Just a short post today to let you see a little bit of Rome and share a thought or two.
We packed our bags and left them at the hotel after we checked out. We had a mission to find a few simple gifts and see a few sights. A fellow pilgrim had told us about two churches on the same block designed by competing masters of the Baroque era. Here is an excerpt of the texts he sent me.
“In via Quirinale there are two churches near each other. One is San Carlino alle quattro fontane (architect is Borromini). The other is San Andrea al Quirinale (architect is Bernini). These are the two giants of the Baroque period with radically different styles. Borromini creates stark interiors with complex geometrical forms, especially curved lines, while Bernini does incredible embellishments. Their personalities were also very different. Bernini was the consummate man about town and Borromini was a recluse always dressed in black and committed suicide.”
His advice was Spot-On. The two churches were great examples if radically different styles of Baroque. Which do you like.
Next we went past the Pantheon which we’ve visited in the past. It is awesome but the line was too long to re-visit.
We finally visited Castile Sant’Angelo the castle/fortress/palace of popes.
Finally we strolled back past the Vatican
The time for us to head to our airport hotel finally arrived and not a moment too soon. Honestly this pilgrimage has made me restless. Staying in one place for two nights just felt odd. I don’t think we could have stayed another night.
As we walked out, the entire city came out and literally rolled out the red carpet. We were touched. Truly touched.
We hung around for a bit but never found out what was REALLY going on.
The last “adventure” was our short train ride to the airport where our hotel for the night awaited. It was surreal to see things pass by at high speed. Our journey home has begun. We so look forward to being home. We miss so much about it – not the least of which is our family.
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Safe trip home, love you!
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Borromini for sure. There’s a simplicity versus Bernini, that I like. Yet both are too much for my taste.
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I liked Borromini’s style better. Bernini’s style was too cluttered but that is more of the way I think Baroque style is.
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As to having too much time at the airport, you can always walk [ ; >) ] around the terminal and do some people watching.
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It’s been wonderful to follow your journey . I’m hoping to do it next year as a solo woman traveller .
Any tips gratefully accepted.
All your pictures and videos really gave us a great view of where you were.
Thanks again and really appreciate all that you shared .
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Helen, some tips are generic and you’ve likely heard them all before, but….
1) Take care of your feet. At even the slightest irritation, stop, take the shoe off, find the problem. It is aggravating some times to stop and take out a tiny rock, lace back up our shoes and find you still have an issue. Stop anyway. If you have the slightest hot spot, stop. Sometimes just taking off and putting a sock back on solves the problem.
2) Take care of your feet. Use trail runners vs boots. This is not a mountain climbing expedition. Trail runners are fine. Bring two pair. Sometimes just changing shoes mid day changes the pressure points and brings comfort.
3) Don’t be bound by any artificial stages printed in a guide book. Some are ridiculously long and arbitrary. Some are too short and made the next day unnecessarily long. Find YOUR pace and YOUR comfort zone and recognize that it will not remain the same each day. Some days you are just in a groove and can extend your kms. Other days you’re in a funk (mental or physical or spiritual). It’s sometimes better to cut a day short.
4) Be flexible – you may hit a spot and find there is a festival….the next day. Consider it.
5) Be aware of how much water you REALLY need. It will change each day depending on supply, temperature, etc. There is no need to carry 2L of water all day when you don’t need to. Water is heavy. Consider a water filter – not because you need one, but if it allows you to carry less water, its a good trade-off.
6) I think it is a unique aspect of travelling during Covid, but lodging was a constant frustration. I wasn’t that it was scarce (well, a few times it actually was scarce), but rather, getting in touch with places took work each day. So many of the pilgrim places were closed. The “lists”, and there are several, have outdated phone numbers and the hosts all seemed to have different preferences (email, text, phone) and varied hours. You just never knew from day to day. Because so many were closed, it was difficult to just trust that you’d find a place once you arrived.
7) Don’t witness the Via through a camera or GPS. If you can’t keep your face off of your phone – leave it behind. I feel I did pretty well, but because I chose to record the Vlog, I still spent more time than I wanted fooling with electronics vs living the Via.
8) ….I could go on and on, but I’ll stop there and see if you have anything specific you’d like tip about.
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