Where are Ron and Ellen?
Italy, Montenegro, Croatia, 20 September - 25 October 2012
Ron and Ellen outside the old city, Budva, Montenegro, October 2012
Rome and Lecce, Italy, 21-30 September 2012
To see the first set of photos of Rome, click on the thumbnail at the left.
To see the second set of photos of Rome, click on the thumbnail at the left.
Wandering in Rome
Rome, Italy
Wednesday 23 September 2012Dear Family and Friends,
All flights went smoothly last Thursday/Friday, and we took a minibus from the airport to the main train station in downtown Rome, then walked from there to Piazza di Sanniti where our apartment is. After several unsuccessful attempts with a pay phone, the kind security guard at the bank on the Piazza helped us out by calling on his cell phone the person who was to meet us with the key. She arrived in just a few minutes and took us to the apartment. So almost exactly 18 hours door-to-door, a long trip but still better than the ~40 hours to Indonesia. The apartment is simple but quite nice. It is in a huge building with multiple interior courtyards, and we are on the second floor of six. Our door and each window open into different courtyards. Stores and restaurants on the ground floor, a green grocer across the street, a patisserie around the corner, a grocery store a block away, and numerous small restaurants in the area. We had pannini from one downstairs restaurant for lunch our first day and an excellent dinner at the other the first night. Friday afternoon we did some walking around our neighborhood, and found a place to get a sim card for Ron's phone (didn't see a need to get one for mine) so we can make calls and use Google maps to figure out where we are. Slept 10 hours that first night!
Our friend Tom had been in Rome last spring and, after noting where our apartment was - quite close to a stop on the Tram 3 line, gave us notes for what we dubbed Tom's Tram 3 Tour. So that was what we did on Saturday. Tom told us, "The 3 tram runs from Piazza di Porta Maggiore near your apartment. Then up Via del Verano to the Piazza de San Lorenzo (San Lorenzo is a great church, see the grate on which they cooked the saint). Then the 3 heads up Viale Regina Margherita. When the 3 gets to P. Buenos Aires. Via Po is to the left and Via Tagliamento is to the right. Via Po has the Dame restaurant and a block down Tagliamento there is a street that goes off at a 45 degree angle (Via Dora) with a very ornate arch across the road. through the arch is a rather lovely fountain and a couple of spectacular art nouveau houses and apartment buildings that are worth seeing if you like art nouveau. There is a church on the corner of Tagliamento and Margherita with an interesting modern mosaic over the entrance. Via Po, remember that from back at the beginning of this note? almost runs into the Borghese Gardens and the Museo Borghese you need to go right off of Po to hit the park. A 15-20 minute walk across the gardens gets you to the Piazza Popolo (see guide books for Caravaggios at Santa Maria del Popolo and Nero's ghost!)."
We went out and got on the tram and first rode all the way to the end of the line in one direction (going past the Colosseum along the way), then rode all the way to the other end of the line, then back to the Piazza Buenos Aires. The Via Dora houses and fountain were, as Tom had promised, spectacular, and at the Dame restaurant we had a wonderful antipasto platter for two, with bruschetta and bresaola and prosciutto and cheeses. Then onward to the Borghese, Gardens, a huge park. We stopped at the museum there to get tickets for a time later in our stay (only a certain number of people allowed in the building every two hours and one needs to reserve ahead), and discovered there had been two cancellations for that very moment, So off we went. The building itself is pretty over the top (although that is true of many of the buildings we've been in here), there are Caravaggio paintings and other paintings, but for us the best things were the wonderful Bernini sculptures. After the museum we wandered through the park to the place where you look down on the huge Piazza del Popolo where we noted a group of perhaps 200 people standing together at one side of the Piazza. After making our way down the stairs on the side of the hill and into the Piazza, we discovered that this large group was actually made up of many smaller clusters of people conversing in sign language. We don't know if this was an occasional gathering or a regular one - and, not knowing sign, had no way of finding out!
