Now into our 4th month in Italy, riding in the streets of Rome seems surprisingly normal. This in large part thanks to our visits to Sicily and Greece earlier in the year. The two yardsticks I’d use would be Palermo, where traffic chaos somehow has both flow and elegance and Athens, where riders pass within inches of one another and their next move falls within a larger realm of possibilities. With our scale thus defined, I’d describe Romans as about as fast as, but more refined than the Athenians. Daring, but their risk taking is calculated and well rehersed. Unfortunately, they also have little use for the Sicilian gallantry I found so charming back in March. Let’s just say they have places to go. And, yes — they can be very creative about getting there.
Prati district of Rome
Surprisingly, horn use is not all that common when communicating with other drivers here. 99% of road antics are tolerated in complete silence and little drama. But yes, incidents of heavy gesturing do occasional occur and words are exchanged.
Here’s an 11 minute ride from the Portuense quarter where we are staying to the Vatican. It ends with a view of St.Peter’s Basilica.
A much more common use of the horn is to clear out the pedestrians. Legally, drivers in Italy have to stop before crosswalks already occupied those on foot. Surprisingly, in Palermo, I found that the drivers followed this rule religiously. In Rome, they often just go flying by having hit the horn a second earlier while enroute. With the pedestrians either fairly warned, scattered or frozen in their tracks there’s no reason to slow down. What’s more, they’re now legally in the clear. Brilliant, really. I’ve witnessed this maneuver successfully executed by drivers of both sexes and all ages. One woman in her mid 60s was particularly accomplished. Her crosswalk clearing extended into the sidewalk. Impressive.
Based on my research, off-road options within 30-45min of Rome are pretty much non-existent. My original plan was to venture out further east to Abruzzo, perhaps as far as L’Alquila in search of real dirt, but I lost an entire week thanks to a flu. Earlier in the month, the weather was a bit checkered and it was safer to get soaked closer to home.
Frascati, looking south and uphill from Centro Storico.
This we did on the way back from Tivoli where Min’s Klim Artemis pants did a bit better than my early model Mosko’s Basilisks, but even my Basilisk IR top took a good beating in the steady rain. Min was wearing a Dianese summer mesh jacket with some wind protection underneath. No contest there.
I had high expectations for Tivoli, a summer getaway for some of the wealthier Romans a couple millennia ago, but other than the wide vistas over the valleys below, the retreat left us unimpressed. The city is no more gritty than others we’ve seen in Liguria and Sicily, but my urban radar was flashing orange. Something not quite right with the scene. We’ve seen so many beautiful places this year, a single dud here and there is more than acceptable.
Frascati, Centro Storico
Frascati was a much better experience. A small town southeast of Rome, it’s only an easy 30 min train ride from Roma Termini, the capital’s main station. It too sits a bit higher up above the valley, but has a lot more to offer as a weekend getaway for the big city dwellers. The historic portion has a healthy number of cafes, restaurants and boutiques and the surrounding areas are populated with villas and larger estates. Min even found a birthday gift for herself. That, too, to the town’s credit as she does have a pretty discriminating taste.
The late rain aside, the riding that day was pretty enjoyable, especially considering having to cross nearly half of Rome twice to get there and back. The most bike-worthy portion was the stretch between Frascati and Tivoli, especially the twisties close to the two towns.
Ostia is to Rome what Huntington Beach is to LA, a beach town that takes about 30-45min to reach and doesn’t pretend to offer much else.
Getting there is surprisingly easy. Once beyond the periphery, there are a couple highways leading straight to it.
The ride is relaxing, but about the last place you’d go in search of curves. On the practical side, a bike makes it easy to both sail through traffic and find parking.
Most of the beach clubs and cafes were already closed for the season, but finding one with a good view of both a motorcycle parking and the Mediterranean took us all of 5 minutes.
The atmosphere was fun and upbeat with Italian hits blaring out of the speakers the whole hour we were there. Still, I took little chances in protecting the bike and left two wheel locks on the Tenere. As relaxing as it was, we were still within the realm of a 3 million-strong metropolis.
Via Appia also known as the Queen of Roads is one of the oldest roads known to be ever constructed by man and still in partial use today.
Via Appia Antica highlighted in red.
“All roads lead to Rome”, goes the oldest of sayings and Appia is very much one of the roads it addresses. The pathway by which the legions once left the city to patrol the southern portions of the peninsula may extend some 800km out, but ultimately does lead back to Rome.
A mix of the ancient stone and Rome’s standard cobblestones.
Today, the Antica portion of the road is largely reserved to foot and bicycle traffic, but riding over the millennia old stones is still possible further away from the city. Visiting the road was a pilgrimage of sorts and very high on my list when we reached the Eternal City in early October. Over the ensuing month we visited it twice. Once on a motorcycle and once to pay our respects from bicycles. In the end, it proved to be one of our very favorite places in Rome, but hardly a unique discovery something I realized upon visiting a bookshop a couple days later. Grabbing the first paperback on a shelf with books by Moravia and opening it on a random page I immediately found myself reading about a Roman couple arguing whether it was the right time of year to visit Appia. In short, this ancient road is very much a thing in Rome.
Here’s what it’s like to ride on Appia.