July 16, 2009

Rome Day 1

Yesterday was pretty brutal: 3:00am wakeup call, left the hotel at 4:00am, four hour bus ride to Zagreb...all to sit in the Zagreb airport until my flight at 2:30pm. The alternative would have been to take the public bus and I wasn’t comfortable doing that with all my bags, so that was that.

When I finally got to my hotel it was shortly after 7:00pm, and I didn’t really feel like going out. I was tired, cranky, and to be honest a little nervous. Rome is a really big change from what I’ve been doing the last couple of weeks in that it’s a huge city and I have to find my way around by myself, as opposed to having the itinerary all planned out. And then there was yet another language to worry about. I walked around for a few blocks just to get the lay of the land, but I was so tired I turned around, went to bed and slept in all the way to 8:00am, which I think is the latest I’ve slept on the trip.

After procrastinating as long as I could this morning I finally got up the nerve to head out. I was initially annoyed with my hotel choice (recommended by my sister, who was here a year ago), but it turned out to be in a great place for transportation: it’s just a couple of blocks from the Termini, which is where two major subway lines meet. I can either take the blue down to the ruins or the red to the Vatican. Both are a long walk, but the subway makes it easy. I bought a Roma Pass, which is a three-day pass that includes free admission to your first two tourism sites (and discounts at the rest) and a three day transportation pass. Since I’m only here for four days that’s just about perfect; I’ll just walk around the places by my hotel on the fourth day to minimize costs (everything here is really expensive compared to Croatia).

(As an aside, how is it that the Romans can build a subway underneath their ruins but we can’t do anything in Seattle? It’s so annoying.)

After seeing the city on the drive from the airport and analyzing a map in my room, I decided to turn around my first two days. Instead of doing the Vatican the first day I’d hit the main ruins - the Colosseum, Palatine Hill, Circus Maximus - instead, and do the Vatican once I had things figured out.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Colosseum,+Rome,+Italy&sll=47.677452,-122.173408&sspn=0.009203,0.021114&ie=UTF8&ll=41.890194,12.492399&spn=0.005088,0.010557&z=17

It’s been a bit of a struggle because I don’t know the language very well and I keep falling into replying in Croatian, but I’m hoping it will come.

I’d heard a lot about Rome, so I was ready for seeing a lot of old stuff. What I was not ready for was the size of the stuff. The ruins are HUGE! I can’t believe a society of people that were about the size of 10yr olds today would build things that gigantic. The Colosseum fit 50,000 people, basically the size of the Kingdome. And it’s still standing, whereas the Kingdome...

I took some pictures, but to be honest they’re not that good. First, it was blazing sun (90 degrees in the shade) in early afternoon, which is terrible light. But even more important is that I don’t think the pictures do it justice. We’ve all seen pictures of these things on TV many, many times, but without the context it’s really difficult to appreciate it without knowing the context of what you’re looking at. It’s the first time I’ve ever felt “you had to be there”, and I’m glad I took the recommendation of friends and paid to have a guide. Without them telling me what I was looking at it would have been much less rewarding.

So today was a pretty big chunk of sightseeing, with the Vatican and possibly Castel Sant’Angelo tomorrow in the day, and a nice walk for some pictures after dinner depending on how tired I am.

One last thing: I did try the gelato at a stand outside the Palatine Hills, and based on that sample the ice cream in Croatia is better. If someone has a recommendation of where to get the good stuff let me know. I’m also taking dinner recommendations.

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