Romeing around Rome

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Rome

I was extremely excited to see the coastline of Italy appear out my window and I think I was even more excited than when I first landed on European soil coming into Manchester airport for my connecting flight to Edinburgh. It was a lot flatter on the coast than I was expecting and I kept looking for a big city to see if I could find Rome. Having no reference point, I couldn't, but I enjoyed my birds eye view of tha Italian coast, a place I had dreamed of visiting since reading an Italian travel journal written by an author in Australia some 3 years earlier. It was the food and the culture that called to me, the sense of family and living from the land. Not that I thought I would find that in Rome, but it was what first attracted me to the Italy.

Getting off the plane, grabbing my bags and heading for the meetingnpole where I had organised a transfer with 'camping Roma' was uneventful. Until no one showed up and I was left standing around with all the other taxi/bus drivers looking for their passengers. The Italian men looked me up, down and around and were quite happy to stare away for as long as I was in their vicinity, some of them also happily pointed at my enormous backpack and made a few comments. Truely an uncomfortable 45mins. So then I rang my accomodation to be told, whoops, actually we forgot you! Take a taxi and we'll reimburse you. Hmm, now to navigate the sleezy taxi drivers. Driving in Italy is similar to driving in Vietnam, although the one main difference is that traffic from the opposite direction doesn't come at you head on like it does in Vietnam. In all other ways of craziness it is pretty similar. Random lane crossing, only occasional indicating, honking, yelling, speeding, changing 4+ lanes of traffic in one go...yep Italians and Vietnamese must have the same driver guide book!

I was exhausted, still getting over food poisoning and in desperate need of sleep. I unloaded my pack, settled into my 3 bed cabin with aircon and bathroom and then chilled outside on the patio to get wifi to work. The Uk/Irish couple who were my neighbours next door were also trying to use the useless internet so we ended up chatting for a couple of hours before they headed off to the bar and I went to bed.

After a very long sleep in I headed into Rome for my first day walking tour which I had organised through busabout. I had Justin who I accidently mislabelled as an American and he was infact Canadian, this meant I was then the butt of further jokes for the rest of the tour! Justin began by saying he would give us both the truth and the story of Rome's amazing history, and we would do it in under 35mins. A big call, and I was sceptical. I will do my best to recount.

Basically the story goes, there was a king who had only daughters, no sons and so they developed thier own sect of relgious virgins. They were so dedicated and devout their virgin leader was rewarded with a day off. So she went to the river to swim naked (isn't that just what we all do?). The god, Mars saw her beautiful body and decided he wanted her so he raped her. Of course she fell pregnant but had to hide it as virgin's cannot get pregnant. When the townsfolk realised she was pregnant (not just eating too many donuts) they were going to kill her at the stake. But she had her trump card, she told everyone that her pregnancy was from a God. Can't kill a God's child, tends to make them angry. So they let her live and she had twins, Romulas and Remus. Then they killed her and left the children by the river (nature here not nurture).

Of course being the children of Gods they were immediately adopted by a SheWolf who raised them as her own. A shepherd eventually discovered the SheWolf and frightened her away and raised the boys as his. At some point (details hazy sorry) a prophesy was told that one brother would rule the entire empire and the other would die by his siblings hand. The boys heard this and immediately fell to fighting eachother. Romulas killed Remus and founded Rome in his own name.

The real story is that Rome was built on a river because there was a good sized hill for defence and the flat land surrounding it was good for farming. But that story isn't nearly as exciting.

Our first stop after all this history was 'The Stone of Truth' made famous by Audrey Hepburn in the movie, Roman Holiday. It was used the 2nd time round as a judicial judgement hole. Stick your hand in, if you are telling the truth, it wont eat you, if you are lying your hand will be eaten. Helped somewhat by the man on the other side of the hole who was holding a bag of hungry and angry rats to 'prove' your guilt. Hmmm good system? Perhaps not. Notice I say used the 2nd time round? That it because its first and original use was because a Royal lady of Rome did not like the look of all the surage being pumped out an ugly pipe and designed "The stone of truth" as the surage hole cover. Yep, come to Rome, wait in line in the hot sun and then put your hand in a surage hole cover for a photo! Haha Love it!

