Goodbye Rome

Today was a day of waiting. We had to be out of the apartment by 9:30, as another group was coming in around lunchtime. We somehow acquired a rather large amount of trash--we've been taking it out every morning, but today we had FOUR little bags of trash. (Lots of stuff cleaned out of the fridge--we drank the last of the milk and juice, ate the fruit, and threw out the yogurt.)

We took the Metro to Termini and checked our bags at the Left Luggage area. (Digression: when I read The HItchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series in high school, I couldn't figure out what a "left luggage" station was--was there a "right luggage" station somewhere?)

Now, we had eight hours to kill before our train arrived. We didn't want to get too sweaty, as there would be no showers tonight, so we opted to mostly stick around the air-conditioned parts of the station. We started by window-shopping at the mall in the basement of the station. All kinds of stores--Foot Locker, Levi Strauss, little clothing stores, etc. We went to the bookstore, and eventually found the English-language books on the third floor (naturally, the one floor where the AC didn't reach). I was entertained for a while on the first floor, flipping through an Italian version of a book that I knew in English (Terry Pratchett's "Colour of Magic"). We ended up buying a history of Rome with overlays, a copy of a new Hitchiker's book by the author of Artemis Fowl, and a deck of Rome playing cards, since we had checked our regular cards in our luggage.

For a mid-morning break, we got some drinks at McDonald's, and played a couple rounds of Hearts with our new Rome cards:



We picked up lunch at Drugstore Conad, which was really a supermarket/drugstore combo. John and Matt had hot sandwiches on focaccia (salami, I think), Beth and I had pre-made cold sandwiches (salami, cheese and lettuce for her; roasted chicken (?), tomato, and lettuce for me), chips, and sodas.

After lunch, I convinced the family that we should venture outside the air-conditioned confines of the station for a brief excursion. We walked to the Baths of Diocletian, which are 1) free, and 2) only a block from the station. These are the old Roman baths, that used to cover 10 acres and bath 3,000 Romans at a time. A large part of the ruins was turned into a church (Basilica Santa Maria degli Angeli), begun by Michelangelo and remodeled by another architect, which is what we saw today.





Inside the church, running diagonally across the nave and transept, is a meridian line that used to keep the official time for Rome.






A couple more church photos:




After we got back to the station, we found a quieter place to sit (near the TI office by track 24):



Our train finally arrived, and left half an hour behind schedule. This time we have two adjoining compartments, so we opened up the little door in between for some family togetherness:



Trenitalia (the Italian train company) need some better English translators on its staff:



For dinner, we splurged and ate in the dining car. The first course was pasta:



and for the second, we had a choice of chicken (John & Beth):



or veal (Matt and me):



Dessert was either fruit, carrotcake, or peach cake (which all four of us chose):



The scenery was lovely during dinner. The sun set as a red ball, just visible over the horizon, and we passed fields of sunflowers and cute little houses. The train windows were very dirty, so I don't have any photos worthy of sharing.

Back in our compartment, we found that the seats had been folded up into beds:



Here's the little sink that's inside a cabinet:


This train is much better than the other sleeper train we took to Venice, although we were really too exhausted to care during that trip. On the previous train, the kids complained that their room smelled, we were several doors down the hall from them, there was no toilet paper, and everyone got the same coffee and packaged croissant for breakfast. This time, our compartments open up into each other, there seems to be plenty of TP, and the conductor asked us if we wanted coffee, tea, cocoa, or milk in the morning. But, the AC doesn't seem to be very strong in our car--other cars feel cooler, and the people in the top bunks (John and Beth this time) were complaining about the heat. It seems to finally have cooled off a bit, although the AC does tend to turn off when we're stopped at stations.

As I type this, we are sitting in the Bologna train station, still half an hour behind schedule. It's a little cooler now than it was earlier, but still a bit toastier than we like for sleeping.