Places stayed

For the first part of the trip, we stayed with a friend, where we had a great view of St. Peter's dome and the whole of Rome.

Sheila with Rome in the background

It was, however, an up-and-down hilly trek to the city and so we sometimes took the bus. *

In Florence we stayed at a large B&B run by Oblate nuns on Borgo Pinti, a narrow street just short walk from the Duomo. The place was very well restored, and our room was big and fairly quiet with a gigantic twelve-foot high wardrobe where there was more than enough room for our clothes. In fact, we probably could have lived in it. The wardrobe was so huge that the coat-hangers had long poles attached to them so you could raise your clothes high enough to hang them.

The house has a pleasant garden courtyard (see picture). Breakfast was so-so: coffee, bread, and home-made plum jelly. On the whole, not a bad place to stay.

Up the road, there's a decent, reasonably-priced restaurant called Acadi. We liked the gnudi ("nude" raviolis, i.e. without the pasta pillow-case) and the fat noodles with yellow bolete mushrooms.

On our return to Rome we stayed at a B&B called Notti a Roma (Roman Nights) near the railroad station. It's also just a block from a metro stop and a good starting point for doing the eastern part of Rome. But we did it all on foot: the Borghese, Santa Maria Maggiore, St John Lateran, Spanish steps, Trevi, the fora, and the colosseum are all within a mile walk (allbeit in different directions).

When we got to the B&B, at night, I realized I had forgotten my backpack on the taxi. The owner at the B&B was very pessimistic about my being able to ever get it back, but half an hour later--yay!--the taxi-driver showed up with the backpack. You can imagine he got a big tip!



* The routine on busses in Rome and Florence is to buy a ticket at a tobacco store--either for a single trip (1 euro) or unlimited trips over a set time period--and, for the single trip ticket at least, cancel it in a machine on the bus when you get on. But you rarely see anyone cancelling tickets. That leads us to assume that Italians have passes or take a gamble that they won't get caught without a ticket (a 50 euro fine). We never saw any official checking for compliance. On regional (ie local) trains the routine is similar. You buy a ticket which is valid for some three months, but you have to validate it yourself just before you get on the train. There are yellow boxes everywhere for doing that. If you're caught without having validated the ticket... again 50 euros. The only time we didn't see a conductor checking tickets was on our first train trip when we didn't know we were supposed to validate. We were lucky.