Advertisement
Published: September 4th 2007
A mere 26 hours after Zo dropped us off at Sydney airport we arrived in Rome. The flight, of course, was interminable. Some things are just not meant to fly - three year old children for example.
Our first day was quite eventful- arriving at 6am we were determined not to go to sleep. Arezzio, our driver helped out by introducing us first thing to the Italian way of driving .....everything we had heard about that is completely true... because there are no lines on the road, five lines of traffic merge effortlessly (although accompanied by many strident blasts on the horn) into three then back to four and so on depending on the width of the road; motor bikes are a law unto themselves and the only people to stop at a pedestrian crossing are pedestrians. We quickly discovered the safest way to cross a road was to latch on to a nun - everyone stops for them.
We arrived more or less in one piece to our hotel, dumped our bags, found our map and away we went.
Rome is an absolutely amazing place; the streets are filthy, cigarette butts everywhere and every corner smells of
Another Statue
Man, those old Romans were BUILT!urine (which is somewhat understandable given the complete lack of public toilets). All those ancient walls are covered in graffitti, but rising up out of all of this are the most fantastic buildings, statues and fountains. Every corner you turn there is a ginormous something. We discovered the The Trevi Fountain which is quite awesome in its magnificence squished in amongst all these other buildings. Also, it seems that those old Popes used whatever excuse was handy to whack up another huge edifice in old Rome - "Oh, we have some Croatian refugees, lets build a whopping big church then to celebrate, or pinch another obelisk off those Egyptians and whack that up somewhere as well".
We managed to find another Roman tradition -a pickpocket; although luckily one that wasn't too bright. I, of course was oblivious, but eagle-eyed Dean spotted him straightaway, and, just as the would-be-thief attempted to sneak his hand into my handbag, he grabbed him by his lapels, and whilst giving him a gentle little shake, gave him a jolly good talking too (NOT, I might add in his carefully rehearsed Italian). The unlucky thief (and his accomplice) then slunk off- rather quicky. You'd
The Colosseum
Dean's favourite. have to say they can't have been too sharp to begin with. I mean, how could he not notice we were wearing the ultimate in slashproof, snatchproof bags in the first place?
For the next two days we walked all over Ancient Rome, (in heat and humidity which would surpass anything Bellingen can dish out mid-February), and we did get quite tired. This helped our budget out enormously as, thinking we were just going to have a little afternoon siesta, we managed to sleep through dinner each night.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.283s; Tpl: 0.017s; cc: 10; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0865s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Lynda
non-member comment
Roamin'
Great start to the trip- and you all look so fresh! A few more close-ups of the well-hung statues, please. LOL Lyndy