August 8, 2006
We arrived in Rome without getting a whole lot of sleep on the overnight train from Interlaken. We had a sleeping compartment that we shared with four other people, making it a total of six people who were trying to get some sleep in a space about the size of a shoe box (okay, a really, really big shoe box). With no space to put our luggage, we placed our backpacks between our legs while we slept. One of our sleeping compartment-mates had a rather phlegmy cough that kept Hiro up most of the night (for some reason it didn't bother me). In the morning, two of the six passengers had already gotten off at a stop and we had a pleasant conversation with the remainder: a young couple from a town not too far from Rome.
Once we stepped out of the station we immediately saw that Rome would be a much different city than any that we had experienced. The hot Mediterranean sun beamed down on us as we searched for our hostel.
It took us a while because we were looking for an obvious sidewalk entrance for the “Gulliver's House†Hostel, but it turned out to be a very large apartment amongst many other homes and businesses in a building tucked into a block southwest of the station and just off the very busy Via Nazional.
We were buzzed in and given a curt but friendly greeting by the front desk manager and given a nice overview of Rome on a free map.
Our room was pleasantly decorated with posters of renaissance art and after we dropped our heavy packs off we ventured out into Rome. We would have rather taken naps, but the hostel had a policy of 12-4 pm lockouts so they could clean the premises.
We found that with a little bit of walking we could cover a number of sights including the Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, and the Piazza del Popolo. There was some scaffolding at the top of the steps as there was apparently some restoration being done on the column by the church, which made the stairway less picturesque as it could have been, but it was still impressive (at least to me. Upon seeing it Hiro said something like, “What, this is it? It's just a bunch of steps,†(which is kinda true)).
The Piazza del Popolo was wide and open and bordered by some grand fountains and statues, but the obelisk in the center was surrounded by curtains and scaffolding. The curtains gave an image of the obelisk giving an impression of what it would normally look like because, just like the column at the top of the Spanish Steps, it was undergoing some repair or retouching. The curtains even had a huge advertisement for Superman Returns printed on it, which was a little weird.
The only monument we saw that day that was untouched by any scaffolding, or curtains, or movie advertisements was the Trevi Fountain, which was undeniably beautiful. Hundreds of tourists surrounded the fountain, many waiting to toss coins over their shoulders and into the fountain: one coin would ensure a return to Rome, and a second would grant a wish.
Hiro and I both tossed in two coins each, though my brother was a bit of a cheapskate and tossed in to US nickels We noticed one man using what appeared to be a magnetic tipped stick to fish some of the more valuable coins out of the fountain. I know that US coins aren't attracted to magnets but apparently Euro coins are.
After we got back to the hostel and took some much needed showers we ventured out in search of food. After some more walking we discovered that one of Lonely Planet's suggestions on good pizza apparently didn't sell pizza at dinner, and another was closed because the staff was on vacation. We settled on a more tourist-oriented restaurant with a friendly staff and English menus and had some pretty decent pizza and calzones. Our first day in Rome was complete.