When In Rome.

            Showered, shaved and changed, Frank (the show band drummer) and I were ready to head for the gangway to explore the eternal city of Rome. We head down the stairs and nearly get onto the gangway when Franks stops. He tells me that he has rented a bike and he wanted to take it with him. I was feeling a bit uneasy about the decision because that would leave me with out a bike and he would surly leave me in the dust. He looks on the bike rack, which was just off to the side of the gangway and looks for an unlocked bike. He manages to find one. We take it off the rack and consider just running off with it. The crew office was closed today so we would be unable to properly rent the bike out. However, the lady who runs the crew office was standing near by so we figured we might as well take a shot in the dark and ask if we could take the bike off the books. Frank politely asks and she looked at him and laughed and simply stated “I don’t really care”. Before she changed her mind we booked it down the gangway with the bikes and rode off.

            The ship was docked in Civitaveccia, which was an hour train ride from the city of Rome. After a few wrong turns, we made it to the train station. The small room at the station was packed with people. We shoved our way through with our bikes and made it to a ticket kiosk. We booked or departure and return tickets which ran us roughly 20 Euros. The tickets said that the train leaving for Rome was on Track 1 so we wheeled our bikes out of the building and onto Track 1 which was right outside the building. The train was already in the station so we got into a compartment with our bikes.

            The compartments were small and there were no hooks to hang our bikes on so we figured we may have to just stand by the doorway and hold them for the entire trip. The train filled with people and as we were waiting for the train to leave, I saw a familiar face sitting in the seats in front of us. It was our friend Sara who was working on the ship and was going home today after a 7 month contract. She came and stood with us and chatted. The bus finally got going after a few minutes the next thing I knew, we were in the countryside.

            I came in and out of Sara and Frank’s conversation as I looked out the train window at the green hills and farms outside. It reminded me very much of places like Napa and Santa Barbra in California. We were passing several wine and olive orchards and I would watch the farmers working the land as we whipped by in the bullet train.

            The train made a stop and a few people got off but a lot of people got on. I had stepped off the train with my bike to let people on and off and when the train started to fill up, Frank warned me to get back on or I was going to lose my space on the train. I quickly got back on and barely fit into the now overly crowded compartment for the door to close.

            The train powered forward and after a few minutes it stopped again. This time a lot of people got off. I stepped of the train with my bike to let people off and I watched a father take his toddler off of the train and set him onto the platform. The dad untied his pants and opened up his diaper where about 5 gallons of urine splashed onto the platform. The dad simply put the diaper and pants back on his son and put him back onto the train. I got back onto the train and wondered if the dad was going to leave the mess there. Sure enough, he did. As the train got moving, I look onto the floor and saw that his feet tracked urine into the train floor right next to we were standing. Luckily, it didn’t create an odor.

            After chatting with Frank and Sara, we made it into Rome. We said our final good-byes to Sara and we stepped off the train. When the train shot off again, we could see the dome to the Vatican from the platform.

            We jumped onto our bikes and rode towards the dome. After navigating through some narrow, cobblestone streets, we made it to the front of the Vatican. Today being Saturday, there were thousands of people in front of it. We had to eventually get off our bikes and walk them because there were so many people. The line to get into the building was a half-mile long and my thoughts about trying to get inside soon disintegrated. The building was massive with several white marble statues of men in togas and robes lining the decorated roof. The building faced a large open area that had a few small fountains and statues. Surrounding the large open courtyard was large roman pillars that surrounded it in a semi-circle. On top of the pillars were more marble statues of Saints and religious figures.

            The place was busy and had tours, religious groups of all sorts and locals coming and going in all different directions which made it dizzying. Realizing that there was no way we were going to be able to wait in this line to get into the Vatican, we decided to bike further down to the Coliseum.

            Once again, we took a few wrong turns and after asking a police officer that luckily spoke English, we headed in the right direction. We had to pass under a tunnel and over a bridge that took us over the Tiber River. We cycled through the city that had many older building and still retained its ancient Roman architecture. I kept one eye on the road and another looking up at the buildings and also watching the people on the sidewalks. After biking for at least 20min, and starting to get a little exhausted, we came to an impressive monument.

