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Rome
ColosseumGeo: 41.8955, 12.4823
Yup, Rome is crowded. Its almost anxiety inducing. I really really REALLY would not want to be in most of Italy during the summer. lol. That would be hell.
In spite of it, Rome has still been nice. I wont say its as awesome as Cinque Terre, but what can ya do? We decided to divide and conquer Rome between three days. Our first day we did "Ancient Rome". We spent most of the day at the Colosseum but we also visited Palatine Hill, the Roman Forum, the Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, etc.
I have to say that the people in the restaraunts and places we've eaten have been some of the nicest. We discovered another microbrewery, this one called Bir and Fud. As soon as I saw it in the guide book, I knew we were headed there at some point. The brewmaster of this place created a beer with the brewmaster of Dog Fishhead, Chris' favorite microbrewery back home. So we got there and stared at the menu for a few minutes, and a guy comes up to see if we need help. He spoke great English... in fact... it was like American English, and only faltered into an
Rome
Palatine Hill and Roman Forum Italian accent every so often. I was confused to find him here, lol. So he went through all the beers and was SO helpful in pickin some out. We both found beer to suit our needs. We tried one called Beer Baera... it was a slightly fruity beer. And Chris got his beer he came for... called My Antonia. The dork is determined to carry that bottle across Europe and back home with him. lol. Anyway, I finally asked the guy, who was presumably the owner, where he was from. He was from Italy, but had spent a lot of time in L.A. That explains THAT. Anyway, the food there was amazing as well. We had homemade chips, which we assumed would be french fries... but they were actually home made potato chips like we have back home, and it came with a vanilla ketchup sauce. Weird but amazing! Chris had never had bruschetta, so we had some of that as well. And then we split a small pizza. Mmmm. So, yeah. My navigating skills are freakin amazing. I think you hit some sort of epic status when you can navigate across Rome by foot totally drunk. I have amazing
Rome
Palatine Hill and Roman Forum intuition when it comes to navigating. I've sort of noticed that all over Europe, when we dont know where to go exactly.. or if we think we need to go somewhere but we're not totally for sure... we just go with it. And 99% of the time we end up exactly where we want to be. Or in the case of the following day... someplace way better. lol.
So, we decided to break up Rome the city with a daytrip AWAY from the city to Tivoli. We had planned to go to a villa there that had amazing gardens. So we get to the city centre and stop at the tourist info booth. I grabbed the first pretty brochure I saw... thought... hey... thats pretty, so that must be where we are going. So we start following the road signs across town to this place. The bus was packed when get off it. After awhile we finally make it to this place... Villa Gregoriana. And no one else has made it. I'm thinkin... Sweet... we beat the other tourists! We walk into the property, pay for the tickets, and the place is practically deserted. Its like going hikin in Alum Rock
Rome
Colosseum Park on a weekday... You see a few people... but thats it. So we just keep going... And this place is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. There were FOUR waterfalls, including one freakin ginormous one, all cascading every which way down different gorges and creating grottoes full of this milky aquamarine water. Holy crap. This WAS NOT the place the guide book mentioned. Turns out its other name is Valley of Hell. ...Why is it named that? I have no idea. Other than that the waterfalls used to frequently destroy everything with massive floods. We spent a few hours just hiking all over the property up and down the cliffs. We ate lunch there, too, and it turned out to be one of the best pasta Italian meals we've had. I had ricotta raviolo in pesto sauce and Chris had some pasta with tomato sauce. Mmm. ..So... Valley of Hell?? Hell is an amazingly beautiful and tasty place.
Today, our last day in Rome, we went to Vatican City. We got our asses up at 7am at the crack of dawn to get to the museums when they opened. Half an hour early and we were
Rome
Palatine Hill and Roman Forum still in a huge ass line. lol. Oh well. We still got in shortly after it opened, so it wasnt as bad as the Accademia in Florence. Anyway, we bee-lined it straight through to the Sistine Chapel, to enjoy it without the crowded madness. I kept trying to stop along the way to look at the other art, and Chris had to keep pullin me along. "Thats not the definition of bee-lining it!!" Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel was pretty cool. I think I like the Last Judgement better- especially his self-portrait in flayed skin version. lol. Silly man. I like his humour. The rest of the museums were okay- a few of them were actually really cool. They had two big rooms dedicated to animals with lots of neat sculptures. There was also a good contemporary art collection that we both really liked. There were a couple Dalis and several just reminded me of Gaudi. Other than that... there wasnt much else to do in Vatican City we realized. We walked over to St. Peters Basilica.... there was a monster of a line... the biggest Ive seen yet in Europe, to get inside. Its just a cathedral! We didnt get it.
Rome
Palatine Hill and Roman Forum We just stared in amazement. Maybe we have to be Catholic to understand. Its not like the Pope is in there..
Overall, we both feel Rome is something you gotta do once, but not really again. There are better places in Italy, and Europe in general. =)
Tomorrow morning we are hitting up another high speed train (didnt have a choice) to Venice. We should be there by the afternoon. We are hopin to go to Murano, an island that specializes in glass making. And Chris and I are gonna be on a hunt for an authentic Venetian mask. We plan on tryin to catch one of the gondolas for a ride, but they are stupid expensive... so we shall see. Venice is THE most expensive city in Italy. So, you can bet we're excited to head to Slovenia next. We will eat like kings there. The hostels we're stayin in are of average cost for the rest of Europe... but the food is supposed to be really good and very affordable. We're spending two nights in the capital city Ljubjlana- yeah, say that 10 times I fast... I cant properly pronounce it once. We're staying in a hostel that used
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Palatine Hill and Roman Forum to be a PRISON! And we even get to sleep in a CELL!!! lol. Ok, we're excited. We think its cool. After that we are headin to Bled in the Julian Alps for four days, including Chris' birthday and Easter. =)
I plan to upload pics as soon as possible. The stupid internet cafe Im in right now wont let us. LAME.
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diana
non-member comment
that IS a cool bottle... Chris, I hope it makes it home!