We stayed at the Hotel Ponte Sisto in Rome, named that way because it’s very close to Ponte Sisto, the bridge in the picture.
The hotel is just east of the river within walking distance of the Vatican, the Pantheon and the Colosseum. It’s in a maze of narrow streets paved with small black stones and flanked by 3-4 story buildings. The streets are lined with small stores, restaurants, hotels, apartment buildngs and churches. They open into several small squares with more of the same. There are no sidewalks on these streets. People wander up and down them, getting over to the side when vehicles come through. Lots of people ride scooters, which isn’t surprising when you see how hard it is to get a car through some of these streets. They’re narrow even before you factor in the restaurant tables and chairs, parked cars and scooters and pedestrians. We were surprised at how patient the pedestrians and cars and scooters are with one another. We never heard anyone yell at a car or beep their horn at a pedestrian.
It was hot when we were there (still is). It’s understandable why the afternoon break is so widely observed. With only two days there we wanted to see as much as we could in spite of the heat. When we couldn’t handle it any more we went back to the hotel for a break – we were very glad our hotel was air conditioned!
There was a thriving nightlife where we were, especially on Friday night – it continued well into the early hours of Saturday. I went out Saturday morning and the streets were littered with trash from the night before. There was already an organized clean-up effort underway, with people sweeping beer bottles out of fountains which a small street sweeper truck then whisked up off the ground.
I’ll write more about what we saw in Rome in a separate post. On Saturday we left Rome and drove to a large villa in the hills of Tuscany, a few miles North of Arezzo. We’re staying here with my extended family – there are 25 of us. We’re quite high up on a hill – the view from here is awesome. And it has a pool – which is just what we need in this weather!
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