            We came onto the Vittorio Emanuele monument. An impressive building made from white marble with large roman pillars. In the front, stood a forty-foot high bronze statue of a man on a horse and next to it, on both sides, flew the Italian flag. To the left of it, was an archeological site that was digging up old roman artifacts and buildings. Looking at all the old roman pillars and part of building, I look past them and realize that I can see the coliseum in the background.

            As Frank and I bike closer and closer to the coliseum, I can hear someone playing a tango on the accordion and also there are street performers on either side of the street. We pedal a little bit further and finally make it to the coliseum.

            The coliseum is massive. I mean REALLY massive. The arches and pillars are mostly intact and it stands there over looking the city like a great grandfather looking after his family. The stone from which it is made from is colored from grey to black in some areas with even bits of red from it’s old age. Once again, there were several hundred people standing around, waiting to get into the building. I took a few photos and looked down at my watch. I saw that we didn’t have 2 hours to wait in line to get in so Frank and I decided that maybe getting some lunch and heading back to the ship would be the best use of time.

            We biked a block away from the coliseum and found a nice little stretch of street that had three café’s back to back to back. We locked up out bikes and look in the first one. There we no customers so we figured that it was probably no good. We moved to the second one where two Italian girls who were waitresses asked us politely to sit down and have lunch. We saw that there were only a few customers there. We looked at the third one and saw that there were a lot of customers so we figured that that was probably the better café.

We sat down and ordered a pizza, a salad and drinks and waited patiently at our table that was outside facing the coliseum. The café had free wifi so we both took advantage of it and browsed on our respective Apple products. The food finally came and it was pretty tasty. We ordered a pizza with hot salami. The crust was very thin and crispy, as they had made it in a brick oven. The salad was OK but nothing extraordinary. When we finished we got the bill and were blown away how expensive it was. We ordered 2 pizzas, a salad, a bottle of water, 2 Cokes and beer and it came out to 78 Euros which came out to $100 US dollars. I nearly emptied my wallet on the table. We looked at the time and realized that we were running behind to catch out train. We paid our bill, unlocked the bikes and hit the road.

            We raced down the streets and tried our best to remember where we came from. Cars were zooming past us and some of them honking their horns at us as we made last minute turns and swerving on the busy road. We made it back to the Vatican and we gave those bikes everything we had as we had to pedal up hill to the train station. We get inside and there seem to be no signs in the station, or on our ticket, on which platform we should be. After flagging down a conductor, we find out we need to go downstairs and out the other side to get to platform 5 to catch the train back to Civitavecchia. We pick up our bikes and run down the stairs and make it to platform 5 with minutes to spare. The train pulled up and we got into the train. As the doors were about to close, a conductor comes onto the train and approaches us.

He points to our bikes and starts speaking something in Italian. Frank and I look at each other and shrug our shoulders. He say’s something again and the last word of the sentence sounded like the work ticket. Frank gets out his ticket and shows it to him. He says no and points to the bikes and says ticket. Finally someone on the train says to us that he wants to see our bike tickets. We told him that we had no idea that we needed tickets for the bikes. The conductor reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a pad of paper. I started to worry that he was going to write us a ticket for not having one.  He tells us (at least what we figured he was telling us) that it’s going to cost 18 Euro for both of the bikes. I reach into my wallet and hand Frank the last bill from my wallet. He writes us a receipt and takes the money.

We felt bad for not knowing but as everything in the station was in Italian, we realized we had nothing to feel bad about. We drove on and ended up meeting some American passengers that were also traveling to the cruise port to join a Royal Caribbean ship. They were from Kansas City and they were very excited to be going on the cruise. It was a father and son and another person who was carrying a black F.B.I. duffel bag. We chatted and when we finally got back to Civitavecchia, we said good-bye and biked back to the ship just in time for all aboard.  

As amazing as Rome is, I feel like you need 3 full days minimum to see it properly. Unlike some of the ports I’ve visited, this is one that cannot me fully explored in one day. I hope to return one day to get a second shot of exploring the great eternal city of Rome.               -DB