We stayed at the Ostia Antica Park Hotel. It is about as near to Ostia Antica as you can get and it looks walkable on the map. It is walkable. You just cannot walk in safety or comfort, since you have to walk along a busy narrow road with no shoulder and no path. We took the bus.
The hotel is good an very inexpensive. The staff is extraordinarily friendly, all of them. It rare to find such enthusiasm. If they are not sincere, they are very adept at faking sincerity.
In the restaurant today, we had our last Italian pizza. Among the choices, the one I chose, was sausage & potatoes. I had never before seen potatoes on a pizza and thought they meant tomatoes, but they meant potatoes. It is an odd, but not a bad combination. You get starch and starch. The pizza was generally good, one of the best we had.
I have been a little disappointed with the food this time. Let me be clear, food in Italy is great. But I remember it being superbly great (if I can double up on superlatives.) Now it is just great. I think what happened since I was here in 2002 is that food generally available in America has improved, so relative positions changed and my expectations have risen. My taste in food has change too. I used to eat mostly pasta and pizza. Today I like fresh vegetables and salads more and they are now more easily available in the U.S. Or more to the point, I know where to get it in the U.S. now.
My first photo shows the sausage and potato pizza. It looks like pineapple, which some people erroneously think goes on pizza, but its not. The other photos are from the little village near Ostia Antica ruins, very charming.