Mom's birthday disaster and recovery

It's Tuesday, our last full day in Rome.

Yesterday started out as a disaster. I got up pretty early, the first one in the apartment, and I was showered and ready to head out by 6:30 AM. I thought everyone else wanted to head out to see the Sistine Chapel first thing, and thought they'd want to get up too. I also thought I let every one know that we all had to get up and head out first thing to beat the lines. Jan was tired, and decided to stay home, but everyone else walked the couple of blocks to the Vatican Museums. I really was worried we were going to be too late and the lines would be too long.

I hate being right sometimes. We didn't get over to the Vatican until about 8:45 AM. By that point, the line was at least 5 blocks long, and the wait would be about three hours. So Nicole said, "hey, why don't we just take the train to Tivoli?" We all agreed, so we walked back to the apartment to get Jan, who got out of bed and got ready to go.

From reading the guide books, it sure seemed as if taking the train to Tivoli (location of Hadrian's Villa and the Villa d'Este) would be a simple of matter of taking the "Metropolitana" subway to the "Termini" main train station, and transfer to a "real" train. So we bought tickets on the subway, and tried to do exactly that. We walked all over Termini to find the right track for the train to Tivoli, but no luck. It turns out that there are trains that go from Termini to Tivoli, but only the first and last trains of the day, which are "express" trains.

When it's not rush hour, the only trains are locals, and they leave from the Tributina Metro stop. So we got back onto the subway, and took the "B" line to Tributina. Metro passes are good for 75 minutes after you "validate" them at the turnstyle. We tried to get back onto the Metro about 77 minutes after we validated them originally, so we had to buy new passes.

So far, the day was not going to well.

The trip to Tivoli was a long one on the non-express train. On the way there, Dad mentioned that the main reason he wanted us to go to Tivoli was so that Mom could see the fantastic gardens at Villa d'Este. Nicole and I joked that we "hope it's not closed on Mondays."

So we finally got to Tivoli. We had to ask how to get to the Villa d'Este from a local at the train station, who pointed us down a flight of stairs to a bridge across the river. When we got to the other side, we saw a bus stop and asked which bus took us to the villa. One of the people waiting told me "you can walk there, and be there 'subito,' (immediately)."

Apparently, the concept of "subito" doesn't translate the same way you'd think it does, regardless of the form of transportation.

After walking about a half hour or so, we finally made it to the main entrance of the Villa. I noticed a sign in Italian that read "Lunedi' chiuso" and I was really hoping that I got the words for Monday and Tuesday (or any other day of the week) confused. It was not to be. I looked down at the English translation on the sign below the Italian one and saw that "the monument is closed on Mondays."

Just when we thought the day couldn't get any worse, it did.

So we tried to figure out what to do next. I was trying to get people excited about Hadrian's Villa. So we found a place to buy a bus ticket for 1.0o Euro per person and figured out where the bus stop to that Villa was. We encountered a mother and daughter from Austin, TX, who told us that they had been waiting for nearly an hour to catch the bus. Fantastic. We waited as well, probably about 15 minutes, and Dad said "let's just call this excursion a mistake and head back to Rome." I said "let's just wait another 5 minutes to see if the bus comes." Unfortunately, it arrived 3 minutes later, so we piled on and headed to Hadrian's Villa.

We bought our tickets, and walked around the grounds. About an hour later, we headed back to where the bus left us off, and happened to see a bus headed in the other direction, just as we started to hear rumbles of thunder and saw the ominous dark clouds in the sky.

Of course, our bus tickets that we used to get to Hadrian's Villa would not let us go back to Tivoli, and of course we couldn't buy bus tickets on the bus. We had to go to a tobaccanist, bar, or news agent for that, and the bus driver was not willing to give us a break or take mercy on us and help us out.

So he drove off without us and we found a place to buy bus tickets for the 4 kilometer trip back to Tivoli. Of course, the tickets for the "yellow" bus would not allow us to ride on the "blue" bus and vice versa. Regardless, after we bought our tickets, we started walking to a bus shelter just as the rain started pouring down.

We waited, and waited, and waited, and then, just for fun, we waited some more. A woman came into the shelter and we managed to communicate that we were heading to the Tivoli train station to go back to Rome, and she confirmed that we were waiting in the right place. When I showed her the tickets that we had she said "oh no, that's for the blue bus! You need tickets for the yellow bus! You can buy those at the bar across the street."

So Renee and I walked across the street, and another 11 Euros later we had the right tickets and 11 wrong tickets, all set for the trip back to Tivoli

The bus was about as efficient as the train, and arrived about as "subito" as the walk to the closed on Mondays Villa d'Este was. Nearly an hour after the bus driver wouldn't let us get on his bus back, the next bus arrived.

Back to the train station, where we arrived promptly at 4:16 PM. Just in time to miss the 4:11 local train back to Rome Tributina station by about 4 minutes, but with plenty of time to catch the rush hour express train back to Rome Termini station. In fact, we had since that express train was scheduled to leave Tivoli at 5:28 PM, we had more than an hour to spare!

Yeah, this day was just turning out to be fantastic.

Jarrett really wanted to try to get back to Rome in time to see the Coloseum before it closed, which is at 6:15 PM. So, of course, our train arrived back in Rome at about 6:20 PM, just in time to say "we missed it by five minutes."

Well, the day was a total waste, more or less, but the night was fun.

I was trying to convince Dad that we should head to a place near the Castel Sant'Angelo for dinner, and that we should walk around the Piazza Navona and Pantheon before going to the Trevi Fountain, and that going on foot would be a lot more fun and scenic that it would be to take the Metro to get there.

I'm glad I did, because the walk to that part of town was the highlight of the day, and as far as I'm concerned is the highlight of the trip so far. Rome at night is fantastic. We had dinner in a nice little trattoria, and afterwards walked down a little alley in the "antique" district to Piazza Navona. The main fountain was being worked on, so the water was drained, which meant that none of us could get the real impact of the fact that it's the best fountain in the city.

I got to function as the group tour guide, and told people about the stuff they were seeing and explained how the entire area was actually a field outside the original walls of Rome, and that the fields was used as the campgrounds for the armies of Roman generals when they returned from battle during the Republic and the early days of the Empire. Generals were not allowed to cross the border into the city itself with an army in tow, so the "campus maritus" was the location where those armies would wait for the general to return after reporting his success to the Roman Senate.

I also explained to them that Piazza Navona was in the shape it was in because it funcitoned originally as Domitian's "circus," a track for chariot races during his and subsequent emporers' reigns.

Next stop was the Pantheon, the temple to all the gods, then to the Fontana di Trevi (Trevi Fountain) where we had some fantastic gelato.

The day was pretty awful, but the night was really great.

Everyone is up this morning, and I hope that we'll manage to get to the Vatican soon so we can see the Sistine Chapel. I hear hair dryers though, so I'm not sure we're going to get there in time. That place queues up pretty fast, and the lines are ridiculous.