It was an early start today for our trip to Cassino.
We had to be at Roma Termini by 8am to catch our train to Cassino so we were up early to be ready for breakfast when it started at 7am. So it was a quick breakfast before heading off on our 25min walk to the station.
We walked past the Trevi Fountain again – this time of the morning is certainly the time to go if you don’t want crowds.
At the station it was a simple task to buy our tickets and then it was off to find a validation machine. Basically when you buy a ticket it is valid for 2 months so you have to validate for the day you actually use it. Either we just managed to find the day when the ticket inspectors were on or Italians are slack with validating tickets as just in our carriage there were at least 3 or 4 people arguing at some point with the inspector who came through and getting infringements issued.
As we headed out of Rome, we followed an ancient viaduct for a few miles as it wound around the suburbs along the railway line.
We arrived in Cassino at around 9.40am and met our guide, Danila, and the others on our tour – an American family from near Boston, George, Barbara and their 23yo daughter Abbey.
It turned out that George’s father had fought in WWII near Cassino and then further north as the Allies advanced further into Italy. Danila was able to provide them with a lot of information during the day about where his division had fought and the difficulties they had. Like many instances, George’s father had not been one to talk about his war experiences and it was only after his death a few years ago that they found letters written home by his father and started to find out more information about his service – and hence their interest in coming here.
But our first stop for the day was the Benedictine Abbey at the top of the mountain. This abbey, Montecassino, has been here since 527 AD when St Benedict built the first church. It has been destroyed and rebuilt on 4 occasions since then – 3 times from battles, including the bombing
during WWII, and once from an earthquake. The abbey has a commanding position on the hill with expansive views down the Liri Valley.
It was amazing to see photos of the “before” and “after” of the abbey from the WWII bombing and to see the effort that has obviously been put in to restore the church. As much as possible was recovered and re-used including some massive doors dating back to 1066 which lead into the main chapel and various statues in the chapel itself. Some of the crypts remained relatively undamaged and in fact saved some of the monks and civilians who had taken shelter there. The bombing was certainly a huge mistake on the part of the Allies – they believed the Germans were occupying the abbey when they were not and in fact after the bombing, the bombed remains gave better cover to them.
We left here and drove back down to the town of Cassino itself where we had lunch at a local restaurant. Our group decided it was easier to have a bit of a taste of all specials of the day including tripe, fried anchovies and grilled sea bass (The tripe did nothing to change the fact it is not on my normal menu ! – though the tomato sauce it was cooked in was very nice – the rest however was delicious !).
After lunch we drove around to areas where George’s father had fought – near the Rapido River – and to get a bit of an orientation of the surrounding area they would have had to deal with – the Germans secure on the high ground and the Allies had to battle the valley and river, which the Germans had made more difficult to cross by flooding it.
We also visited both the Commonwealth cemetery and German cemetery – the German one rather ironically located up a hill on the “high ground”.
It was quite a contrast between the two – we know from our visit to France how peaceful and well maintained the Commonwealth ones were whereas the German one was much more sombre and dour – even our guide had said that visiting the German cemetery for her for the first time had given her an “uneasy feeling”.
We stopped at a couple more locations then it was time for us to head back to the station to get our train. We had decided to get the 3.55pm fast train which would get us back to Rome about 5.30pm. George and Barbara were going to stay on and walk the town a little however Abbey had had enough and decided to head back with us.
The train was only a couple of carriages and full – I had to stand up all the way back to Rome but luckily Adrienne managed a seat. Again on the way back I was amused at the number of people the ticket inspector had to deal with !
We decided to walk back to our hotel once we arrived at Roma Termini, back past the Trevi Fountain – which was now wall to wall people – and our feet were well and truly sore by the time we got back. So we put our feet up for a bit before deciding to head out for dinner. We had seen some restaurants in a quiet back alley not far away so decided to try our luck there. But they must have moved the alley and we couldn’t find them and as we were getting hungry decided any of the millions of others we had walked past probably looked as good !
A little one fronting onto a small square – not actually full of parked cars and motor bikes – looked tempting so we went there. Both the food and the drunk patron who decided to sing were very good !
The end of a long and interesting day.