when in rome do the romans- i wish they are gorgeous!!!! we arrived in rome around 11am local time and caught a bus to the airport with minimal language dificulties. vic and lili fell asleep - probably for the best because the first impresion of rome is not the nicest slums as far as you can see all painted a bright orange but nonetheless not disguising the poverty. whole 'villages' of shacks stretch for hundreds of metres along the moterway, made of cardbored ,couragated iron and other junk where people huddled over fires in garbage bins trying to keep warm in the minus degree temperatures. our impression of rome didnt get much better at the main metro staion 'termini' where trains are completly covered in grafiti and windows are so covered in dirt you cant see inside ,we didnt dare sit down it here even if there had been space, and cramed in as we were we held tightly to our bags having been severly and frequently warned about pickpockets. we arrived at 'cavour' and attempted to follow instructions to our hostel and eventually gave up and bought a map for four euros ($12!) we later discovered we had been decidedly ripped of. once in possesion of our map we realised our hostel was about a minutes walk down the road from the station when we had initailly gotten of. feeling a little ashamed and downhearted by our first impressions of rome we headed up a cobbled street with beautiful old buildings of varying shades of orange - i later realised this typified all of rome, the entire city is orange. our hostel 'roma inn' was barley identifiyable with the tinest of plauques on a green door, we got stuck in a weird european style lift and had to drag our weary feet up the marble stairs. the hostel is in the oldest part of the city literally 5mins walk from the collesium and the veiws are amazing. its a weird layout but wonderfully vibrant. we were given a free map which is avaliable almost everywhere.( mr cute glasses as we named him) who was behind the desk was shocked to discover we had paid 4 euros for a much more inadequate map. there was no power at the hostel at that time a power cut i assume, quite hilarious in retrospect and added to the flavour of the trip so he lead us towards the best icecream in town -the sicilian icecream and pointed us in the direction of the collesum. rome may be dirty at first but the sights around the colluseum are to die for , you have not lived till you have seen rome. we almost didint want to take photographs because it looked like a movie set or a postcard and just couldnt be belived , the essence of the city cannot be captured on film. around the colluseum are many many ancient bulidings and we explored these for hours till we could ignore our hunger pains no longer. we headed back to our hostel for dinner which was three euros. eveyrone sits around on square red seats in the reception as there is no comon area and the dorms doors are all in this tiny room. due to the power shortage the chef (mr chef man we nicknamed him i cant keep up with the italian names ) had attempted to cook with candellight with no succes so dinner was late. while we waited we chatted to the remaining two members of staff mr cute glasses and leather jacket guy who gave me and vic some italian wine which i think is very similar to tequilla as it has worms in it and which u drink in shots , its very strong but quite nice on the throat, they were using it in the dinner and it is wonderfull in cooking. we had apatisesers of a 5 star quality of bread with olive oil, basil avacado (which we have been mising in the uk ) and prawns and mini quiche with ham and tomatoe. the dinner was as promised one of the best in rome and much much cheaper. and consited of a pasta bar with fetuchini , raviolli and tortalinii of various flavors. after dinner the three staff members (chef ,leather jacket ,and glasses ) took whoever wanted to come -(most of the guests) to the nearby 'libera' bar/cafe, much to the italians amusement we misheard and thought they said they would take us to the libary and were quite confused. the cafe is just a second up the road and is very picturesque, it has a upstairs and downstairs with various oddities in the decor such a scarves and beads hanging from the celing , broken couches , books ,mismatched coffe tables. we thought it was fabulous , so cute and bohemian. the area is quite a musical and arty scene and there were musicians and people carying instruments in the surounding streets. we had tequila shots and expresso(short black ) at libera with some of the guests and for the second time i got into a fight with some australians who had been imitating the kiwi accent not having realised i was one. the australian couple were very emabrassed and actually quite nice , the other guests were mainly american or spanish speaking from various countries and all very friendly. we left the cafe around 2 am and went to find icecream , everything is still open and all the shops seem to be open almost 24 hours. we went back to the scicillian icecream shop we had visitied that afternoon and i returned to my new found obsession (almond gelato)which tastes like marzipan. i attempted some italian and got laughed at but most people are willing to speak english so no problems there. outside the icecream store at the guiness pub there was a lage group of about 50-60 italian skin heads who were quite scary and who looked at vic and lili quite menacingly as they are asian , i hurried vic along as she hadnt been aware of the significance and with the inocence i love about her said 'alot of people with shaved heads around arent there'. we arrived home around 3 am and fell straight to sleep barley meeting our american dorm mates, who are are studing in madrid belguim and barcelona on exchange, one of them who is asian-american warned us that he had seen many neo-nazi skin head rallies in his travels around europe and cautioned us to be wary in particular of the italian skin heads, luckliy being blonde in italy is a blessing.
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