Eurotrip 2011: Central Rome for dummies

For vacation this year we planned a big one. I wanted to wander around Europe in a GPS spec'd Audi A4 Avant TDI (turbo-diesel) rental car for a couple weeks, finding hotels and what not on the way, and Beth wanted to take a cruise so she could see many places with less effort, as well as some luxury. After some discussion and slacking on my part to book flights or whatever (mainly because I don't like parting with large sums of money), we decided to take the job out of the hands of my web browser and trip-booking-website du jour and hook back up with our travel agent from the Mexico and Jamaica trips from years past. When the smoke from my wallet parted, the plan of action was set...in semi-dry concrete. We ended up with a plan to stay in Rome for a few days before departing on a Cruise spanning four stops and three countries, in the Mediterranean Sea, then take a train from the Rome Termini in Italy to Munich, Germany for my part of this Eurotrip. When I say my part of the trip, I don't mean I wasn't interested in the beginning of the trip, but you'll understand once the German portion of the trip is revisited via these e-pages. I went all out on preparation, even buying extra batteries, memory and renting a new lens for this adventure, the Canon 24-105mm IS F4L, so I wouldn't have to change lenses, batteries or memory during long stints and would get solid image quality in most conditions we'd run into. This plan proved to be very wise.

I worked nine days straight at work before our flight out of the country. I packed about everything days before, but finished up Tuesday night before we flew out Wednesday afternoon. My breh-in-law Chris handled the arrangements and took our car back after I drove us all the airport in Philadelphia. The flight over was long, but I managed to sleep for a solid 4 or 5 hours at some point during the journey which I can't remember anymore. Our plane landed in Fiumicino (Leonardo da Vinci) Airport in Rome with great applause by the entire flight. Tired, but pleased, we got off the plane to make our first mistake - turning $500 USD cash into Euros at the airport. While this sounds like a good idea, the exchange rate they give you varies on how much you convert; so if you have $2k USD to convert you almost get the current exchange rate. If you have $500 you get the 'best we can give you rate'. Later on after the cash ran thin, I found out that going to an ATM will cost you a foriegn fee around 10 bucks or so with your bank, but you get the current rate which was in the ~1.42:1 range. It was ~1.56:1 at the airport. In hindsight I would've gotten about $1k converted to Euros at a US Bank before leaving all together, but a lesson learned for next time is always good.

After turning $500 into about $285 Euros (after the service fee was taken out), we went with voucher in hand to find our booked shuttle to the hotel. Going from Eastern Standard Time (EST) to Central European Time is like doing the typical 'Spring forward' time change six times in a row. I didn't really catch up on sleep until the fifth day of our trip. After realizing it was the equivalent of about 4:30am EST once I turned on my cell phone, we got rounded up by our driver and all the other tourists taking out shuttle to Central Rome. We got situated and began making our way via the Autostrada (Italian Highway System) to the city of Rome by car. Traffic in Rome was an eye opening thing to see. Taxi's represented about half of the cars on the road, sub-compact/smart cars represented another 15%, the rest were either scooters or motorcycles. The flow of traffic was a whirlwind of traffic lights that switched too quickly, people double parking and holding everyone up in individual lanes, pedestrians walking right into the street and blocking right handed turns and those on two-wheeled transport (who looked liked geniuses with how cramped the city is) working their way between cars and occasionally on sidewalks. Our drivers' ability to curse in Italian brought smiles to our faces, it's literally like poetry which I wished I could learn via osmosis for my return home. We navigated the tightest roads and side streets with the smallest of clearances; I was truly impressed and tipped accordingly when we arrived at Hotel Planet Rome.


the main 'drag' half a block from our hotel - Via Marsala

 Hotel Planet Rome was a place in Central Rome with a good price and next to everything. The Rome Termini station, which had railways for connecting Eurorail transit as well as the Rome Metro system and shopping outlets, was just a brisk walk away. Ristorante's and gelaterias everywhere and taxi's hanging out for any desire to be fleeced of 10 Euro for an eight minute drive through cluster-eff city traffic. I initially thought we'd be walking everywhere given most places we needed to go for the walking tours we signed up for were within two miles or so, but after getting there and taking our first stab at walking to a destination for a tour of Ancient Rome, we hailed a cab...drenched with sweat from the July sun.



