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Published: November 29th 2006
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If there’s any one thing that stands out about Rome, it’s not the history. It would most certainly have to be the people. As a matter of fact, the history just sort of blends in, and if you don’t stop and look, you might very well miss it. Ok, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. It’s kind of hard to miss certain things, such as the Victor Emmanuel II monument or the Colosseum, but it all has a way of fitting in to a Rome we found to be very modern and trendy. It’s a mix of the very old and the very new.
The flight over was fairly uneventful, though we’ve both been hit with a bad case of jetlag. We had a chauffer bring us to the Grand Plaza, where we’re staying. I’ll say that traffic here is frightening. It seems to work well enough though. After a while, you just start to plunge into the streets like a native, regardless of what’s coming. As for the hotel, it’s nice, I guess. The common areas are every bit as luxurious as the pictures show. The room itself is decent, but probably not worth the money. Still,
it’s got a fantastic location in the middle of all the major touristy stuff.
Speaking of which, we finally got out this morning(Wed.) and started to take in the sights. Well, sort of. Our initial plan was to be at the Capitoline museum when it opened at nine, but things didn’t happen that way. We ended up waking up around three am, though according to the clock in our room it was four. So we got ready and went to down for breakfast which was supposed to begin at seven. Come to find out from the concierge, it was only six. Both a bit disappointed and very hungry, we decide to take a nice morning walk until it’s time to eat. We walked down to the Pantheon, one of the oldest churches, and Rome’s best preserved building from antiquity. Truly an amazing sight from the outside, though it was obviously closed so we haven’t been inside yet. We then headed back and went to the Spanish Steps, which was kind of neat. Honestly, it just looked like a bunch a steps I wasn’t in the mood to climb.
Anyway, breakfast turned out to be very delicious,
skyline over the forum
Trajan's column at center but we still had some time to kill so we went back to the room. The plan was to hang out for twenty minutes and then head out. Unfortunately, we both ended up crashing and not waking up until early afternoon. Oh well. We finally went out and headed straight for the Capitoline museum. Simply amazing. As an avid admirer of sculptures, I was in paradise. Julie liked it too, but it all looked the same to her after a while, which is reasonable. A lot of it was fairly repetitive. Still, I’d been waiting to go to this place for years, so I didn’t want to miss anything. The highlight for me was the Hall of Emperors. I think we spent about fifteen to twenty minutes in that room alone. It contained the busts of at least 30 emperors, from what I recall. As a Romanophile, I couldn’t tell you how great that was for me, but it was special. Almost as great was the head of Constantine. For better or worse, few men have ever changed the course of history so much.
After the Capitoline, we headed down to the Roman forum. I wasn’t as impressed
Chamber in the Capitoline museum
Pope Innocent X surrounded by frescos as I’d thought I’d be, but it was still enjoyable. I particularly liked the Senate building and the arches of Severus and Titus. I was trying to find the column of Phocas, but I either saw it and didn’t recognize it, or it’s not in the forum. We visited the Palatine hill as well. It was actually much more impressive than I’d thought it would be. We bought the combo pass which let’s you into the Palantine hill and the Colosseum, but it was late in the day and the woman at the ticket booth said the Colosseum would be closing, so that’s our first stop in the morning.
As for the food, it’s pretty good from what we’ve tried. Everything seems to be hideously expensive though. Maybe we’re just going to the wrong places.
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