Our Second Apartment

The apartment where we are spending the last nine days of our trip before we return home is just off the Via del Corso, the big, straight main street going from the Piazza del Popolo (People's Plaza) at the north (near the foot of the Spanish Steps) to the Piazza Venezia and the Vittorio Emanuele II Monument at the south end. Via del Corso as a major thoroughfare is paved with asphalt rather than san pietrini, and as a result of its smoothness we have actually seen a couple of skateboarders on it; but there are nice-looking potted shrubs --as you can see, at the precise point where the cobblestones turn to asphalt--creating a porous barricade so that only taxis, police cars, and other vehicles with a need to be there are actually allowed to enter the largely pedestrian precinct.

The many cross streets house many restaurants, some of them very good, others touristy and not so good. There are many stores with shopping opportunities for those so inclined (not us).

Our apartment is about a third of the way down from the top of the road. It is on the second (i.e., third) floor, with an elevator, of a modernized building with roots several centuries back that don't show much. The street we are on is quite quiet, considering how close we are to the main drag, but it gets some street noise and is less quiet than the Trastevere apartment, which, despite being in an area of Trastevere with a lot of nightlife, faced an interior courtyard/garden space with trees and other buffers, and no nightlife.

This apartment has a good-sized living room with a dining table next to the kitchenette, and a good-sized bedroom with a satisfactorily comfortable bed, and a bathroom with a shower and a wide, useful counter and big mirror. It looks okay, doesn't it?

Nice neutral gray walls with white trim, clean hardwood floors. Vinyl-clad sofa bed in the living room. TV (we have yet to turn on a TV during this trip). But as we have lived here for coming up to a week, we've discovered that we really kind of hate it.

We didn't have a lot of choice when we booked it, we just needed someplace decent to fill the time slot because the first place was not available for the entire three weeks.

There is a long list of things wrong with the place--broken or missing or worn out or borderline icky--most of which I'll spare you. The chief and most important problem is the apartment's electrical outlet shortage. There are only eight outlets in the whole apartment, one of which is off limits because it's for the refrigerator,* and we have eight devices with us that require power. The combinations of adapters for both plug configurations and power adapting are mostly too wide to permit much doubling up at a single outlet. The two bedside lamps and one floor lamp were both already unplugged, by the previous occupant for the same reasons, we are sure, so we've been able to use those. Yesterday I discovered that the combination of plugs I was using to charge my phone was not charging, so hours, literally, of experimentation with rearranging different combinations of adapters were necessary to achieve a charge on every device.

*The refrigerator is connected to the sole kitchen outlet by means of a short extension cord that can't take any other route than directly across the only work space in the kitchen. It is absurd.

Late last night we had the brilliant idea that we didn't have to stay here till Wednesday morning, that we might be able to take the short leg to Amsterdam, originally planned for pre-dawn Wednesday, a few days earlier than booked. So today we tried to change our reservations, but alas there is no availability, and we are condemned to stay here four more days. You might not think that four extra days in Rome was so much to be dreaded, but we're very frustrated and it's disappointing not to be able to leave. (First-world problem, we're aware.) We will find some nice things to do, though.