So finally, the first of the Rome reports! First, the hotel. It's called Les Fleurs Luxury House (a half-French, half-English name in Italy...) and was very nice. It has a good location and its modern decor was a welcome change from the older, more traditional hotels we've had in Italy so far. The hotel is very small, with only five rooms, and you have to climb a steep set of stairs to get to the front desk, but it had a cozy, personal feel to it. The hotel room was also very small, but lovely.
The bathroom included this magnificent jacuzzi tub, which was quite possibly the best thing about our room! We each used it almost every day, and it helped a lot in trying to recover from the ridiculous amounts of walking we did in Rome.
The service at the hotel was very good, too - they made us tea (for me) and decaf coffee (for Sarah) on request in the evenings, and the breakfasts were amazingly good for Italy. Freshly scrambled eggs, bacon - which was somewhere between prosciutto and American crispy bacon - toast, tea, cappuccino, and fresh-squeezed orange juice that was incredibly delicious. I should have taken pictures, but I almost always forget to bring the camera to breakfast.
The only real downside was the internet almost never working, but that is so important that I probably wouldn't stay there again. To try to make up for it the first night, they gave us a bottle of champagne - we'd both rather have internet, but it was pretty fun.
The hotel is located about a block from the Spanish Steps, so whenever we went out we walked past all the beautiful luxury stores - Gucci, Prada, Cartier, Bulgari, Dolce & Gabbana... I saw plenty of things I would like to buy!
Spanish Steps at the end of Via Condotti
Shopping in the evening
Overall, the sightseeing and photography in Rome were generally enjoyable and successful, but as always there are so many things I didn't see that I would have liked to. So that was a little sad as usual, but that aside, five days was enough! Rome is just so big, noisy, and crowded. I really don't love it as a city, but it does have some of the best stuff on Earth.
The afternoon we arrived in Rome (Tuesday Nov 9), we headed out to "take it easy" and "just see some local stuff" and ended up walking all the way across the city. But the weather was really beautiful so I'm glad we did!
First we stopped at the Pantheon, a round Roman temple (125 CE) that has been used as a church since the 7th century.
Glimpse of the exterior and dome from a nearby piazza
Pagan architecture and Christian art
Oculus in the center of the ceiling, open to the sky, and a short ray of November sunlight hitting the interior of the dome
Detail of concrete dome
Tomb of the Renaissance artist Raphael
Lovely piazza in front of the Pantheon, with fountain featuring an obelisk swiped from Egypt by the ancient Romans.
Then we visited the Basilica di Santa Maria sopra Minerva, a Gothic church (the only Gothic church in Rome, in fact) built on the site of a temple of Minerva. It has two main highlights:
Tomb of St. Catherine of Siena
Statue of Jesus by a young Michelangelo
Then we continued quite a bit further on to the Capitoline Hill, Forum and Colosseum at the heart of ancient Rome.
View from near the base of the Capitoline Hill
Heading up the hill
Statue at the entrance to the plaza on top of the hill (we visited the Capitoline Museums, seen in the background, another day)
View of the Roman Forum from the Capitoline Hill. That's the Arch of Septimus Severus (203 CE) in the foreground.
Temple of Saturn
Temple transformed into a church
Basilica of Santi Cosma e Damiano, another temple converted into a church in the Forum. The magnificent mosaic, depicting the Second Coming of Christ, dates from 527 CE.
Mosaic detail
Trajan's Forum across the street from the Roman Forum
View across Trajan's Forum to a couple of Baroque churches
On our way back to the hotel, we happened to walk right past the famous Trevi Fountain. As you can see by the umbrellas, by now it had also started to rain.
Closer look at the pretty fountain, completed in 1762.
View from atop the Spanish Steps
