Day 4: A Bus Strike, A New Hotel, the Galleria Borghese, and Lots of Sun

Castel Sant'Angelo.

Friday was one of the nicest days we had weather-wise. It was sunny all day and, while windy at times, pleasantly cool. Unfortunately, we hit a huge snag in our plans almost immediately: a bus strike! We checked out of our convent-hotel in the morning, walked to a bus stop that would get us close to our new hotel, and were told by a passing Italian gentleman that there were no buses running. We didn't entirely believe him, because we had seen a different bus running down our street about fifteen minutes before. So we walked to a different stop where a couple of nuns were waiting. Again, a passer-by informed us there were no buses. We tried to get more information by asking a guy in a convenience store, but he had no idea. We walked back to the hotel and asked the desk clerk about it; he didn't seem to know if there was one or not, but he assumed, based on what the passers-by had said, that it was true. He offered to call a cab for us, but the line (naturally) was busy. While we were back at the hotel, we told him that we were thinking about leading a student group that would stay there next summer and he brought out the nun manager who was very kind and who showed us some "apartment-style" rooms we could use. These were a suite of four triple rooms with two shared bathrooms. This helped give us an even better impression of the place - not that it was low to begin with!

After that, we headed to the nearest taxi stand. It's very difficult to hail taxis on the street in Rome; most of them wait at designated taxi parking areas until they get a dispatch call or until someone shows up who wants a cab. Naturally, on a day with a bus strike, there were no cabs there, but there was a call box with a button we pushed. About ten minutes later, a cab showed up, driven by a rather diminutive grizzled old Italian man. He took us north to our new hotel, in the Prati neighborhood, between Castel Sant'Angelo and St. Peter's Basilica.

The new hotel was a bed and breakfast on the fifth floor of an old building that housed a number of law-offices. The very friendly owner, Massimo, greeted us and proceeded to give us all kinds of information about Rome, much of it stuff we already knew, having been there before. But he gave us some new information, too, including shopping and dining recommendations in the area. The room was quite comfortable and clean, but in the end, we didn't enjoy our stay as much as at the first place because of the breakfast (which you'll hear about in the next entry) and because the cleaning woman re-arranged most of our stuff and even seems to have gone through one of our bags!

Palazzo di Giustizia.

Our original plan for the day had been to visit the Castel Sant'Angelo in the morning and the Galleria Borghese museum in the afternoon. The Galleria Borghese requires that you book your tickets in advance and you're only allowed in at the designated time you've reserved; our tickets were for 3 pm. Thanks to the bus strike, our morning was pretty much shot and we were looking at about an hour walk to the Galleria Borghese. So we modified our plan - we skipped the Castel Sant'Angelo and started walking towards the Galleria Borghese. Along the way, we stopped for a take-out lunch of sandwiches and ate in the Piazza Cavour, a big park in front of the Palazzo di Giustizia, the seat of Italy's Supreme Court. It's a huge, grandiose, overly-baroque building constructed in the late 19th century, following the proclamation of Rome as the capital of the newly united Italy.

"Welcome to Rome!" says Pope Sixtus V.

Following lunch, we crossed the Tiber and came into the Piazza del Popolo, a large round piazza that marks the old northern gate in the third-century AD walls (now almost totally gone from this part of Rome). Because it was the major entrance to the city for medieval and Renaissance pilgrims coming from the north (which really means from every in the world except southern Italy!), a 16th-century pope had a huge Egyptian obelisk moved from the Circus Maximus to this piazza as a sort of "welcome to Rome sign." However, the obelisk was surrounded by fencing when we were there because authorities were setting up for a big political rally to be held later in the day. You see, local elections happened on Saturday and so Friday was the last day of campaigning. We had seen signs throughout town advertising rallies in various parts of Rome on Friday afternoon and Massimo had informed us about the elections. He also informed us of one other big piece of news in Rome for the weekend: Sunday was the final match for the Italian soccer championship and the two teams playing were Roma (Rome's team) and Lazio (the team from the region immediately surrounded Rome). These are two big rivals (imagine Bears-Packers or Ohio State-Michigan or Steelers-Browns) so their normal matches are a big deal; a championship match for all the marbles was such a big deal that the police originally didn't even want them to play the match in Italy because of safety concerns! In the end, though, the clubs won out and they played Sunday night in the old Olympic stadium from the 1960 games.

Galleria Borghese.

Lisa's dream car in the Villa Borghese.

Anyway, we continued our walk towards the museum by climbing the stairs up the Pincian Hill, from where we got some nice views overlooking the Piazza del Popolo. There's a huge park on the Pincian Hill (the Villa Borghese) which surrounds the Galleria Borghese and is the remnant of the suburban estate of the 17th-century Cardinal Scipione Borghese. It's now quite a pleasant park and we threaded our way through joggers, bikers, Segway-ers, and even walked around some sort of large equestrian fair. We also saw four twenty-something Italian men barrel down a steep hill on little metal go-carts and then bail out just before hitting a tree. It was quite amusing and a very nice day to stroll through a park.

"This is the best idea I've ever had!"

Pool in the gardens behind the Galleria Borghese.

The Galleria Borghese is located at the back of the park and we got there in time to collect our tickets and get inside for our 3 pm visit. Most of the collection was created by Cardinal Borghese. He was an early patron of the great sculptor Bernini and a collector of Caravaggio's paintings. Unfortunately for you, we couldn't take pictures inside (although we did see one rather boorish looking tourist walk right up to the sculptures and repeatedly snap pictures on his iPhone, hindering other people's ability to see them; we kept hoping a security guard would chew him out, but none did!). You'll have to be content with some links to the more famous works, like Bernini's Daphne and Apollo and Rape of Proserpina and Caravaggio's Bacchus (which is supposedly a self-portrait). The pictures don't really do justice to the sculptures, however; the high level of detail on them is just astounding.

On the Pincian Hill.

In addition to being unable to take pictures, the other thing about the Galleria Borghese is that your visit is strictly limited to two hours, so we were kicked out 5 and started walking back towards the hotel. On the way, we stopped for gelato (our first of the trip, amazingly) at a cafe in the park and we threaded our way through the Piazza del Popolo again, this time with the rally in full swing. However, the size of the rally seemed dwarfed by the size of the piazza! After crossing the Tiber again, we walked up Via Cola di Rienzo and window-shopped in the many stores. For dinner, we went to a place just around the corner from the bed and breakfast which was recommended by Massimo. It was about half tourists and half locals, the waiter spoke to us almost entirely in Italian, and the food was delicious, continuing our streak of picking good restaurants (in contrast to the last time we were in Rome). It was a good way to end the day.

Coming up next: weird breakfast food, Rome's ruined ancient port city, a 1910s power plant full of ancient sculptures, Aaron's favorite ancient statue, and more rain.

A half-hearted political rally.

The Villa Borghese (apparently a nice spot for a romantic rendezvous,
judging from the couple in the lower left).

Bonus picture: antique Fiat.