we actually had some mimosas with the prosecco and orange juice we purchased at the store the other day. They were not as good as our homemade Peach Bellini’s, but we did not have the peach schnapps here to go that route. The orange juice was marginal, it was a little bitter compared to what we get at home. However, the shortfalls did not keep us from enjoying them nonetheless.
We also did a little packing since we need to get everything back into travel mode for the trip home. At least we don’t need to worry about getting the clothes wrinkled as we fold them for repacking, it will all go in the wash anyway. We should not have any issues with the weight of our luggage, They were under the limit when we flew over and we have not really added anything to them other than some paperwork on some of our sights. We have used a lot of our toiletries, so that should eliminate a few pounds in and of itself. The only issue will be making sure the weight is equally distributed, so we will still need to use our luggage scale for that.
We ended up leaving the room by about 10:30 AM, and first visited the church which is right next door to our hotel. We have passed by the church’s gate many times, but it has always been locked. This morning it was open, so we went inside for the first time ever. The church is the Basilica di Santa Pudenziana. The outside of the church was pretty plain, but it was beautiful inside. We were glad we had finally gotten to see it after two trips in Rome, staying at the hotel right next door.
From here, we headed to another church right near our hotel, one of the four Major Basilicas in Rome. It is the Santa Maria Maggiore, and is one of the prettiest churches on the inside in all of Rome. We had now visited three of the four Major Basilicas on this trip, and had plans to visit the fourth this afternoon. These were the same four we visited in 2016 during the holy year, and had gone through each of their Holy Doors, only open during a holy year. Holy years normally only happen every 25 years, but in 2016, Pope Francis declared it a holy year for a Year of Mercy. The time between holy years varies by Papal decree, sometimes it is 25 years, sometimes 33 years, unless there is a special decree like was given in 2016. That is why it was so special in 2016, 25 years from now is a long time, and we are not getting any younger.
After visiting there, we headed back to the room to get a couple of things and to make sure we had enough Euros to take home with us for our next trip to Europe. We normally want to have somewhere between 150.00 and 300.00 euros for the next trip, it makes it easier since we don’t have to try and get money from an ATM in a crowded airport or train station when we first arrive, and are tired. We forgot to check our remaining funds before we left the room this morning, and it was just a few blocks to go back to the room from the Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica . We found that we had plenty of Euros tucked away with our valuables in the room safe, so there was no need to go by an ATM before we head home tomorrow.
After leaving the hotel, we headed to the Forum area, mainly on our way back to the Pantheon for lunch. We took a few photos, and tried to visit one of the older churches there, but it was closed until 3:00 PM. Maybe we will eventually figure that out, most churches close in the middle of the day, and reopen at 3:00 PM. We walked around the Victor Emmanuel II National Monument, we had been across the main street when we passed by yesterday, and it was nice to see it again up close.
After walking for about 10 more minutes, we made it to our favorite lunch spot at the Pantheon, the Antica Salumeria. We headed inside to get a table. They were pretty busy today serving sandwiches, and we could not get a seat at our favorite bar height table, we had to sit at a lower height table near the door. We got two sandwiches and of course, a liter of the house red wine. Not too much later, we were able to get seats at the larger table with higher chairs, which was much more comfortable. There were a lot more samples of cheese and meats out today, and we noticed that there were less tour groups coming inside the store. We did not see any people wearing cruise ship tour stickers today either. We just think they know when the cruise ships are in port in nearby Civitavecchia and do not put out as many free samples for people to eat. It was different today for some reason, and, there were many more people eating lunch here today than yesterday.
We did help ourselves to the free samples, and really enjoyed the Parmesan Cheese. We planned on purchasing some to take home just like we did last time here, so after finishing our wine, Stephanie went and picked out the smallest block that was available, which was pretty large compared to the one we took home last time. We paid for our lunches, the wine, and the cheese and headed out, sad to be leaving here for the last time on this trip.
We wanted to go to the St, Paul’s Outside the Walls Basilica to participate in the free tour that the seminarians host from The Pontifical North American College, the place where we had picked up our tickets for the Papal Audience. They had told us during the orientation presentation that they did free tours of the St. Paul’s Basilica at 3:00 PM on Wednesdays and Thursdays, so we thought it would be nice to visit there again. This is the fourth of the Major Basilicas we will visit in Rome. We left in plenty of time to get there by 3:00 PM, except we forgot to take into account the Italian transit system.
We were going to take a bus to a metro station near the Circus, the large arena for chariot races long ago, and then the metro from there to the Basilica. Google Maps showed it was 34 minutes total travel time, and we had about an hour to get there. We walked to the bus stop, and waited, and waited, and waited for our but to arrive. There were actually other repeat bus route numbers arriving before ours came for the first time. It was about 25 minutes late arriving.
We took the bus about four stops to the stop closest to the metro station and got off. We did not have to walk far to the metro, but after all the waiting for the bus, we had to use the restroom. We headed into a café, and they are like hawks as far as picking out people wanting to use the toilette for free, especially tourists. As I headed to the restroom I was tracked down by an employee who just was asking “Sir, Sir”, meaning he wanted to know where I was going. I had a two Euro coin, and I gave it to him saying I was using the Toilette. They are just magical at knowing who is trying to use their facilities for free without being a patron. Unfortunately, it was a single unisex stall, and there were people already in line ahead of me waiting. Then, Stephanie used the facility after me, but it had taken a lot of time. We headed into the metro station only to find out we were on the wrong side, and had to completely exit that side, go back upstairs, and go across the street to enter the metro station to go in the direction we needed. That was unusual, normally the station entrance has access to both directions from inside, but not this one. We were now going to be late for the tour, but we still wanted to go to the Basilica anyway.
