Travel between cities by train.
Extra nights can be added. Round out your Italian experience by
adding as many of our 2-night mini-stays as time allows. Santa
Margherita, Siena, Lake Como and Milan all offer you more of a
good thing -- ITALY!
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Detailed Information
Rome wasn't built in a day...but you can tour it
in just over 10 hours. A teeming anthill of humanity and antiquity
intermingled with awful traffic jams, Rome grew up on the Tiber
("Fiume Tevere") among seven low hills that rise from
the river's soggy eastern banks. It's a city of many peeling layers
of history, of which the bottom layer--that of the earliest Roman
centuries--is the most interesting and still astonishingly whole.
The hub of this layer is the Palatine Hill, the Forum, the Colosseum
and the Circus Maximus.
On the western bank is the Citta Vaticana, the independent
papal city where the Pope blesses pilgrims from all over the world.
Neighboring Trastevere ("Across the Tiber") is a mix
of Roman, Greek and Jewish subcultures, great for little restaurants
and nightlife. Further north on the other bank is "vecchia
Roma," medieval Rome of the Pantheon and Piazza Navona; Renaissance
Rome is centered south of the Corso Vittorio Emanuele.
Commercial Rome is the city of the Via del Corso,
the Piazza del Popolo, the controversial Victor Emmanuel monument
and finally the Stazione Termini, the nexus for all trains and
roads from Rome.
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You've heard, perhaps, of the Renaissance? Well,
this is the region it started. And without the Renaissance, our
art would be poorer, our food and wine would be poorer, and our
culture would be poorer plus, the term "Renaissance man"
would be meaningless and confusing.
Some interesting sites to visit are the castle where
Michealangelo is supposedly tombed, the Arno River, which divides
the city in half, with the historical district in the northern
part, and the Oltrarno neighborhood to the south. The Piazza del
Duomo is usually found with hundreds of tourists, and the Piazza
Santa Maria Novella is a regular hangout for immigrants and tourists
waiting for the train. Most of the streets are open only to pedestrians,
so walking is a welcome reward for getting around, rather than
by car or bus. Be sure to get a map with all of the interesting
landmarks and entertainment to be found in this great city, available
at the tourist office and most hotels. Take your time, there are
many Renaissance palaces and Gothic churches to be experienced.
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As you near the end of the bridge, you see at first
only the back side of the city itself. But in the time it takes
to walk through the train station, you begin to hear sounds peculiarly
Venetian--the low rumble of boat motors, a humid incubation of
voices, water lapping insistently against wood and stone. And
then Venice confers her greatest gift: No matter how many times
you've been here, it always seems, in that first glimse, like
the first time.
If you are smart, you will immediately start a tour
down the Grand Canal by hopping on a vaporetto (water bus) or
gondola or water taxi. If you are lucky, it will be during those
few hours before sunset when the light shines most kindly on the
venerable facades that line this liquid boulevard. If you are
particularly observant, you might even notice that neither the
light nor the colors are quite Italian, not like the tawny earth
tones of Florence or Rome.
The canal is a murkey green, the palazzi a mix of
faded, grimy sherbets--watermarked mint and sun-blanched apricot
and deep overripe peach. Sunlight shatters into spangles on the
water, gondolas knife bach and forth, the Rialto Bridge looms
overhead, and then, beyond one final curve, the Palladian church
of Santa Maria della Salute and the Campanile (bell tower) of
San Marco come into view.
Piazza san Marco is Venice's grand salon--expansive,
familiar, picturesque, pigeonesque. It is anchored at its eastern
extreme by the Basilica di San Marco, which is not only the spiritual
seat of Venice's patron saint but also one of the most glittering
monuments of Christendom.
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