[Note: This is for a past event.]
Susan and I arrived in Rome yesterday evening. It was a very nice
flight: when told that we were on our first anniversary we were
upgraded to first class on British Airways. It sure was high flying:
the foods were good and on real china with real silverwares. And the
seats were converted into a twin-sized bed after dinner. Still we were
somewhat tired when we arrived in Rome. We checked into our hotel, the
Belle Suite Rome and after a short nap we walked several miles to the
Spanish Steps which are underwhelmed, the so-so Travis Fountain and
had some gelato which is the Italian version of our American ice
cream! There are absolutely so many people, tourists packed in Rome.
Millions of tourists.. the subways were so packed that we lost the
fear of pickpockets; there was no way anyone could move so picking
someone pocket is - I was sure - out of the question.
After a long night of sleep we felt a bit ambitiously adventurous: we
took the very early subway to the Vatican and to visit other places
later. I had made reservation ahead of time so we did not have to wait
for several hours in hot Italian summer to get into the Vatican
Museum. The Sistine Chapel frescoes had been cleansed so they looked
very bright and almost fake. Again, people are everywhere. Tour groups
from every country on Earth were here today. We then walked several
miles to the Pantheon and were awed by the incredibly fine example of
early first centuries Roman architecture and engineering inside. We
have with us a Rome map, one of the very best but still were lost
several times. Many Roman streets change name quite abruptly.
We took several buses later to travel to the Colosseum and to the
Roman ruins near by. The Colosseum looked much larger when we climbed
upstairs to level 1. It made ones paused thinking about all the bloody
sports that took place there and the thousands of people died there
for the entertainment of the Romans back then. We took the subway back
to Termini, the main train station and walked to our hotel dead tired.
Dinner at Del Giglio - recommended by our hotel manager was excellent.
The hotel's computer does not have an Xd card reader for me to
download our pictures. We will be travelling to Firenze (Florence,
Italy) tomorrow. Hopefully, we will be able to report to you our
travel as we progress.
So Ciao for now.
