The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
Well, we only have 1 more day in Rome and I think that it has the been the city of the most extremes. Toilets hae been very scarce and often dirty and seatless when we can find them and sometimes worse!! The smell in the toilet in Mcdonalds this morning was so bad that I had to hold my breath. But Mcdonalds have some of the only toilets that we can feel okay using even if we arent customers. That doesnt go for all places though. In Nice on the French Riviera we had about an hour train lay over so we ate at Mcdonalds and the toilet was downstairs but it was protected with a glass box with a number pad and on every recipt was a code to open it.
Anyway, Rome has been the dirtiest and the seediest place so far but it has also offered some of the greatest food and attractions yet. Today we walked through the Colessuem, the palace ruins on the Palatine Hill and walked again through the Roman Forum. But, although these things were awesome and rich in history they were expensive to enter and distinctly lacking in information inside. They all want you to pay for an audio guide or guided tour and if you arent willing to shell out the money then you are on your own! In some churches around here you have to pay 50 cents to get 2 minutes of illumination of the mosaics or whatever there is in the apse!
Yesterday was one of the highlights of the trip. We took the train (which was the dirtiest, most graffiti ridden train full of the seediest and most neferious characters I have eer seen!) to the old Roman port city of Ostia. It is a whole city preserved in various states. There were not many tourists there and so we had the run of the place. You can pretty much go anywhere and you really feel like Indiana Jones! There are bits of wall painting and mosaics all over that you can walk on. You can walk up the crumbling stars of the Temple of Jupiter or step inside a real ancient Roman restaurant complete with painting of food on the wall, a marble counter with a bar and a latrine! It really brought history alive and was by far one of the best places I have eer been. We were there ALL day and couldnt see everything and were shuffled out by a guard with a whistle at 5pm.
The day before that we found our way to the Christian catacombs outside the city. My brother and I tried to find them 10 years ago and failed. Well, no wonder. We had to take the train and then find a bus and had no idea when to get off or how to pay. We got off 1 stop to early and got stuck walking along an ever narrowing walled road (the old Appian Way actually) and couldnt get off and a couple times I thought our time was up with crazy Italian drivers whizzing past in both directions. But we finally made it and got to tour 2 different catacombs and see some of the earliest depictions of Christ or Christian symbols and saw corridor after corridor and layer after layer of undergound tombs. Only saw 2 skulls though.
Well, my time is about up and I want to put up a few more pictures.
Ciao
Anyway, Rome has been the dirtiest and the seediest place so far but it has also offered some of the greatest food and attractions yet. Today we walked through the Colessuem, the palace ruins on the Palatine Hill and walked again through the Roman Forum. But, although these things were awesome and rich in history they were expensive to enter and distinctly lacking in information inside. They all want you to pay for an audio guide or guided tour and if you arent willing to shell out the money then you are on your own! In some churches around here you have to pay 50 cents to get 2 minutes of illumination of the mosaics or whatever there is in the apse!
Yesterday was one of the highlights of the trip. We took the train (which was the dirtiest, most graffiti ridden train full of the seediest and most neferious characters I have eer seen!) to the old Roman port city of Ostia. It is a whole city preserved in various states. There were not many tourists there and so we had the run of the place. You can pretty much go anywhere and you really feel like Indiana Jones! There are bits of wall painting and mosaics all over that you can walk on. You can walk up the crumbling stars of the Temple of Jupiter or step inside a real ancient Roman restaurant complete with painting of food on the wall, a marble counter with a bar and a latrine! It really brought history alive and was by far one of the best places I have eer been. We were there ALL day and couldnt see everything and were shuffled out by a guard with a whistle at 5pm.
The day before that we found our way to the Christian catacombs outside the city. My brother and I tried to find them 10 years ago and failed. Well, no wonder. We had to take the train and then find a bus and had no idea when to get off or how to pay. We got off 1 stop to early and got stuck walking along an ever narrowing walled road (the old Appian Way actually) and couldnt get off and a couple times I thought our time was up with crazy Italian drivers whizzing past in both directions. But we finally made it and got to tour 2 different catacombs and see some of the earliest depictions of Christ or Christian symbols and saw corridor after corridor and layer after layer of undergound tombs. Only saw 2 skulls though.
Well, my time is about up and I want to put up a few more pictures.
Ciao
posted by Ana | 7:33 AM
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