Walking the Roman Ring Road - not to be advised

The day (Sunday) began with breakfast at 7.00. We stayed around the hotel until 8.30 and then we headed in separate directions. I went to the parish church of this area of Rome. The Church of St. Hippolytus. Mass was at 9.00 and the Church had a leaflet so I was able to take part in the Mass in Italian rather than mutter the English quietly, though I reckon my pronunciation could do with some help. The Church was modern built in the 1930s and with none of the glitz and kitsch associated with so many of the renaissance churches of Rome.

Drew meantime was due to go to a laundrette that he had identified as the nearest using Google maps. When Mass was over and I walked the 200 yards back to the Hotel there was Drew waiting in the lobby still with a suitcase of dirty clothes. He had lost his way and after nearly an hour had returned to the Hotel to wait for me to follow the map.

So off we headed using this map, you know the bit on Google maps when it says “Use caution – This route may be missing sidewalks or pedestrian paths.” well next time I may pay more attention to it. This walking route intended us to cross bits of three lane roads of what turned out to be the Circonvallazione Tiburtina part of the Tangenziale Est di Roma which Google Translate makes ‘East Ring Road of Rome’; a motorway. As we had got to where we were, it was too scary to go back across the traffic, so we saw a path alongside the road, which was presumably for people needing to access the road for work purposes. While the route was much safer than the one we had come up on, it was well away from the road and had a good barrier between it and the road, it certainly was unoccupied. Indeed it clearly didn’t get much use as at times the trees which grew all along there had branches across the whole width of the path, so occasional ducking to get under them punctuated the walk. An outline of the 1.1 mile walk, that felt more like a 3 mile one is here. We finally came to a junction where the road, and the walkway got off the main motorway and we emerged near the Via Tiburtina. We found a small cafe that we had seen on our walk on Saturday evening and sat down to two coffees and two acqua frizzante. 

It is worth noting that by this time in the holiday when we say coffee we mean what the Italians call cafe normal and what we call espresso. While Italians have about 100 different types of coffee this is the one everyone drinks as they stand around the cafes of their towns, so we have been doing the same.

People who know me know that we often have ‘little adventures’ when on holiday, and this is clearly one of them. However unlike most of them when Drew accuses me of taking him to dangerous, life threatening places in the seedy parts of towns (indeed based on her experience my colleague Alice accuses me of the same thing). This time while it was a very strange place to be it wasn’t taking him to the seedy parts – just on to roads that perhaps we shouldn’t be walking on.

We caught a bus back to the hotel, dropped off our case of dirty washing (more of that in a later post) and headed back towards the town centre. Note in Rome a travel ticket works on all forms of transport, as it does in New York, this is really useful as it allows for a variety of options. You’ll have noted that we have mainly used the ticket for the metro so far, but today we decided to stay above ground. We headed back on the bus to the Verano district and then caught the Tram (19) to see where it went. We alighted at the Museum of Modern Art a huge building which was hosting an Andy Warhol exhibition, from there we walked down the hill past the Guilo Museum which is the Roman museum of Etruscan culture. Following that we caught one of the newer trams and travelled to via Faminio and stopped for lunch.

Lunch was at a restaurant called Ristorante Popolo. We shared a starter of Bruschetta Mista, which had four Brushettas: Bruschetta Pomodoro, Bruschetta Porcini, Bruschetta Carciofi and Bruschetta Aglio e Olio we shared them between us, each of them was distinctive in flavour and very nice. My favorite was the porcini, Drew favoured the aglio e olio. For the main course Drew continued his theme of Pizza Diavola, this is his fourth now, but I guess it he likes it why not enjoy it. I on the other hand opted for Braciola di Maiale al Forno con Patate which was a lovely oven cooked piece of Pork, a different cut from those we use at home, similar to a pork chop in texture but without the bone. This was served with beautiful rosemary flavoured oven-roasted potatoes. More like a Sunday dinner than I expected when I ordered it.

Over lunch, in the nice air-conditioned space of the restaurant, we discussed our next moves. As I’ve mentioned already before coming away Drew had summarised from the web things to do in the various Cities and we are using these summaries as guides to our visits. Our Rome one only had three places left on it; the Spanish Steps; the Pantheon and the Piazza Navano. We decided that rather than use our usual approach and go and get cool during the heat of the afternoon we would try these three as they were all within walking distance from where we were. Note to self – it is always easy to make decisions in air-conditioned spaces that don’t reflect the draining ability of Roman heat and humidity.

We walked down the Via Del Babuino which was full of busy shops and tiny churches and that led us down to the Spanish Steps – they were certainly worth the effort, while the crowds were at the busiest we had seen in Rome to date the romantic nature of the steps and the piazza below were worth all the hype.

On we went down Via di Propaganda to Via del Tritone and on to the Italian equivalent of Parliament Square. This led us into a very busy tourist spot filled with restaurants and shops selling memorabilia until we came to Pizza Della Rotunda and the Pantheon. Wow! While many of the sights of Rome were not a surprise to me, I’d seen their images before on websites and in films, the Pantheon was something unexpected. A huge temple built by Marcus Agrippa in 27BC and converted into a Church called St. Mary and the Martyrs in 609. What an amazing place. Its dome remains the largest built with bricks anywhere in the world. You can see below that the tourism people liked it, giving it great scores for its value, and it deserves them. The whole space is almost overpowering, yet the church elements are intimate. It moves from the grand tomb of Victor Emmanuel II to a quiet chapel for prayer. Really Wow!

From the Pantheon it was just three streets to Piazza Navona, a 15th century piazza built in the space of a first century stadium. An impressive sight with three Churches and three spectacular fountains; the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, Fontana del Moro and Fontana del Nettuno. It was now 3.00 p.m. and very hot and humid, and so were we.

We decided to get cool by catching a bus (air-conditioned). We didn’t much care where it was going just that it was cool. Thus by chance we came back to St. Peter’s where we started our Rome visit three days ago. From there we caught the tram 19 back to Verano and from there the bus to the hotel, thoroughly exhausted but really pleased that we had had such a wonderful day. We slumped into our room at 5.00 p.m. and began to plan where we would eat tonight.