For this week's Sunday adventure, we took a train a little south of Rome for the Marino Wine Festival. We weren't sure what to expect, but it turned out to be both fun and frightening in the end.
When we arrived at the train platform at Termini, our first observation was that all of Rome must be going to Marino for the festival. The train was packed! We stood the whole ride, which was fortunately only about a half an hour long. Marino is yet another hilltop town, which we knew before we went. What we did not know was that the train station is at the bottom of said hill. We walked up something like 300 or more steps to get to the town center, where the festival was taking place. Once we got to the top, we were rewarded with a great view:
We then traversed into the town, which was packed with vendors of all sorts. Obviously, the primary vendor was the wine seller, who was selling half-liter cups of wine for 2 euro or liter bottles for 4 euro. I tried a cup of the white wine and sipped it slowly while we made our way around to all the vendors. Some of them were giving out free samples of things, which was pretty cool. We tried some yummy wine, cheese, sauce, and jam. Eventually we made it around to one of the main squares, where we discovered a renaissance parade was about to happen! It was pretty much the coolest ever. Evidence? Small children in renaissance costume:
After the parade was over, we made our way up to the main square where the fountains were supposed to flow wine for a while at 5:30. It was packed! There were thousands of people trying to cram into the tiny space around the fountain, where they were handing out little plastic cups in anticipation of the "miracle". Finally, there was a countdown, and the fountain did, in fact, flow white wine, of which everyone was vying for a taste. As people started to receive their little cups of wine, they gradually began to push their way back out of the congested crowd. Eventually, I made it to the front and received my well-earned share. It was a little crazy for a while there though. Kind of like being in a mosh pit, only with a lot of wine splashing around everywhere and angry drunks trying to push their way through to the free wine.
But we made it out alive and then spent some time looking at the other vendors we had missed earlier. There was a lot of nice stuff that we would have liked to buy, but money is really tight right now, so we refrained. On our way out of town, we got some pulled pork sandwiches to eat for dinner. Then we made our way back down the 300+ steps to the train station. The train station was completely packed with mostly drunk people waiting for the train back to Rome. There wouldn't be another train for two hours, so tension was high. Would we all make it onto the train? When the train arrived, we soon realized just how dire the situation really was. Almost all of these people were at least buzzed, if not drunk, so they were prone to care even less about others than they normally would. Thus, when the doors opened, it was a free-for-all of people pushing, shoving, climbing over, and stepping on anyone in their way. People even started climbing in through the windows. It was a pretty scary experience. Fortunately, we happened to be pretty close to a door when the train stopped, so we not only made it onto the train alive, but we also got seats, which was pretty miraculous. Oh well. It was an experience.
So this was my first attempt at "photo-blogging". I have posted these and other photos from the Wine Festival on snapfish. Facebook is being dumb right now, as the upload keeps "failing", but I have no idea why. I'll keep trying. I recently found out that the link I originally provided for snapfish only links to the honeymoon album and nothing else. So, try this link: http://www2.snapfish.com/photolibrary/t_=134892683. It should take you to my main page, where you can link to any of the albums I have posted. Sorry about that! I hope that hasn't caused problems for too many people. I also recently posted on both sites an album of photos from the Wall Walk we went on three weeks ago. I think I'm all caught up now, except for some random photos of Rome and Anguillara, which I will try to post soon.
Comments (1)
sounds like a ton of fun, glad you survived the trip home! yikes!