We will finish our walk today. We just need to walk across Rome to St. Peter’s cathedral. There are two choices of routes, one about 9.5 miles which walks along the Tiber River and kind of skirts town and one that goes through the parks in town-more direct at about 7.5 miles. We debated the options last night and decided to take the longer one, partly out of fear of being in the huge parks early in the morning with dewy grass and partly because being in the parks means we won’t see the city, although a coin flip to decide would have been just as good because either route is fine. I had gps routes for both.
I loaded the gps track for the longer route in my watch for navigation this morning and we were set to go. The nice thing about the watch is you don’t have to have your phone out and if you get more than 60 feet off route it lets you know.
We had purchased six eggs last night to boil for breakfast, but when we got to it this morning we decided to scramble them all. That and toast, pack up and we were ready to go a little after 7:00am. We carefully snuck out of the house, not wanting to wake Dion or his son, Edwardo and were quickly on the street.
It was a beautiful sunny morning with clear skies. There was a slight wind, making the 42° seem colder than it was. Our path was along a river that feeds into the Tiber, paved and joggers passing us in both directions. The “grass” growing on both sides of the path was 8 feet high. At one point we came to a large traffic intersection. It took us about half a mile to get around it on the trail.
Just as we completed the traffic circumnavigation the trail headed down a set of stairs. When we got to the bottom, I did not see any blue and yellow stripes marking our route. They had been regularly spaced and very visible up to this point. Were we supposed to stay at the street level instead of descending the stairs? A quick check of the track on GaiaGPS showed this was the point where the two paths separate. By going down the stairs we had started to follow the park option. Was it laziness that stopped us from trudging back up the stairs to gain the track we had decided to take last night? Or was it the number of joggers on the paths and the indecision of last night? Whatever it was, we decided to change course and take the park route. Rather than have my watch beep at me for the next few hours telling me I was off route, we sat for a moment on the curb and I loaded the park route onto my watch. That done, we were on our new way.
This new course took us up wide dirt roads through the park. It was amazing to see how many dog walkers and joggers were out and about. The road rose gently before us, surrounded and canopied by trees. Except for the background roar of traffic noise you would not realize you were in the city. There were a few very muddy spots, but nothing like yesterday’s glue-on mud.
We exited the first park, Village Ada, but first stopped to pee in the bushes before entering the paved land of no place to potty. We found ourselves on a hilltop on a swanky part of town. We stopped into a pastry shop, but when we saw all the workers in swanky uniforms and the prices we decided two vagabond looking characters with mud on their shoes and pants cuffs, one carrying an overstuffed pack, were slightly out of place.
It was just a short distance on city streets until we entered the next huge park, Villa Borghese. We had been to this park back in 2017 and in a few steps we began to recognize it. Our GPS route made what looked like an unnecessary loop that we had planned to ignore and cut across the shorter distance, but we got walking and soon realized we had missed our chance. We saw a food stand in the close distance on route and approached it, asking for gelato. He said he had it, yes, and we ordered two, lemon for Sally and chocolate for me. I had a five in my hand and some change in my pocket figuring that would cover it. “€16 please”. What?!? I guess we aren’t in the low rent district anymore.
We walked downhill still in the park and saw the columns and gate into Rome. We had been hoping for a “Entering Rome” sign. This was better. It felt so majestic, so immense. We were truly entering Rome now. Once through the archways we were in the Piazza de Popolo. Beautiful. From here we had about a mile and a half to the Vatican. It was a straight shot down a road, two rights and a left and we were standing, looking at St. Peter’s basilica.
This is a jubilee year and the holy doors are open. There were tons of people around and just about as many Carabinieri. A temporary white portable building had been set up to handle people wanting to go through the holy doors. It said Pilgrims Office. We entered. It turns out the word pilgrim applies to people seeking to go through the holy doors as well as those of us that have walked the Way of Saint Francis. There was confusion in the building when we said we were pilgrims trying to get our credentials stamped. These were temporary hires and didn’t know about our type of pilgrim walk.
After discussion with a few other official looking people we got it straightened out. We walked up to the metal detectors and security stations, talked to a guard that let us sneak in front of the hundreds of people waiting in line, enter past the metal detectors (I had to leave my scissors with them. I was told I could pick them up after my visit) and then walk up to the area to the right of the Basilica main entrance underneath where we were greeted by two volunteers that had us fill out our certificates of completion and posed for photos with us. I asked how many pilgrims in the month of November - 80.
From there we could retrace our steps outside and up the basilica steps to the open holy doors, pass the rough and into the basilica. Never fails to impress. So incredibly large. So vast. So ornate. So many sculptures. Not a surface without some kind of adornment-painting, sculpture. Everything marble. Yes it is beautiful and magnificent beyond measure.
After a half an hour staring gaped mouth, we exited, sat for a minute to plot our route and headed for the metro station about 8 blocks away. It was now about two and we were hungry. We stopped into a restaurant on a side street and ordered a lettuce salad, a plate of lasagna and two cokes. We took our meal at a table outside. The food was excellent but we were a little cold sitting in the shadows outside. While finishing up I walked to a newsstand and purchased two subway tickets, €1.50 each.
We rode the subway to Termini station and transferred to the other line to ride out to the Tiburtina station. We checked out the bus station to see where we would catch our bus to Salerno tomorrow, then walked the fifteen minutes to our room for the night. It was now about 3:30 and we were happy to rest. Yes, we know all of Rome was just outside our door, but in our defense, we had already walked clear across Rome, visited St. Pete’s basilica and traveled to the other side of the city again. Plus, we reasoned, we had all day Monday and Tuesday next week to poke around Rome (and we have been here three times before).
We stepped out about 6:00pm to get a Donar Kebab (they are so good and have lettuce, cabbage, carrots, onions, olives, potatoes, tomatoes and shaved mystery meat chicken and for $5.00-no brainer) and a few groceries for our bus trip tomorrow. I wrote my blog, Sally posted to Facebook and relaxed. What an amazing day!! Entered Rome through the most amazing gates. Finished our walk. Got our compestella. Walked through the holy doors. Negotiated the subway at rush hour. What a great finish to our walk.
