Roaming Rome
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
Rome is a lovely city - they have done really well with keeping it green and inviting even though it’s really hot, with most days sitting around mid to high 30’s. It’s relatively easy to get out of the heat too, as in the shade it’s much cooler and they have such dam good ice cream. We decided that we would catch the bus to the furthest attraction and walk back, passing all the other attractions on the way home. As it turns out we had to take the 175 which was a mini electric bus that could hold around 20 people, it was small so that it could go through the tiny little cobbled streets that make Central Rome.
First stop was the Piazza del Popolo which was a huge square that connected three of the man streets in Rome and had two identical churches with a fountain in the middle. There wasn’t too much to it, so after we had a look around and stopped for a bit to admire our surroundings it was off to the Piazza di Spagna and the Trinita del Monti.
Basically this is a Church at the top of a large flight of stairs and the coolest fountain from the 1500’s. Just as we got there we heard a little something and Sarah turned to me and said, ‘was that thunder’ as I had just pointed out that the sky looked a little dark and it felt damp. If you hadn’t guessed before we knew it, it was raining like you wouldn’t believe, unless of course you have been to Thailand, and we had just enough time to rush into the nearby Christian Dior shop. This turned out to be a bit of a stupid thing to do really as Sarah was immediately engrossed with the latest hand bag range with the wallet coming in at a modest 350 Euro….
After about the first five minutes its was getting a little uncomfortable in the store as we didn’t look to much like the tourist that would splurge out and buy a thousand dollars worth of handbags – like the Asian people beside us did, and we thought that we could brave the storm. As we walked out the door it was quite apparent that it really was raining and that staying under the eve was a much better idea for a bit. But tropical storms never last long and it was only a few more minutes before it was business as usual, but nicely giving us a couple of tourist-free photos.
We had marked our route on the map to take and so far it had worked out great, even stumbling across things that weren’t on there. The third main place though was The Fountain of Trevi – far out. If you haven’t been I really can’t explain it to you; think big and you’re half way there. It was commissioned in the early 1700’s by Pope Benedict the XIV, and I would say it’s the busiest free attraction in Rome today, but once you get your seat you don’t want to leave as it really is like nothing I’ve seen.
It was only a short walk to the Pantheon from the fountain; this is a huge domed cathedral even bigger than that of St Peters basilica (the dome that is, not the cathedral itself). The outer walls of the cathedral were 6 meters thick to accommodate the huge dome, which had an opening at the very top to let in light, which was a really nice effect. Outside there was a small fountain in the middle of a square surrounded by little cafes and restaurants. After a bit to eat we moved on to what we thought was the Trajon pillar, but turned out to be a random pillar that looked basically the same but was in front of some government buildings. Hmmm.
From the pillar we moved onto the Piazza Navona, which was a rectangular island in the middle of pedestrian streets, and apparently used to be a ‘stage’ for mock battles for the general public. Now it’s a lovely square with a lot of nice places to eat and get a drink. There are two fountains one at each end both telling different stories, that are quite nice. The last few things that we saw on our long walk was the place that Caeser apparently lost his life that has now been turned into a cat sanctuary, and a massive building that is called the ‘wedding-cake’ as it is obnoxiously large with huge pillars holding up the massive roof. It is the site of an monument to the unknown soldier but the building was called something very different that we can’t remember. By this stage we had used both memory cards for the camera and it was really time for a siesta and our hotel was a less than five minute walk away so we headed home for a couple of hours.
We spent quite a long time just hanging out, but once it got dark we decided that it would be nice to see the fountain Trevi so we walked back to basically our starting point earlier that day. We really didn’t expect there to be so many people it was crazy, I would say there were more people in the night time than in the day – kinda figures really as it’s just so hot during the day. We didn’t stay long as there was no where to sit but had a couple of quick photos, before the walk home that funnily enough was exactly the same route that we had walk earlier. We stopped for a while at the Pizza Navona taking in all the atmosphere there were a lot of artist there doing portraits and caricatures, lots of people pretending to be artist as well… We we’re very tempted to get a portrait each but there was a queue for the most talented guy so we headed to the other end stopping about half way as a show was about to start that looked interesting. It was a fire show with lots of different varieties of fire poi. Unfortunately it was broken up by the police about 11:30 as it drew a too bigger crowd which was a same but good at the same time as we still had a half an hour walk ahead of us home, luckily the streets are so safe in Rome with police everywhere on the main routes.
posted by Maarty @ 12:00 pm,
