Conversations with Myself

We left Venice in the early morning of the 27th December 2013. It took us 2 and half hours drive to get to Florence.  We did not even jump out of the car in Florence.  We drove for a long time in narrow streets in City Centre and we were just pure exhausted plus Florence was never part of our plan.   All that said Florence was beautiful and we hope to come back one day.  It took us couple of hours from Florence to reach Rome. 

We stayed at Villa Paganini B&B in Rome.  Ok, before I go on can I say some praises about this place.  The caretakers, Fillipo and Nillam went all their way to make us feel welcomed.  Nilam served us divine breakfast every morning, he was so kind.  And the place was excellent.  We used busses to commune between our base and tourist places.  Fillipo gave us a very good crash course to read the bus map.  We never had any problems. 

    

To me Rome was more like a learning vacation.  It is a city full of history.  That is why we decided to have guided tours.  It will be futile to look and marvel at the ruins and old buildings without really knowing what is going on.  Receiving historical information for every structure on the road was so good and yet a bit too much. I find myself still processing some of the information to date.

Victor Emanuel Monument.

Just when we jumped off from the bus to the city was this imposing structure.  This white marble structure stands out in all the buildings.  The building has statues and neat columns outside and stairways inside.

I liked this structure more because it is free entry.

For free you can take a picture with a lovely background.

And for free we went upstairs and have this view of city.

Walking the streets of Rome.

  

In one of many churches in Rome.

Other Ruins.  Do you notice the apartments built on the ruins.  I doubt if I would like to have an apartment on the ruins.  Its just spooky for me.

Just mind blowing.

The colosseum

The Colosseum was designed for gladiatorial contests and public spectacles.  It was like an entertainment centre in ancient Rome.  Today it is used as a tourist attraction spot.

What amazed me about this building is that it took about 7 to 9 years to build it.  This is way too short time to construct a building of this size. It was built by 100,000 slaves.  They must have been working night and day.  Thanks to the unions today for the emphasis of fair treatment to workers.

 

I mean this huge building, its construction took less than 10 years to be completed.  This picture does not clearly show its immensity.

Amazing!

 

 

Lots of tourists.

 

This girl was on her best behaviour.

    

 

The Pantheon.

It is not a big building, but the fact that you are standing in a 2000 year old building is just amazing.  It was a temple in ancient Rome just not sure which God was worshiped in here. Today it is  a Christian church.  Notice a Latin inscription  “M·AGRIPPA·L·F·COS·TERTIVM·FECIT”,  it stands for, in English, “Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, consul for the third time, built this.”

 

Inside, amongst people that were buried in the temple, I managed to take a snap shot of Italian painter and architect Raphael’s tomb.

 

The place was crowded but not too bad for Muli to be able to appreciate some paintings.

    

 

St Peters square.

This was the most crowded place we encountered in our vacation.  We started the tour early and we purchased the online skip the line tickets. We avoided all the lines. 

It was drizzling but that did not stop eager tourist to queue up in the rain.  We were glad we came early and purchased a skip the line ticket online.

 

We viewed the place very quickly.  The Vatican museum, the Sistine Chapel and the St Peter’s  we finished in about 5 hours.  We did not see everything but saw enough.  Muli was tired and we wanted to go back to our hotel earlier so we can have a rest.

 

 

The giant bronze fractured sphere outside Vatican Museum

 

Taking pictures in the rain.

 

 

It was so easy not to enjoy the display of paintings and statues inside the building.  The place was crowded but we liked the Raphael room, the Sistine Chapel ceiling and this room full of statues and many other paintings.

 

The Trevi Fountain

There are lots of fountains in Rome but this is the most famous.  It is loaded with coins.  Our tour guide explained to us the tradition of throwing a coin.  She said we must stand with our backs to the fountain and toss the coin with our right hand over the left shoulder.  If done right you will one day return to Rome.   There were lots of tourist throwing coins in the fountain.

We did not manage to take good pictures of the fountain.  There was a photographer around who took us a family pic and gave us paper copy, which looked great.  I have to treasure the picture because I did not throw the coin to the fountain ha!  I might not come back to Rome ha!

Just random pictures.

 

 

Tips:

• As I have said before, travelling in low season worked perfect for us.  We travelled by bus from and to our hotel.  Busses where not full, the city was not congested.  Try low season vacation.
• I really did not feel like I’m in vacation in Rome.  There was a lot of walking.  The city was too busy and I think also the loading of historic information.  You will really need comfortable shoes.
• If you have time constraints in Rome do not miss Vatican Museum and St. Peter’s, The pantheon, Colosseum and Forum.

Take care,
Nez