We finally made it to the metro stop we needed and exited for the walk to the Basilica. We had done this same trip three years ago, but had forgotten we needed to go another way to the entrance, and we took the longer route there again this time, and wasted even more time. By the time we arrived at the entrance, which was modified because of construction and took even longer to get to, we were about 10 minutes late for the tour. We headed inside thinking we would catch up to them inside, but we did not see any tour groups. We thought that maybe no one showed up, and the tour was cancelled, so we went inside and I started to take some photos. Stephanie asked a church attendant where the tour was and he said to go back to the meeting point we had seen at the entrance.
Stephanie headed there while I took photos inside the Basilica. It has a very pretty altar area and ceiling, but most of the inside of the church is just a huge wide open space with a nice marble floor. After several minutes, I saw Stephanie with a group at the other end of the church closest to the entrance. Obviously she had found the seminarian tour guides, and the tour group. I walked over to join them. The tour had started outside in the garden area near the entrance, we had not even thought about looking there when we arrived and had hurriedly gone directly inside. There was some construction going on at what is normally the main entrance to the Basilica grounds through the gardens at the front, so it was closed and we had used the alternate entrance. Had we entered the normal entrance, we would have certainly seen the tour group assembled there.
We continued with the tour inside, and the seminarian tour guide explained about the decorations inside the church, and where many of the specialty colored marbles and other beautiful decorative stone had come from. Then we proceeded toward the altar and he gave a description of what all of the characters in the mosaics above the main altar arch represented.
Next we visited all of the small chapels on either side of the main altar and also stopped for an explanation of the meanings of the large mosaic apse above the main altar.
The last area we visited was the tomb of St. Paul in the center of the church under the main arch. The seminarian did a great job on the tour and really shed both some historical and religious perspective on the decorative aspects of the Basilica.
The tour group disbanded and we took a few more photos before heading out. There was a nice and clean restroom near the gift shop that we visited, our motto is never pass up a restroom here in Europe, especially one that is clean. It was a euro 0.50 euro, but well worth the cost. Of course, Stephanie wanted to visit the gift shop, and after that, we visited the garden area at the front of the church for photos since we had not yet seen that area in our rush to get inside earlier for the tour.
The walk back to the Metro stop was shorter, we now remembered that we had taken the long way around the Basilica to get to the entrance last time we were here, but had not thought about that this time since we were in such a hurry to get to the tour that we were already late for.
We took the metro all the way back to the Cavour stop which is just a few blocks from our hotel. We were tired and sore from all of the walking, and headed to the room for a rest break. It was about 5:00 PM.
We had made dinner reservations for 7:00 PM at the La Carbonara restaurant, and planned to get there a few minutes early to make sure we were near the front of the line to get in, and while waiting, to try and interpret the menu that is posted on the wall outside the front entrance using our phone for internet access to try and look up the menu item descriptions. For some reason, there is no cell service inside the restaurant, and they have to give you a temporary 20 minute login and password to use their Wi-Fi once inside inside. We never really made much progress with the research to try and understand the names of the various pastas on the menu, but at least we were near the front of the line just in case something had gone wrong with our request for a reservation that we made with our waiter last night.
Once they opened and we went inside, we found out that we were indeed on the reservation list, and just happened to get the same table as we had last night. It is a nice table for two, located against the side wall and out of the way of the main traffic pathway, and it is pretty quiet. We thought about ordering some different pastas, and asked a few questions about some of them, but in the end, we got the same things we had for dinner last night, knowing they were good and not wanting to be disappointed with our last meal in Rome. Sometimes, we are just not that willing to take a risk with food we do not know or understand.
We ordered a different bottle of red wine, which was much better than last night’s choice. Even our waiter, who was different than last night, said he did not like their special bottled house wine we had ordered last night. We also got a basket of bread with olive oil and balsamic vinegar for dipping. The meal was very good again, and we really enjoyed eating there.
After dinner, we walked back to the hotel and spent a little time relaxing and then finishing some packing for tomorrow’s trip back home. We had some wine left over, so we had that and I also had the last of the Limoncello we purchased in Amalfi. I loaded up some photos for the blog and worked on today’s post. We also purchased our train tickets for tomorrow morning’s Leonardo Express train to the airport. It is a dedicated train that leaves from the main Termini Train Station and goes directly to the airport in about a 32 minutes. We purchased the tickets through the Trenitalia App on my cell phone, which is nice, we don’t have to go through the stress of getting them from a ticket machine at the station before we board the train.
We set an alarm for 7:00 AM. We plan on leaving the room by about 9:15 AM for the walk to the train station. It is not that long, but it is all uphill, and can be tiring with luggage in tow. I had to make a wheel repair to Stephanie’s suitcase, the rubber had started to peel off one of her wheels during the walk to the hotel when we arrived Monday. I used some electrical tape that I carry with me for miscellaneous uses, and we will see how well it works tomorrow. We only have a little more walking with our bags before we hand them over to the airport staff at check-in.
We turned in about 10:30 PM, hoping for a good night’s sleep before our long travel day home tomorrow.