The second European trip of the season was a return to Rome this time to play AS Roma as opposed to our two previous trips to play SS Lazio.  As everyone knows Rome is also the venue for this year’s final, so hopefully it won’t be a long wait to go back again.  I was looking forward to returning so booked a three-night trip flying from Gatwick and decided to go to Fiumicino at the Rome end, as it is easier to get into the centre.  I’d picked Easyjet and got a fairly good deal.  Checking in online meant I didn’t have to rush to the airport but I did have a sense of unease about not getting there ridiculously early.  This may just be force of habit but I wasn’t comfortable until I had arrived there.  But going on my own meant I didn’t have to worry about anyone else.  There were quite a few familiar faces on the flight, which surprisingly was not full.  Everything seemed to be working fine but we were then told that despite being ready we would be late taking off.  As it turned out this didn’t make any difference at the other end as despite taxiing half way to the city centre we were near enough the station to make the train with ease.

I had booked a hotel near the station as it was central and I thought we might be taken back there after the game.  However I then found out how long a road it was, I felt like I was walking back to the airport down quite a grim street.  I found the hotel and spoke to the ancient Roman behind the desk who, after struggling with my name, then said I had to go even further down the road to get to the right part of the hotel!  I got there in the end and found I had a double room but it was right up in the roof with only a skylight, so no view.  I spoke briefly to my mate who was already out there but on the other side of the city, he was having ticket trouble but nothing I could do to help.  I decided to go for a wander before retiring and found I was near to a section of the old city walls, but in an area I was unfamiliar with.  I didn’t manage to get lost but will admit that I was having difficulty with the map as it didn’t have all road names marked.  In the end I made it back and decided on an early night.

Match day dawned and I decided to revisit the main tourist sites.  I found the nearest Metro was only a few minutes away and got a day ticket for a very reasonable 4 euros and they also don’t have any of this business about zones.  Getting out in the centre it all seemed very familiar and I happily wandered past the Trevi fountain, the Pantheon and down to the river Tiber.  Unfortunately it did start to rain a bit and a flock of umbrella sellers appeared.  They had so many to sell everybody could have had a couple each, though most had something already.  Outside St Peter’s I bumped into some other regular travellers who had arrived on the Monday, which sounded a much nicer day.  They told me where to find the club shop and then wandered off towards the Vatican.  Later back at the impressive Monumento Nazionale a Vittorio Emanuele II I found you could actually go up the steps at the front and there was then a view back over the centre.  From the café round the back I found you could then look over towards the Colosseum.  Clive had now arrived and we arranged to meet at the Colosseum and then went for a wander.  You wouldn’t have thought there was a game on and we didn’t see many Chelsea fans.  When we were near the main station it suddenly got very dark, much too dark even for a November afternoon.  It then turned into a full-blown storm with thunder and lightning and even more umbrella sellers.  We took shelter in the station and it absolutely lashed it down for quite some time.  So we ate in the station and waited for it to stop, fully aware that only a week before Roma had a game abandoned due to a waterlogged pitch.

We had agreed to meet our other mate, eventually deciding to go to his hotel as it was quite near the Olympic Stadium.  The Metro got us half way but the tram platform was ridiculously crowded and it was still raining.  So we splashed out for a cab and got there through various puddles.  This was the mate with ticket problems who had come with his better half.  He had a ticket in his name and she had one with a bloke’s name.  We had been warned the tickets were assigned to the individual who had bought it.  This appeared to have been proved when he had tried to buy tickets in the main stand.  They were happy to sell them to him despite being English but his name came up as already having a ticket so they then couldn’t.  So after lots of poor jokes about putting on a deep voice we decided to chance it.  My mate then seemed to be doing some sort of business on his mobile as we walked to the ground, not sure how obvious he realised he was being about being English!  Needless to say despite going through three ticket checks, including a barcode reader, and two searches everyone got in with no trouble.  The game was as impressive as the security.