On Sunday we focused on ancient Rome, taking our friendly tram 3 to the Colosseum and walking around the outside - we'd gone in when we were here in 2003 and decided not to do that again. But we did go into the Forum and the Palatine Hill. We saw a note on the list of ticket prices about free tickets for seniors, and when we asked at the counter were told "over 65" - we said we were 72, and he asked for ID, and when we started to get it out he looked at the long line behind us and just handed us tickets and waved us off. We are not positive, but we think the senior tickets may have been supposed to be for EU residents, but there we were and off we went. Wandering through these ancient ruins is quite amazing. Sitting down to rest on a piece of toppled column or a hunk of marble wall makes us feel connected to and at the same time very distant from the past.
Sunday while waiting in line for Forum tickets Ron was reading an ebook on his cell phone and Ellen reading on her Nook. When we got home Sunday evening, we could not get the Nook to wake up from sleep mode. Panic attack! How is Ellen going to function on a trip without being able to read! We did some searching on the Web and tried all the suggestions (most variations on the same theme) we found there for waking frozen Nooks. No luck. So we write a long message with lots of questions to Barnes and Noble support. They responded very nicely, (included some suggestions for waking the Nook up that, as expected, didn't work) - but the bottom line is that it is dead, unless one has a US IP address one cannot download Nook software to a phone, and there is no place to get a replacement in Rome, but when I get home I can trade in the dead one for a discount on a new one. Ron has the Nook reader software on both his phone and on his Netbook, so we have come up with a workable, although not ideal, solution. I do not have the Nook app on my phone (Ron suggested it at one point, but I didn't do it - I've learned my lesson and will do it when I get home!) so we put the sim card for Italy into my phone to turn it into our usable phone, and now one of us will read on the Netbook and the other on Ron's phone, with my phone becoming our actual phone. Means we have to take the Netbook pretty much everywhere, and I don't like reading on it or the phone as well as reading on the Nook - but beggars can't be choosers! A fine example of the reliability of paper vs digital, but with paper we'd need 20 books filling our suitcases.
Monday we spent a very frustrating several hours on the Internet booking our overnight ferry tickets from Bari, Italy, to Dubrovnik, Croatia. We couldn't get a cabin on the date we wanted (Ron on his own would have booked a deck seat but Ellen refused to overnight that way!). We ended up shuffling things around a bit and will now take the train on Friday 28 September from Rome to Lecce (about 5 hours), spend Friday and Saturday nights in Lecce, take the train from Lecce to Bari (1.5 hours) on Sunday afternoon 30 Sept, and take the ferry to Dubrovnik Sunday night to Monday morning. We take the ferry back from Dubrovnik on Monday 22 October, arriving in Bari on Tuesday morning 23 October, then immediately taking the train back to Rome, where we'll spend the last two nights before flying home. After finally purchasing the ferry tickets, we ate lunch, then walked to the train station where, after a certain amount of frustration again (crowds, lines, no useful signs), we bought our train tickets from Rome to Lecce. Doing logistics takes a lot of energy!
After that we took a bus to Plaza Argentina, a sunken plaza of Roman ruins whose high walls contain a cat shelter - lots of cats curled up sleeping beside old pieces of pillar or stalking among the columns. On to the Pantheon (a building that was RE-built by Hadrian around AD 125!), then wandering the streets in that area. (Cheryl, we think we may not have found the right gelato place - the hazelnut was good but not spectacular.) In San Ignazio church we discovered a German group called Wurzburger Dommusik rehearsing for a concert, and stayed for about 1.5 hours listening to them. A very modern piece called Augustinus by a composer named Hilles, complete with a chorus, soprano soloists, a boy soprano, tenor soloist, harp, flute, violin, cello, numerous and various drums and other percussion instruments, and, at one point, the chorus using wine glasses partially filled with water to create a haunting sound.
