Originally posted on July 10, 2011 by Canicus
Today didn’t go as planned. I woke early before the hotel breakfast room was opened, so I spent some time selecting some pictures from Friday to post. I’ll try to get them out to the website when I post this.
After breakfast it was off to Termini with the idea of spending the day at Vatican City. But I was running low on cash so I visited the ATM machines, but I could not get them to produce any cash. So I went back to the hotel (fortunately it is quite close) to get the £50 I had stashed away. I figure I won’t need that in London on my return trip. So I took it to the money changers to get Euros. Then to the Metro. I followed the signs for Metro B to Battastini which led me down and up stairs and finally to the exit. Now it is getting toward lunch time. So lunch. Termini station has a jillion food places, but they are virtually all takeout. I went into one, got a Panini and water. It looked like they had some tables and chairs. But on closer inspection they are “reserved for waiter service.” The Panini was very dry; the water was wet, though.
Eventually I’ll go to the grocery store in Termini for some supper in my hotel room I had said I would check out the ruins in front of Termini this afternoon, which I did. The statue of John Paul II is indeed ghastly. Hardly worthy of the man or the city of such fine statuary (even if a good bit of it was stolen from the Greeks).I did manage to get into Santa Maria degli Angeli even though I had changed into shorts. The Baths of Diocletian are now a museum, or at least the parts that were not taken over by Our Lady. I did go part way into the grounds. But formal admission is for four museums good for three days. Since it is closed tomorrow, I figure it would be best to come back later when I am a year older. If the U.S. would join the European Union, I could get a reduced senior fair.
Rome seems to be booming economically. There are crowds everywhere. The Metro is jammed. There are venders crowding the streets. What you do not see are abandoned, closed store fronts. I need to get to the ticket desk at Termini to get a ticket to Ostia and reservations to Naples, Venice and Salerno. But whenever I go to that area there are huge lines. Apparently eventually I’ll just have to go stand in line.