Text 37397, 64 rader
Skriven 2010-05-05 08:24:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: trip 99
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The Villa Borghese houses one of the great collections of
classical and neoclassical sculpture, including the Canova
Venus Victrix (my favorite), modeled by Pauline Borghese,
sister of Napoleon, and the Apollo e Dafne by Bernini (hers,
perhaps an admonition). We had to go there. Using Lilli-fu,
she'd gotten us advance ressies and thus bypassed much of
the crowd not to mention the fact that tickets were sold
out, as well they might be, as they were free this week.
Free means E2 for processing, which gave us a chuckle. The
museum knows what it's doing, letting only 300 in for every
2-hour block. The first time I went there, in the '90s, it
was free-for-all, though a rather genteel and uncrowded one.
The limited entry created a facsimile of this situation,
and it wasn't bad at all.

I'd read that the 116 minibus goes from the Terminal
Gianicolo, which is atop the hill overlooking St. Peter's
Square, all the way to the Borghese Park, a block from the
Villa. We set off looking for it, heading up the hillside,
but there seemed to be no way to get across the wall that
encircled the top. I swallowed my pride and approached an
older couple; the man gave us instructions in pretty good
English. We were to go back down the hill, into the traffic
tunnel, curve over into the second tunnel on the right, and
there it would be. We thanked him and followed his
instructions, buoyed by his getting into a taxi with his
wife shortly thereafter - he was a cab driver! and ought to
know his way around town.

It was quite a trudge, and the second tunnel didn't have
much of a walkway and was exceedingly dingy. Nonetheless,
there we were at the top of the hill, with a 115 bus staring
us in the face. Where the 115 was, the 116 should be not far
behind, right? Wrong. There were two 115 drivers taking a
break, and it took both of them to figure out how to get
us to the 116 - into the bus exit portal (actually, where
Lilli had originally suggested we go). So eventually we
found the stop and soon thereafter the bus.

We later found there's a pedestrian walkway from right off
St. Peter's that goes right into the bus depot, and we'd
walked quite a way out of our way (Lilli hasn't tumbled to
this yet, but taking a walking tour with me often involves
substantial detours); neither a taxi driver nor a bus
driver could have been expected to know this route, though.

The 116, being a short bus, can maneuver itself through tiny
alleys barely fit for pedestrians, so it really gets into
the heart of the city. Down by the river, into the Jewish
quarter, up through Largo Argentina, a block off Piazza
Navona, paralleling Via del Corso for a ways, across the
Piazza Colonna, past the Tritone fountain, up Via Veneto,
and into the park, terminating at the avenue leading to the
Villa. This takes less than half an hour (it's maybe 5
miles) and is quite edifying. We still had over half an hour
before our reservation and took a walk through the park,
narrowly escaping encounters with out-of-control tourists in
bicycles built for 4, little engines that could, and girl
scouts selling fattening pastries (of which we bought a
piece of rich chocolate cake thing).

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