At one point in the rehearsal a woman appeared in the aisle playing a metal bowl and when she started singing we realized she had top notch talent. After the rehearsal Ron asked her for her name and the name of the program. She was friendly and charming and also gave him her card: Maria Bernius www.mariabernius.de
Tuesday was a church-visiting day - each one seemed more spectacular than the one before. I think we may be done with churches now (except, perhaps for a visit to St. Peter's, which we visited in 2003). In the evening, Ron decided to go back to St. Ignazio for the actual concert, but since it didn't start until 9 pm, almost her bed time, Ellen stayed home to read.
And today we are off for more wanderings.
Love to all,
Ellen and Ron
Golden Stones of Lecce
To see photos of Lecce, Italy, click on the thumbnail at the left.
Lecce, Italy
30 September 2012Dear Family and Friends,
We are in Lecce, Italy, packing up our bags after a two-day stay here. Late this afternoon we take the train from Lecce back north along the coast to Bari (2 hr trip), and from there we take the overnight ferry for Dubrovnik.
Lecce is a beautiful town, and we stayed in the historic center, an area of narrow winding streets and gorgeous gold-colored baroque stone buildings from the 16th and 17th century. One guidebook described it as "an orgy of architectural extravagance," which is right on the mark. The roads in the old city were, of course, not constructed with cars in mind, and pedestrians and cars and motorcycles are often contending for space, but there are also a number of pedestrian-only streets. Yesterday morning and this morning we spent wandering through the streets, in and out of churches, cathedrals, and basilicas, around the Roman amphitheater and smaller Roman theater (both late 2nd century), through little piazzas, and under archways. Yesterday evening we wandered the same area, which looked totally different at night with the buildings all lit up and the street packed with all kinds of people out on a Saturday night. And we had a wonderful dinner, pasta with mussels and clams for me and swordfish with olives and tomatoes for Ron. Yesterday afternoon we spent reading in our room, as it was very hot - temperature hit 98F. We just hadn't expected this kind of heat - everything I looked at said the high temperatures would be around 70. However, I felt a little better about our planning when I looked at the weather page yesterday (where I was told the temperature was 98) and discovered that the average high temperature for 29 September is indeed about 70. We are hoping for cooler weather soon!
Last Wednesday in Rome we decided we would go back to St. Peter's and the Vatican, to which we'd been in 2003, but not the Sistine Chapel, to which we'd also been in 2003. We took bus 40 from the train station (that and tram 3 have taken us most of the places we wanted to go) and walked up through the streets leading to St. Peter's Square. One has to go through airport-like security to get into the church - and the lines, although they were moving, were possibly thousands of people long. After standing in one for about 5 minutes, we decided to forget the whole idea!
We've felt like there were many, many more tourists everywhere we went than there had been 9 years ago, but as we thought more about it, we realized that in 2003 our 10 days were in late February and early March. Late September and early October are obviously a whole different matter when it comes to numbers of tourists.
After giving up on St. Peter's we walked back across the river and wandered though little streets (stopping for gelato), ending up in Piazza Navona, which had been almost deserted in 2003 but was now filled with artists displaying their wares and lots of tourists - but not nearly as many as St. Peter's Square.
Thursday we took tram 3 to its ending at Pyramid (there actually is a pyramid there in the middle of a huge traffic circle) then walked to Trastevere on the other side of the river, passing on the way the fabulous but expensive deli (packed with Americans) and the inexpensive cafeteria around the corner where we had a great lunch (both recommended by Tom). After wandering through the narrow streets of Trastevere, much less crowded than anywhere else we'd been in Rome, we walked back to Pyramid to pick up tram 3 again. Last stop for the day was San Clemente, a 12th century basilica with beautiful mosaics and frescos. Then you go downstairs and underneath the church is the nave of an even older church (400 AD), still with frescos on the wall. And then you go another level down and find the remains of a 1st century Roman house and Mithric temple. The layers of history are pretty remarkable, especially when you realize that much of central Rome has the same kind of layering.
Love to all,
Ellen and Ron
Back to the Fall 2012 index
cfw.com
Questions? Send email to Ellen, ebouton 
Last updated: 8 November 2012
