“Early” doesn’t even begin to conjure up our timetable for the day. Add in that we went to A Little Night Music last night, which is a long production - and Opera North’s is amazing and worth seeing yet again - we got just three hours of fitful sleep before awakening at 03:00 to pack the car, cross the Pennines and launch ourselves at MAN. Although bag-drop is trivial these days, having done all the airline’s work in advance, the Security line was out the door - literally - snaking around the unused check-in desks in the arrivals hall, where we spent seventy minutes inching forward.
We pass the railway station with its statue of John Paul II, and round the Coliseum, the Forum and brave the hoards at Trevi Fountain.
When we eventually reached the doors of Security the queue was diverted downstairs to an old and disused hall that I think was formerly a charter area. Anyway more snaking around here for thirty or so minutes and we finally get passed through the oldest and cronkiest security scanners, and out into an almost deserted terminal. Meanwhile our flight is calling last warning to board so we hot-tail it to the furthest gate only to find no-one is getting on! Another lengthy wait and we finally get seated.
From then on all was lovely! The beautiful Alps, the Splendour of the World parked up in Civitavecchia where we’ll pick up our relatively tiny ship Seabourn Sojourn in three days time.
We pass through security in minutes, but bags take a while. Soon enough we are whisked by our driver, who easily clocks up 155 km/h in his Vito, to The Guardian Hotel in good time. We enjoy half a bottle of Chardonnay whilst we wait for our room to be made ready then, after unpacking, a Cæsar with the remainder for lunch.
We plan an orientation walk to start, firstly to the nearby former Papal basilica with gilded ceilings. We take a tour of the private areas to get to some wonderful statues and exquisite mosaics from C13.
We pass the railway station with its statue of John Paul II, and round the Coliseum, the Forum and brave the hoards at Trevi Fountain.
The Spanish Steps are a little underwhelming as they are closed in anticipation of a fashion launch tomorrow. The shortest way home from here takes up back via “Whitehall” as we pas amazing building-after-building housing ministerial departments, and finally turn on to our street.
We’ve been wondering where we might eat and pretty much rejected all the touristy places on our walk, or found a couple of smart options but decided they were too far away. Right across from the hotel is a promising one so we pop in to make a reservation (our bijou hotel doesn’t have a restaurant) for later.
Time to shower and re-dress, we manage to break the loo flush, so I strip it down and fix it!
Although there’s no proper restaurant in the hotel the bar is lovely, so we take aperitifs in the form of the house Chardonnay, then cross to Al Grappolo D’Oro where we enjoy an excellent dinner.
Comments
Post a Comment