During the ride to the hotel, I was grateful we were not attempting to drive it ourselves. It appears that traffic lanes are suggestions. Drivers have to be aggressive AND defensive at the same time.
It took an hour to get to the hotel and I can’t imagine what traffic looks like at rush hour. Despite our fatigue, we were intently focused on the scenery on the drive.
After arriving at the NH Vittorio Veneto hotel we paid the driver the 49 euro fee plus a 5 euro tip.
The front desk check-in was very efficient. I asked about staying in the same room as part of the Insight Tour and they indicated no problem. We were assigned room 235. Although lower floor than I preferred, the view of the Borghese Villa was nice. Although we could see the traffic, we rarely heard it.
This is the smallest hotel room Steve’s ever been in and I think it ties the small room my sister and I shared in Bath, England. But it has everything we need (and some things we don’t like the bidet).
After dropping our luggage, we asked for a sandwich shop recommendation at the front desk and broke a 50 euro bill. They recommended baghetitiamo. Armed with their map, we found it and they nicely explained the menu to us.
We both ordered a ham, mozzarella, sundried tomato and lettuce panini and asked for it warmed up. Steve had a coke and I had a lemonata which was very refreshing. The sandwich was good, but the bread was the star! So crunchy and tasty.
We headed back to the hotel and quickly fell asleep for a nap. Two hours later we were ready to face the day and after showering headed out for a walk.
I wanted to see the Spanish steps, Pantheon and Trevi fountain before dinner. We got lost for a while but saw a lot of other sites along the way.
After finding many beautiful fountains along the way, we finally found the Trevi Fountain.
We decided not to wait in line but got to see a good deal of it.
While there, a bride and groom walked by.
Now that we had our bearings, we figured out how to get to the Pantheon by following Rick Steve’s heart of Rome walk.
There was some sort of political rally going on in the square in front of the pantheon but that didn’t stop the tourists.
The Pantheon was amazing but very crowded.
We found the holes in the floor for drainage and was amazed by the beauty of the space.
From there we walked to the Spanish steps and sat amongst the crowd for a while.
Then we headed back to the hotel while looking to see if any restaurants piqued our interest.
We didn’t really see any before getting close to the hotel so ventured down side streets and found a small ristorante, La Bruschetta E, that had spaghetti with meat sauce on the menu (Steve’s choice).
We were quickly seated and they brought us bread and still water as ordered.
I ordered mixed salad and spaghetti carbonara. We chatted with the couple next to us who were from Washington DC and going to take a Celebrity cruise the next day.
We didn’t realize the olive oil and balsamic vinegar was our salad dressing until we’d eaten our salads! Next time we’ll know better. I did use them for my bread.
We ended up drinking two liter bottles of water as both of us were very thirsty. We’ll have to do a better job of hydrating ourselves from now on.
Our pasta dishes were very good and we left with full bellies BUT there was still room for dessert.
Steve ordered a custard filled croissant and I had a bacio gelato at a little bakery on the same street. Not great but a nice way to cap the evening.
We walked back to the hotel and I had 15,827 steps on my Fitbit for the day for 6.5 mile and 31 floors. Wow! We took sleeping pills to help us get to sleep and off we were to dreamland.
Leave a Reply