Up at 4:00am this morning. We needed to be at the airport by 5:00ish for our 6:55am flight. Poor Christine didn’t want to leave Malta. This was our departing view from our hotel balcony. Hopefully, we’ll return before too long. Christine said we should come for 3 months again, like we did in 2016. We’ll see.

Things went pretty smoothly at the airport. There are about 25 flights leaving Malta between 5:00 and 8:00 so there is always a big queue for check-in. They don’t separate passengers by airline. All flights are served by the same few counter agents. We were early enough to miss the biggest line up and got through security with no problems. The Malta airport doesn’t have any jetways, so you get bused out to the airplane that is sitting out on the tarmac and you have to climb up the external stairs. For this flight, we checked our bags so we only had to wrestle with our hand luggage. That made climbing the stairs a heck of a lot easier.
The flight was only 90 minutes and we arrived in Rome on schedule. Although I had purchased train tickets from the airport to the central terminal, we decided to take a taxi, so we skipped the whole getting on and off the train and then on and off a bus to our hotel. We had a smooth 30 minute ride into the Rome neighborhood of Trastevere where our hotel was located. We’re staying at Hotel San Francesco. We arrived several hours before check in, but we could sit in the hotel lobby. We had a cappuccino and a croissant while we waited.
After a while, I needed to move around a little, so I went and explored our neighborhood. We are feet away from a small piazza which is in front of San Francesco a Ripa church. Apparently, St. Francis actually made a visit here in 1219. The church is largely a 17th-century Baroque-style church, but there are some great paintings in several side chapels. It also has an awesome dome with a very intricate pattern. I was also impressed that a large painting of a nun in full habit was in one of the chapels and learned that it is Saint Giacinta (Hyacintha) Marescotti. Her life was rather interesting in that she went from a nun who liked the finer things in life early in her early religious career to finally embracing a vow of poverty and helping to take care of the sick.





Shortly after my walk around the block, we were able to check in. We spent some time unpacking and settling in to our room. Although small, it’s comfortable and I think the best thing about it is it’s classic Italian tall shuttered window, and we can even open the window wide and hang out looking up and down the street.
We then decided to go exploring. Trastevere is one of the most popular districts, or neighborhoods, in Rome. It’s name means “across the Tiber,” so it is apart from the central historic district of Rome. It is a very old area and even Julius Caesar had a home in Trastevere. It has a bohemian atmosphere with lots of narrow, cobblestone streets. It has become a touristy area now, where it once was a working-class neighborhood. It has a vibrant nightlife with lots of bars and restaurants.
The main street is quite bustling. The tram rails run right down the center and what makes it so beautiful is the very tall trees growing along each side of the avenue. It offers a peaceful, shady feel to this active area.


There was much to see while wandering around the area. We headed towards one of the main piazzas, Piazza di Santa Maria, but along the way, our heads were swiveling to take in the wonderful sights.






I was surprised, though, by the amount of graffiti all over the place. Seems a shame for such wonderful old buildings to have such defacement. Graffiti can be beautiful artwork, but this was just ugly scribblings. Walking by a shop, we saw a sign that said Elvis Lives, which I thought was funny. Then we saw a painting of Charlie Chaplin in a scene from The Gold Rush where he was eating his boot, but in this painting I was struck by the shoelace, which so focuses on being in Italy and all the pasta being consumed here.

The piazza of Santa Maria was quite typical with a fountain in the center and cafes and eateries around about half of the perimeter. On one side was whitish building that was the Palazzo di San Callisto which had impressive figures over the entrance. The fountain had these huge shell-like sculptures.





The Basilica of Santa Maria is one of the oldest churches in Rome. The first church on this site was probably build in the early 4th century and much of the current structure dates to the 12th century. The facade of the church contains beautiful mosaics and statuary, all from the 12th century. The church wasn’t open at the time we were in the piazza, but we’ll try to revisit when it is. It’s only a 10-minute walk from our hotel.


On our stroll back to the hotel, we stopped at a restaurant with outside seating to have a late lunch. We had a delicious lunch, nothing special, guacamole nachos and a Caesar salad, but we both kept saying how delicious everything tasted. The salad was full of the best-tasting cherry tomatoes that I’ve ever eaten. And the tiramisu was divine! We really enjoyed our lunch, just sitting along a narrow street watching people go by and enjoying Trastevere. Today was sunny and hot, the warmest temperature we’ve had, just over 80 degrees.

We spent the rest of the afternoon having a siesta back at the hotel. We tried out the small restaurant in the hotel and had a dish that used Roman mint as a spice with a lamb ragu over fusilli pasta. There was some other spices used in the dish that created a very powerful flavor. It was okay, but after eating a lot of it, is was overwhelming. In the restaurant was another couple from the U.S. Come to find out the man was from Whitehall, NY. They live in New Hampshire now, but someone in their family moved to Binghamton and someone else went to school at SUNY Oneonta. I marvel at what a small world we live in.
So that concluded our first day in Rome. I’m glad we had at least one nice weather day because the rest of the week is not going to be very pleasant, with rain and thunderstorms forecast. We’ll see what happens with our touring around. Tomorrow is the Colosseum and Roman Forum.