4'x5'



What a view!

 After checking into our hotel and noticing how absurdly small the bathroom was, we went back out and grabbed lunch at a local store front. Forno (Pizza) and Pasta where on the menu. It was all delicious. In clockwise order starting from 10 o'clock, you'll see a roma tomato, olive and fresh mozzarella slice, pesto rotini, white pizza with sausage and a rigatoni dish with fresh basil, tomato sauce and mozzarella. I guess saying fresh goes without saying. This random small restaurant on the side of the street was better than anything in the US, on flavor profile alone. One thing was clear, al dente isn't just a word here, it's how pasta is cooked everywhere.

We got back to our room and laid around, generally exhausted. Tomorrow we would sleep in and take on Ancient Rome.

Green Thumb Season 2 - Ep.1

Picking up from last time, we found ourselves coming home from the plant nursery up the road with some seedlings, soil and pots. Beth worked her magic and got everything transplanted and watered. The biggest wildcard this year is growing cucumbers, which we've never done before. Growing them isn't the issue as much as how they grow. Last year with the tomatoes (another plant that likes growing with a support system of sorts) we found out late that they should either be supported as they grow vertically or you should just let them grow out horizontally, naturally. If they slump or grow out horizontally after they start their upward climb, it's easy to damage the stalks. Cucumbers by all research we've done can grow in a similar manner, but the weight will be considerably more. For the time being we have pots with 'mounded' soil and we plan on letting them go horizontal once fruit begin to develop (or whenever the plant naturally leans toward the ground). Another unknown is what local woodland creatures like cucumbers, but we'll deal with that when we come to it.

I didn't end up taking shots of them initially planted, but these are about a week in:

After another week or so of rain from the last shot, the peppers sprouted upwards with a couple flowers here and there. The Bush Crop cucumber plants exploded in size.

The full pepper list is Thai Hot, Yummy, Italian Sweet and Jalepeno. They all serve their purpose depending on the dish you plan on cooking and I hope to do a food dish special (or two) using the ingredients when harvesting time arrives. In the meantime though, I'm going to stick to grilling my food on this lovely but hot Memorial Day weekend.

Falling down.

With the end of Summer on the east coast comes the beginning of Fall. It's the start of the cold and the end of painless hand washing of your car outside. The house windows stay closed and the furnace shakes off it's cobwebs for it's six month tour of duty. I've taken plenty pics of the seasons changing around Maryland over the years, mainly to showcase a car of mine for a forum post or personal stash. The biggest difference between 10+ years ago and now is that back then October was October. What I mean is September was cold and the first day of October was down right frigid. November was literally freezing overnight and the first snow fall could come well before Thanksgiving.

Before Al Gore screwed up the distinction between seasons (sarcasm), the leaves changed uniformly everywhere in Maryland. Now you have to go further and further north to get this consistency. Of course some tree varieties still respond quickly to the cooling weather and predictably morph before going bald, but if you look outside now you'll see 60% green trees, 15% half changed over trees, 15% fully orange/red trees and 10% bald trees. It makes capturing the season hard to shoot, especially when you're like me and like to get big landscape shots; accordingly I'll likely break this seasons' series into a couple parts...hopefully I can get the dream shot I want in the locations I look for it.

I wandered around my new home town to see what I could find outside before too much time passed last Friday afternoon. The trickiest thing about trying to time fall foliage is that if a tree looks 'perfect' one day, chances are it won't be the next. You have to stick and move and if you're fortunate the weather and sun light will play nice.

While I was walking around shooting I stumbled onto a really cool old building (2nd shot) that I've been driving past, on the way to I-95S, for literally two years now. I had errands to run which kept me from going more in depth; I'll get better shots of it for another post. In the meantime, I'll see what nature brings me in another week or two.