Next stop was a building that looks similar to the Colosseum but is now home to the rich folk of Rome who are living in a unit worth 45 million USD. Crazy. The Panthenon was our next stop, still unknown is how the massive concrete dome was made and stays up, but one theory was they filled the entire building with sand, built the concrete dome on top and then emptied out the sand after it dried. Our mid afternoon snack was gelato, which was actually my first meal in Italy, and my first food since San Sebastian! I felt queasy afterwards but I think I overate.

My favourite story is from our next photo stop. Unfortunately I cannot remember what the name of the building is called but it is a huge massive white building that normally you would guess it would be some kind of parliment building. It was built by a King or Emperor of Rome that no one liked, and then therefore no one appreciated him building it. It also features a massive bronze statue of the guy on a horse, which is apparently the biggest equine statue in the world. Which also makes the guy ontop of the horse equally as huge, so big infact his mostache is 1.4 metres long!! Holy moly! Mousollini took over the building during the war and tried to make it cool by inviting 8? Of his fellow counsillors for dinner. Not to be outdone, he didn't have dinner on the terrace, or even the roof, he cut a hole in the bottom of the brass horse's belly and put a ladder up to have dinner INSIDE the horse statue. Haha! I love it. There is also an eternal flame that is on 24 hour guard. They looked pretty serious about their job. Nowdays the building is used as a museum and has its own cafe.

The last stop was the Roman Forum and Colosseum. Justin was still trying to rile me, so 15-20 minutes of violent descrriptions of the lives and deaths of gladiators, animals and anything else the Roman's could put their hands in did not help my already delicate stomache. He said he aimed to make someone throw up in his tours when he told them of this history, he definately had me pegged as his current target. But I staved off another round of being sick, but only just. To conclude our tour, Justin had us quote the three things you must remember about Rome: Margarita pizza is delicious, Mostaches are big in Rome and the Colosseum is enormous! By far the best walking tour I have done in 3 months of travelling (Paris came a close 2nd) but Justin tipped it over the line with his passion for history, engaging delivery (and handsome good looks!). Romeing Tours....do it.

I made friends with 2 others from the tour and walked back with them to their hostel as we were all meeting for the night tour at 9pm. I had vege soup for my first real meal and managed to feel ok, I did get some stange looks from the waiter as to why I wasn't eating more, which turned into why are you alone? So I left before it got awkward. The night tour was good, we had Tad from Romeing tours who was the original owner, we saw the Spanish steps, Trevi fountain, Eqyptian obilisque and many others but my brain didn't absorb the history enough to recount it. There was a cool statue by Boblini?**** who constantly got back at people who annoyed him in his artwork. One shell statue was a representation of someone else's cousin with her legs spread...moral of the story, don't annoy an artist before they are finished the work. I had a creepy guy from New Zealand try to make repeated passes as me during the tour and I spent a good deal of time trying to avoid him, telling him I wasn't interestedI made some new friends and wandered the Colesseum at night before we all got a taxi back to the hostel.

My second day in Rome was slow, I felt awful, my stomache was still cramping so I spent the entire day chilling in my air conditioned cabin, skyping Jen and my parents, doing inventory on the items I needed to send home (or ask my parents to bring) and generally just recovering. In the evening I took the train/subway into town to see the Trevi fountain and try to recreate the previous nights tour by finding the final piazza with the Neptune fountain. I found many many piazza's, some with fountains, some not, walked for ages buy of course I was not lost because I wasn't sure where I was really going in the first place!

