Another hot, miserable night, but we didn't care; we were leaving. We were up early, rinsed off, finished packing, finished the spremuta, and had some of the remaining fruit for breakfast. Our train left at 9:30, but for N's sake I had left plenty of time to get to the station. We were going to try to take a bus; N had wanted to hire a taxi, but every one of our books talked about how dishonest Neapolitan taxi drivers were and how the fares had to be negotiated in advance. I didn't relish the idea of showing up with heavy packs and two little kids and expecting to get a fair deal.
We closed up the apartment, put our packs on backs, headed down the stairs -- we hadn't used up much, and had bought a few books, but the packs seemed lighter than when we had come from Rome -- put the keys to the apartment in the mailbox, and left the building. Instead of walking down the narrow street and down the uneven and pigeonshit-covered stairs to Piazza Bovio, we went the other way, into Piazza Santa Maria de Nova and to the wide streets near the Piazza Municipio.
I had promised N to get bus tickets if we could, but I didn't think it was such a big deal, as we hadn't seen anyone validating tickets that wasn't a tourist or monk. At any rate, the tabacchi were all quite closed. We found a stop to the west of Piazza Bovio which was in the shade, and waited for a bus, not taking the packs off our backs. One arrived in about five minutes, with almost no one on it. We got on, and had an easy ride to the station.
It was a simple matter to locate our binario; it had only one bench, unlike the ones at Rome, but since we were more than an hour early, no one was there. I had been worried about being hassled by beggars or shady characters, but there was in fact less of that than in Rome. I went scouting for breakfast; the station concession appeared to be held by McDonald's (albeit one with a full bar, which interested me even less than their hamburgers), so I crossed the street and looked about just to the northwest of the station. The place on the corner, the Caffe del Professore, was crowded, but so was a place a little further up, La Sfogliatelle Antica, which looked like it had decent pastries. I had a coffee at the bar (quite good), and ordered some pastries to take back to the family: sfogliatelle, of course, but also brioche for N and A, and cornetti for Z. We ate them on the binario and managed not to make too much of a mess.
People started arriving and crowding onto the bench or standing very near to us, but the kids were good about holding their positions and calmly reading. When the train arrived, it pulled in so that our car was located right in front of us. Since it originated at Napoli, we had no problems taking our seats. There were no stops before Rome, and the trip was uneventful. I read some Suetonius, and dozed when it got too intricate or gossipy. When pulling into Rome, both N and I paid attention to the aqueduct we had seen earlier, and we tried to spot ruins to the west on the Via Appia, but the view was blocked.
We pulled into Termini at 11:15, and started putting the scouting I had done to use. We put the kids' violins into a self-serve locker, checked our packs at the left luggage place (it took about 15 minutes in line), found a counter at the new "Binario 25" complex on the west side of the station that was willing to sell us tickets to Fiumicino, and left the station about noon.
It was hot, hot enough to make us realize that the weather we had had for our two weeks in Rome had been a fortunate fluke, and that the heat we had suffered through in the second half of our Napoli stay had also been felt in Rome. Since it was Sunday, though, the traffic was diminished, and the overall impression, even around Termini, was one of relative calm and peace. We walked up to Piazza della Repubblica, around the circle under the arcades, and north to the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria, but it had closed at noon. It was to reopen at 3:30, but that wouldn't allow us enough time to see it, get to the station, get the train to the airport, and check in without some worry along the way. Bernini's statue of Saint Teresa in ecstasy would have to wait until our next visit.
We were somewhat consoled by the small Chiesa di San Bernardo alla Terme, just across the piazza of the same name, which was open; this was one of the outlying pavilions from the Baths of Diocletian, also turned into a church; it was octagonal, with a round coffered roof like a miniature version of the Pantheon, yielding a gem I suspect few people visited.
We walked down Via Nazionale, largely empty of both vehicular traffic and pedestrians with its stores shut, and appreciated the calm and wide streets. Ironic, considering how we had been ready to leave Rome because of the bustle and noise. Our lunch possibility, suggested by Fred Plotkin, was the rooftop cafe on top of Palazzo delle Esposizione. To get to it, we had to walk through the middle of the current exhibit (on Futurism; I tried not to look at it, since we hadn't paid admission). We walked into the bar and took the elevator up one floor. The rooftop cafe looked rather faded, and it was mostly empty since it was still early, but it turned out to have quite good food. A list was at the entrance. We went around to stations and ordered cannelloni with ricotta and spinach filling, cold rice salad with smoked salmon and vegetables, shell pasta with a light white sauce (the latter for the kids, who vacuumed it up and started nibbling on ours); a plate of mixed grilled vegetables; a plate of mozzarella di bufala and rughetta; a big mug of prosecco on tap which I drew myself; and three slices of various crostata. It was a bargain, and hit the spot. As we ate, more people came up from the museum to have lunch.
We regained the street and continued down it, with a brief stop at Villa Aldobrandini (the park atop the Aldobrandini family holdings, with people taking refuge from the heat in the leafy shade among some ruins and ancient statues; some workers, some street people, and one group of what appeared to be either young wives or domestics). From there we went past Trajan's Market, down the steps towards the column (stopping to get the kids more cheap postcards, at L.150 or about seven American cents each probably the cheapest thing of any sort we had seen in Rome), and onto Via dei Fori Imperiali (again closed to traffic).
It was hot! We walked on north side of the street until the shade gave out, then crossed to the south side and went into the Foro Romano. We didn't need our books, which in any case were sitting in the left luggage at Termini; all of us, even the kids, remembered the structures we were seeing. A few tour groups, mad dogs and Englishmen, clustered here and there, but it wasn't crowded. We walked through, the kids identifying this building and that, until we reached the Arch of Titus and the wide ramp down to the patch of grass where the Colossus had stood, at which point we turned left and walked past the Colosseum to the entrance to the Metro station. It was a good way to end our stay in Italy, by returning to a familiar place to see it with a new perspective. From here it was straightforward: two stops north to Termini, retrieve our luggage, train to Fiumicino, and check in for our flight to Frankfurt and our weeklong workshop at the Dagstuhl Institute in Germany.
We had to walk between tourists posing with a costumed "gladiator" and the person taking their picture to get into the station. I dug the last two Rome transit tickets out of my wallet, but our way was blocked by a woman who was trying to put the wider "smart" card into the old slot. I showed her how to use it; she went through, we put our cards in, stepped through the turnstiles, and we were off.