There had been a small band of ultras to the left of the Chelsea fans who only knew one chant that was basically “Chelsea, Chelsea, vaffanculo”.  Bit boring after a while especially as they insisted on running over to the fence when they scored.  I think the fairly mild reaction from our fans was why we were kept in for even longer than the usual Italian one hour after the game.  Why they can still legally do this is beyond me in these days of human rights acts and the like.  Only upside was a free bus ride back to the centre.  Talking to people on the bus a lot had followed the strong recommendation of getting picked up by organised buses to the ground.  We had totally ignored this as it seemed too early and too near the ground to bother.  Those who turned up, at the height of the storm, had found a row of buses and no toilet or refreshment facilities in the area.  The police of course filled the buses up and then waited for more fans before setting off in a convoy.  Those who had got on the first buses had waited the length of a football match before this departure happened.  By the time we got to the centre it was gone half twelve so I walked back to my hotel to retire to bed.

The next day dawned with bright blue skies, which lasted all day.  It was pleasantly warm but the locals didn’t seem to appreciate it being wrapped up in several layers compared to my shirtsleeves.  Now I had my bearings I explored the area I’d wandered into on my first night.  I then wandered into the centre and up the Via Veneto made famous by Fellini’s  ‘La Dolce Vita’.  I found a plaque about it that revealed it was nearly all done in the Cinecitta studios!  I walked into the Villa Borghese Park and decided it was too nice for museums or art and just wandered, then exploring the back streets between the park and the station.  My lunch was surprisingly good as I just went into a place by the station and had pizza the way Italians do.  The pizza is a huge rectangular slab and you buy it by weight it is then folded over and put in a bag so you can walk along munching it without dripping the contents on to you.  Very cheap and very tasty.  To see a different area I then jumped on the Metro and got off at Pyramide, and yes there is one outside the station.  I walked up and over the river and into Trastevere on the other bank. 

Somehow it was by now mid afternoon and my legs were tiring as I’d done a lot of walking in two days.  But at least this time when the skies went dark over the river it wasn’t rain.  Starlings!  Thousands of them were flocking in the gathering gloom.  I can remember this used to happen in central London but I’d never seen it on this scale anywhere.  Most people ignored it, some put up umbrellas to protect themselves, but a few did watch this amazing spectacle.  If you were near the riverside trees where they were all settling down to roost it was also pretty noisy.  Back over the river I had a plan to go to a cinema in the Via del Corso that showed original language films rather than dubbed ones.  But I’d wandered too much and in too many loops and realised I was too far away to make it.  But in the end this just meant no Woody Allen instead I watched a police thriller called ‘Pride and Glory’ in English with no Italian subtitles.  It was okay and passed the time.  It meant it seemed a bit late to eat but I found a restaurant near the hotel that was still serving and had a meal there under a picture of local hero and film star Alberto Sordi.

I checked out the next morning, the hotel had been fine though the breakfasts didn’t have a lot of choice.  I bought my train ticket for later and thought I’d leave my bag in left luggage.  I wasn’t put off by the x-ray machine but reading the instructions they expected bags to be locked and you didn’t put them in a locker yourself.  No lock and a zip that had split twice already meant I decided against this.  I’d decided to explore EUR, which is an area of 1930s development out at the end of the Metro and had been developed by Mussolini as part of his new Italy.  This was very disappointing as the architecture was disappointing and the buildings had been allowed to fall into disrepair.  But maybe that is fitting for ‘Il Duce’!  So I decided to go back to Trastevere instead and explore it better.  This was much better and has a different feel from the more central parts of Rome.  Again it was a pleasant day and I just wandered through the streets.  I decided to go up the steep set of steps in front of me and came out in the park at the top.  This is where there are statues of both Garibaldi and his missus.  It is also the best view you can get of Rome as a whole, though because of the seven hills in the centre you cannot see everything.  By now I was flagging a bit and the weather was clouding over.  So I had a snack in St Peter’s Square and sat there watching the mix of tourists and church types wandering around.  After recovering a bit of energy I explored the area around the papal palace in the middle of Rome but found this to be not only well enclosed but also that there was nowhere you could get any real view. 

I resisted the temptation to buy any tacky souvenirs or an unofficial replica football shirt and decided to give myself plenty of time to get to the airport.  Typically having done this and checked in the flight was ninety minutes late.  So I used the money I’d saved on not buying souvenirs to get something to eat and just waited and waited.  We finally took off at about the time we should have been landing at Gatwick.  I was not very impressed with how Easyjet handled the delay and it showed up how poor their policy of not allocating seats works as it almost became a free for all.  Being late I could only get back as far as East Croydon by train so ended up splashing out for a cab and regretting I had decided to go to work the next day!  Roll on Bordeaux.