Waking up in Rome

It's a beautiful morning in Rome, but looks like another hot day in the making.

The workmen have already started their work rebuilding the Terme Di Tito across the street from the self-catering apartment we rented from a friend of a friend. It's a penthouse on the fifth floor with an outdoor terrace where we eat our meals and a nice breeze sweeping through it most of the time.

Today, our first full in Rome, we visited the Colosseum, the Palatine Hill, and the Forum, all of which are just a block away from our flat. Tonight we have to refresh our supplies of food and money. We will probably try out the Metro/underground/subway.

Here's a map of the area of the apartment we stayed in in Rome.


View Via delle Terme di Tito, 94 in a larger map

Just click on the address and "Street View", then pan right to see the door to our residence and the outdoor cafe where we had lunch yesterday when we arrived. While you're there, use the Streetwalker to take a leisurely stroll around the neighborhood. It was a perfect location.

Yesterday we arrived in Rome on a Eurostar/Trentinalia high speed train from Florence which was a joy to ride. It was new and clean, had only 3 seats in each row - two on one side of the aisle, one on the other. With welded rails and no stops, we made it from Florence to Rome in just 100 minutes. I don't know how far the trip was, but I think we hit about 150 mph at times. Maybe one of you geeks with good internet access (which we don't have) could look up the distance and let us know how fast we really travelled. I wish we had trains like this in the states.

The trip throught the Italian countryside was particularly pleasant nice because there were NO signs along the railway, so we got an unobstructed view of the scenery. In fact there were few signs even in the towns we zipped through – just fields and streams and trees and mountains.

As expected, we are getting fat on wine, pasta, cheese, salami, gelato and chocolate. Even hours of walking doesn't seems to be compensating for our gluttony.

Before I ramble on, I'm going to save this epistle on a memory stick and see whether I can find a place to post it on the blog. If I'm successful, I'll work on recaps of Venice and Florence to fill in some blanks in our travels.

Hope all of you are well.

Spud & Babs