Rome Day 2

14th Dec 2009

After a night of rest and the late night drama, we got ready for our day. But before setting out, we gave the reception another call and to ask whether they could upgrade our room as we were promised a Villa Borghese view prior to our checking in.The hotel personnel that attended to us was Anna (Yes, same name with our Venice reception lady but not the same person). She is very helpful and managed to help us secure a better room. Its an Executive suite!!! The room is huge! But the only down side is that it is facing the Via Veneto street, not the Villa Borghese. We are very tempted to keep the room but the urge to have a room with a Villa Borghese view got the better of us so we insisted from Anna on that. After a few moments, Anna called us with good news. There's a room for us on the 5th floor overlooking the Villa Borghese! Yay! At least something makes our day in Rome.

Room 506 Rome Marriott Grand Flora Hotel

"What's the big deal about the Villa Borghese view?" you may ask.
Hope the photo below answers that. I could only dream and drool at the view during Autumn...

Once settled in our room, we headed out to get the first thing done. Firstly, collect our Roma Pass at Piazza Navona, then to lodge a police. ROMA PASS is a visitor pass that allows the holder to visit ANY TWO participating museums, which includes the Colloseum cum Palatino Hill/Roman Forum, Museo Capitolini, Galleria Borghese and more. What makes this pass even more attractive is that it comes with a transport pass that allows the holder to take unlimited Metro+Tram+Bus for a duration of 3 days! All these for only €23 per person. IF you goes for the "Ala Carté" mode, the Colloseum + Palatino/Roman Forum will sets you back a neat €12. With this out of the way, choose the next more expensive museum (E.g. Galleria Borghese @ €10.50) that you intended to visit and utilise the card. Note that the ROMA PASS cannot be used for the Vatican Museum. A 3 day unlimited transport ride card will cost you another €11, thus, factor all the costs in, it will cost you a total of €33.50 (€12 + 10.50 + 11) for ala carté not inclusive of the time wasted to queue up. Its a definite value for money! Interested? You can get it online like l do from here. Once you've purchase the ROMA PAss, you will have to choose which collection point you want to pick it up. I choose the one near Piazza Navona, so make you own choice. You will thank me ;-).
[Tips: I find this site particularly helpful in terms of transportation in Rome]

Bus 116 from Spagna to Campo Fiori

We took bus 116 from Via Veneto that heads directly to Campo de Fiori and walked over to Piazza Navona. Bus 116 is an electric bus and it is pretty fast. You will need to get a bus ticket, which is available at most book stalls or Tobacconist (You won't miss that famous "T" sign). Piazza Navona is filled with carts and stuffs selling goodies from christmas candies to mask and doodads. The sights is beautiful.... The architectures are beautiful and being very "suaku" (Means "From out of town" or to be more precise, "Uncivilised" in Hokkien), I took many photos despite the lousy weather condition. But I did came back later part of my trip to snap better photos so be patient.

Pigeons at Piazza Navona.
They seemed hungry all the time!

View of Piazza Navona

Beautiful houses surrounding the Piazza Navona

Fountain of the Four Rivers at Piazza Navona.
This is the area whereby one of the Preferatis
are supposed to be murdered in the movie
"Angels and Demons"

We next walked to the police station to make a report and guess what? The policemen told us that they are closed and asked us to go elsewhere. The consolation we got from the policemen is that he is helpful enough to scribble on our map the location of the next nearest police station at Via Farini, which is next to the famous church Santa Maria Maggiore i.e. Saint Mary Major. We managed to reach the police station pretty easily, but communicating with the police women is hard. To cut the story short, after waiting for a long 45mins, another policemen passed us our police report. Its truly upsetting to waste the time just to make the police report, but too bad, its a need at that moment.
Upon leaving the police station, it started to drizzle a little bit, so we quickly make our way to Santa Prassede, one of the itinierary for the day (At last). The church is small but beautiful and most importantly, free entrance! The most interesting item housed in this church is a small pillar called the Column of Flagellation, which was supposed to be part of the column whereby Christ was flogged during His Passion.

Statue of Christ's crucifixion in Santa Prassede

One of the many statues in Prassede.
This one shows Jesus and His mother, Mary.

The view of the hall of worship in Santa Prassede

Beautiful Byzantine mosaic work in one of Santa Prassede's chapels.

The beautiful frescoes in one of the many Santa Prassede's chapels.

Next, we are about to head to Termini Station but upon passing Santa Maria Maggiore, we realised that we could visit the church for free too, so of course we headed straight towards the church. This church is one of the 4 main churches found in Rome (Wonder if the name Maggiore or "Major" was referring to that?). This church is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, in Rome and was build by the Pope Sixtus III. Let the photo speaks.

Basilica Santa Maria Maggiore

The corridors alone are already awesome and breath-taking!

Frescoes in one of the many Santa Maria Maggiore's chapels.

What about a beautiful artwork like this in your house?

Once we are done with the church, off we go to Termini. The original plan was to walk from Termini all the way up to our hotel, which will bring us pass Piazza della Republica, Teh church Santa Maria degli Angeli, the church Santa Maria della Vittorio, the church Santa Bernardo and the church Santa Susanna. Sigh, I guess these will have to our next trip's itinerary and God knows when we are coming back again.

More posting coming!

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