Walking alone in Rome introduced me to the many ways Italian men asses fellow ladies.
1) Most start with looking at your feet before slowly slowly working their way up, assessing what you are wearing and eventually the older men look you directly in the eye. Basically you feel like you need to have a shower to go and get the 'creepy' off you.
2) Some of the stupid ones laugh in your face if you eyeball them back.
3) Some then make comments...others make hand gestures of various meanings

I did find a super cute store which I marked on my map in lipgloss (had no pen) which I decided to investigate tomorrow during the day. I also found 10+ of the wrong piazza's before finding the one I wanted. I followed Tad's directions for a good place to eat and unfortunately found the wrong place and ended up with not so good pasta, terrible service and worse company from the annoying English speakers beside me complaining about the food being "just not like it is back home". No kidding, you are in Italy. Food cramps continue so in my attempt to walk it off for another hour I walk through most of Rome looking for a taxi to take me back to the camp ground. Eventually I got one, who then took me on the most scenic tour possible and charged me double what I paid the previous night. Arg. Bed was calling.

Unfortunately this was not the end of the story. I got back, did the usual face wash, teeth brushed, but then my toothbrush (electric) would not turn off. It had been sitting on charge all day as in the previous weeks it would no hold charge more than one use. Now I couldn't get it to turn off. I tried to put it back on the charger....fail. I tried to open the toothbrush battery area....fail. I figured it was dead anyway, now it looked broken, I will break the damm thing, I just need sleep! SNAP!!! Yay! Bed...sleep....dream....BBBBBBUUUUUUZZZZZZ!!!!! Nooooo! Bugger. Break it again... Snap. Bed, sleep.....BUUUUUZZZZZ!! Oh for the love of god, No! Need sleep! Bury it in the backpack....muffled buuuuuuzzzzz.... At this point I have had enough, I am sick, tired, cranky and there is a buzzing noise which is never ending. So, and I am not proud of this, I never would normally do it. But I littered. I opened my door quietly, super spy checked no one was around, quietly tip toed down the stairs and threw the damm vibrating disaster into a bush outside. I then ran back inside and shut the door. The only hum I could hear was the dulcit tones of my own air conditioner, bliss.

Next morning I awoke, quietly checked the toothbrush wasn't still vibrating outside, and went and got some breakie! I was off on the Catacombes tour for my final day before Anna arrived for the Italian Adventure over the weekend.

Originally the Pagans were buried inside the city walls but they decided that the Gods didn't like it as more people kept dying, so they decided the dead could be buried outside. The catacombes are a mix of pagan and christian tombs which is dug into a mound in a hill and eventually dug 45 metres deep in some sections. The tunnels stretch for 40km long and if you could stretch it out, it would be long enough to reach Florence. The first level are thr oldest and there is a church built underground where there is famous Eunich's burried. The ground was donated to the christian Roman's by a Niece of the King who was banished. Christians were pursecuted for 250 years and 80% were killed by one horrible emperor of Rome.

There is one very ornante grave thought to be St Peters daughter. In some places underground it is so dark, it is impossible to see your own hand infront of your face. Not a place to go easily exploring. They used to use oil to light their lamps and basically only stopped digging when they hit the water table. They still hold services underground. Tad told us his is the only company outside the catacombes guides allowed to bring groups down there and his weirdest moment happened on his second group where a girl stayed behind to sleep in an empty grave and asked him to just leave her there, she was where she needed to be. Very creepy.

We took the bus back to the city and was entertained by a crazy homeless woman who took a liking for a guy and his brother. She serenaded us for our entire journey with her tuneless song and errant ramblings. Tad said it was the first time he'd seen it happen on a bus, so I really should appreciate my authenic Roman song. Haha I got a new reccomendation for a restaurant from Tad, managed to find it (which was a miracle) and then went wandering the shops, found frozen yoghurt and then headed back to the camp ground to see Noelene and her boyfriend Shawn at the pool bar, as they had just come back from the Italian Adventure the previous day. It was great to see her and meet Shawn and we all had dinner together before Anna arrived ready for the Italian adventure the next day. Upon weighing myself on the baggage carrier it looked like I had dropped 8kg!?! Nothing 3 days in the south of Italy couldn't fix! Bring on the pizza, pasta and gelato!

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