Advertisement
Published: August 14th 2014
Edit Blog Post
Hello, Rome! The first thing I noticed upon arriving is that there is a side of Rome that Hollywood completely ignores: the poor, broken, back alley side. After a bit of time, it became clear that not only is it ignored, but that it IS Rome. Based on what I've witnessed so far, about 80-90% of Rome -- basically everything except the main tourist areas -- is under-built. Especially if you get outside the old Roman walls, where it was especially sketchy.
At dinner, we ended up at a Trattoria on a side street. First off, their pasta, while good, was nothing spectacular. However, their main courses were, which made up for it. More important to this story, though, is the Australian couple sitting next to us that we started talking to. They'd done a lot of traveling around the world, and I think they said it best: "Rome is underwhelming. It doesn't fit into my notion of what civilization looks like." Now, granted, that is a personal thing, and there are definitely plenty of places that are less well-off. However, the Rome of the movies only seems to exist in select places: the ancient city, the Vatican, the
river...tourist spaces.
There are some cool things. As we wandered the city after arriving yesterday, we chanced upon the Rome Museum of Contemporary Art, which had partial free entrance. On of the free things was a huge, colorful net that you could climb around on and in, which was actually super fun. We also discovered that even dingy pizza shops outside the center of the city make better pizza than the US does. Also they beat out our gelato and ice cream with ease.
As we were walking to the river after dinner, we accidentally walked by the edge of the Ancient City. That prompted a bit of a "where the hell are we?" moment. It's strange to think about how the columns in this pit we were standing next to are, give or take, 8 to 11 times older than the United States. Some of them were likely built before Jesus was born.
Speaking of which, there is of course Vatican City to visit. We plan on doing that tomorrow, but there is a little hitch. Someone did something good that Christians liked a long time ago, and now they
have a feast. A big feast. On August 15th. Which means the Vatican Museum is closed the 14th and 15th. The only way to see the Sistine Chapel is to visit the Museum. We fly out at 8 am on the 16th. We found this out at 5:30 today, and the Museum closes at 6. So, the long and short is: I won't get to see the Sistine Chapel. Which I'm kind of annoyed about. So instead, we're going to go visit the Catacombs of St. Callisto, which should be cool. Also, the Trevi Fountain is under repair so there's no water. We can still see it, I think, there's just a lot of scaffolding and stuff. Oh well, not every city can be perfect, I suppose!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.379s; Tpl: 0.021s; cc: 6; qc: 45; dbt: 0.2059s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb