Rome hotel plus Angel Tours

By Donna McDonell
This item appears on page 13 of the April 2015 issue.

Before arriving in London, my adult son and I visited Rome, Oct. 24-29, 2014. We stayed at Hotel Fori Imperiali Cavalieri (Via Frangipane, 34, 00184 Rome, Italy; phone +39 06 679 6426, www.hotelforiimperialicavalieri.com) and were very satisfied. The staff was great, especially Paulo (I think that’s how he spells his name). He was a sweetheart.

My room had a balcony. It was very pleasant to sit out there and soak up the atmosphere. Our single rooms came to about $123 each per night, which, for Rome, is good. (A single room without a balcony was a little cheaper.)

The hotel, a few blocks from the Colosseum and the metro, was on an alley, so it was very quiet, which I liked. It was a short block from the main street, where there were all kinds of shops and places to eat, and just a couple of blocks from St. Peter in Chains, a must-see church.

We had booked an underground Colosseum tour, which we took, but I was disappointed because the tour went only to the edge of the underground and I had wanted to walk through it to learn what went on beneath the public eye.

I wish I had booked a tour in advance for the Forum and the House of Augustus. I’d been told it would be no problem when we got there. Well, that wasn’t true. There were lots of people ahead of us, with no guides available, plus the audio guides were being recharged, which would take hours.

I did lots of research on what to see and how to get around in Rome. Angel Tours (Rome, Italy; phone, from the US, [011] +39 348 734 1850, http://angeltours.eu/rome) kept coming up as a great tour company. 

We booked the “Eco City Tour” with Angel Tours and it was awesome. It was almost five hours long, traveling in a golf cart that could go anywhere in Rome… and we did! The perfect tour for anyone who has problems with mobility, it was great fun and very informative.

We saw must-see sights plus places you wouldn’t ordinarily hear about. Among our stops were the Pantheon, Piazza del Popolo, Piazza Venezia, Torre Argentina Cat Sanctuary, Piazza Campo de’ Fiori, Castel Sant’Angelo, the Mouth of Truth, the Aventine Keyhole, Circus Maximus and Tiber Island.

We paid 80 (near $90) each for the tour, and it was worth every penny. Our guide, an expert on ancient Rome, was a wonderful Irish lad named Sean, who runs Angel Tours. I highly recommend the company.

We took the metro to the Trevi Fountain. I knew there was work being done on it, but I wanted to go anyway. We shouldn’t have bothered; we could not see much of the fountain, as most of it was covered over.*

The other place I wanted my son to see was the Capuchin Crypt. It’s a must. I had been once before and really appreciated it. Yes, it’s strange, and some would call it macabre, but, to me, it sends a message of how short, yet important, our lives can be.

DONNA McDONELL

Spokane WA

*Visitors can view the empty Trevi Fountain from a platform footbridge overhead. Work is expected to continue on the fountain until November 2015 (Aug. ’14, pg. 4).