|
|
| |
|
|
Last weekend we went on a long-awaited city break to Rome. City break
might not even be the best name for it as we just exchanged one city
for another.
We
planned our plane tickets so well that we actually had 4 full days in
Rome and the hotel we booked was very close to the city center. What
can I say, we had it lined up and we were very eager to visit
everything.
The first day we walked from one end of the city
center to the other ever-searching for the elusive "Bocca della verita"
(EN: "The mouth of truth" - famous sculpture allegedly biting the hand
off anyone who puts their hand into its mouth and tells a lie. It
doesn't work.). As we were searching the city we passed by many of the
famous landmarks of Rome like Piazza di Spagna, Via del Corso, Fontana
di Trevi, Piazza Venezia, Il Vittoriano, Forum, Colosseum, Circus
Maximus or the Palatino. If you go to Rome and you find yourself
thinking Circus Maximus is an interesting thing to visit DON'T! It's an
empty oval field.
On day two it was time to see the inside of
things so we visited the Forum, the Palatino and the Colosseum for a
few hours during the morning. We got some useful information from Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree
on how to get into the Colosseum easier. What I'd like to add to their
information is that if you go to the Colosseum at lunch (1:30pm) under
the scorching mid-day sun there will be no one else queuing to get in
anyway.
At lunch we had the best pizza of the four days in an Irish Pub.
In
the afternoon we went to the Vatican, following the Thorn Tree advice
once again. We visited the Vatican museums in about 1.5 hours. That's
fast, very fast, so fast, in fact, that I had a headache when we got
out from all the visual information I assimilated in such a short
amount of time. There would be too much to tell about the museums for a
blog so I'll leave it to the encyclopedias and the Vatican Museums website. Later we visited St. Peter's Basilica (IT: La Basilica di San Pietro) which was another astonishing highlight of the trip.
Bottom line, if you take the Palatino, Forum and the Colloseum and the
Vatican museums and the Basilica and compare the two you'll come to a
simple conclusion: Rome sucks / Vatican rules! You've got rocks and
ruins on one hand (Rome) and many of mankind's greatest works of art,
all assembled together in one place on the other hand (Vatican) - also
no ruins.
Later that evening we spent time at and around Piazza Navona and we went back to Fontana di Trevi for some "by night" photos.
After all I've described above, packed into some 36 hours, we got a bit
"visited out". Some of us probably wouldn't have been able to bare
seeing another battered down ruin without getting really sick.
So... on day 3 we went to the beach. We spent an entire day in Ostia on
a private beach, dividing our attention between the hot sand and the
blue waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea.
In the evening, back in Rome, we had dinner at a very nice restaurant on the Tiber Island
(IT: Isola Tiberina). Our Tunisian waiter, Alex, once again confirmed
that what you see on TV has little to do with reality. We expected
people in Rome to be somewhat negative towards Romanians after all the
events in Italy earlier this year. Instead, we found everyone had a
Romanian friend, colleague, girlfriend etc. and a very positive
attitude towards us as Romanians.
Day 4 was dedicated to shopping and to searching for the Porta di Roma
shopping center for 3 hours. We found it... and our minds and budgets
never were the same again.
The flight back was uneventful. Speaking of which, I really have to
hand it to the Wizz Air pilot of our flight to Rome who performed the
first landing in which I couldn't tell when the plane actually touched
the ground.
 Send by Yahoo! Messenger
 Send by email
|
|
|
RSS 2.0
