We were in Rome over 35 years ago for five nights. Neither of us liked it. We found it chaotic, loud, very dense and a bit unkept. We had just come from Paris where there were beautiful buildings and manicured gardens and did not appreciate the contrast. After a long hiatus, we started traveling again in Europe a few years ago. We have since enjoyed both Athens and Naples which led us to wonder if we would like Rome more now than when we were in our 20s. So when I lost the “bet” on ITA prices to Sicily to go down again, I booked us on Delta through Paris to Rome for about $500 a ticket less with the idea that we could spend a couple nights in Rome first.
We didn’t arrive in Rome until after it was dark. It was a short walk to our guest house, Sofia’s Suites Guesthouse, where we paid about 127 Euros a night for a well-designed but smallish room with a king bed through Booking.com. No breakfast but a fridge so we bought food at a nearby convenience store. I wanted something walking distance from train station but quiet and this fit the bill. It wasn’t quite as close to the sites as ideal but workable. I was glad we could easily walk from the train station (10 minutes) as the line for a taxi was long when we arrived by train from the airport.
There are three major differences we observed returning to Rome after so many years. 1) it is much more crowded; 2) many more people speak English, and 3) there now is Goggle maps. The latter meant that after we ate a quite good dinner across from where we were staying we walked to the Trevi Fountain. Goggle maps took us down lots of narrow streets and alleys for about 30 minutes until we reached the fountain. It was 11:30 pm at night. We couldn’t get over how many people were at the fountain. Apparently, it was relatively uncrowded as there were twice as many people the next day when the GPS took us past the Trevi fountain on our trek through Rome.
We had decided to focus our first full day on doing things we had never done in Rome. So the next morning we took a GuruWalk with Maria Grazia of Jewish Rome. These are “free” tours where you make a donation. We had a group of ten, about half of which were Jewish. We are Catholic and ironically so was the guide. But she knew her Jewish history. Two of the Jewish men were quite familiar with it and I could see them nodding appreciably when she went into certain details. One of the interesting details was that the Jewish community was long standing in Rome and during World War II most of its members were taken in by other families before the Nazis arrived to “relocate” people. Still the tour was perhaps a bit long but that may have because of the particular people on the tour. Others must have thought so too as two of the tour members dropped out at the two hour mark.
We then ate lunch just outside the Jewish Ghetto area (which are not the original buildings which were torn down). Our sandwiches were good and I paid in cash but didn’t count my change. Later when my husband tried to use that change to buy something from a vendor, we discovered that I had been given change in Canadian currency!
The other thing I booked was a tour of the Galleria Borghese. Make sure you buy from the museum’s website (which may take some persistence as it seems to be down a lot) as there is considerable mark up by tour operators. You have to reserve a spot in advance. The regular entry price is 15 Euros. We paid 23 Euros for entrance and a tour. I would really recommend this option as it allows you to easily see the highlights in the two hour allotted slot. I was quite taken by Bernini’s masterpieces. I simply gasped when we walked into the room with Apollo and Daphine. The scale of the museum makes it easy to appreciate the art and we are hardly experts.
I was able to wear my small cross body purse into the museum but our backpacks had to be checked.