Rome 13th- 16th May 2010

The train ride to Rome and hostel location exercise went smoothly, had a shower and chilled out for an hour in the dorm room. My room mates were a guy and girl from Minnesota called Derrick and Amanda. Really nice people and fellow Anthropologists to boot. Amanda had been studying in Rome over the last month and knew the best places to check out. Ended up hanging out with them for the evening and getting a free tour round town. ( Awesome ….my run of luck continued following Venice free dinner !!)

The first place we went to was a church with Michelangelo’s Mosses in it, pretty impressive, next stop a church called the Gesu that had an amazing frescoed ceiling and a sound and light show roman catholic style. The ornamentation here was amazing easily the best church I’d ever been to …these Italians know how to do religion.

Next we swung by the coliseum and surrounding ruins of the Roman age…even from the outside it was well impressive much more than I was expecting. We ended up watching the Germany V Australia World cup game on a big screen in the park in north of city….a great first day in a new town.

The next day I went to the coliseum and Forum and Palatine. Another top tip from Amanda saw me skipping the ticket queue at the coliseum and buying a joint ticket at the forum. The scale of the ruins was incredible easily the coolest place ive visited in my life with the coliseum after being predictably impressive also.

That evening I went to visit the Pantheon, the only complete roman age temple in the world….Pretty unbelievable when you consider that the original marble floor dating from 126 AD was still there.


The next morning I headed to the Vatican after drinking many cups of free coffee at the hostel …by the time I got to the closest tube stop I was busting for a piss and had to resort to finding the closest McDonalds or Burger king. These were unsurprising signposted all around the Vatican. This wasn’t a easy mission though, and 45mins later when I found the McDonalds realised there wasn’t a WC there ….arghhh arghhhh etc .Luckily managed to use one in the shop next door and, felling like a new man, made my way to the Vatican Museum.

The queue at the museum was light and I got inside and headed straight to the Sistine Chapel. It took about 30mins of being herded round the museum with countless other tourists like livestock to get there. Once I was inside it lived up to rep…… spent about 45mins sitting and staring in awe at the frescoes, while taking to odd cheeky non-flash photo on my phone……

Struggled to find a way out of the Museum and it was getting hot…I had no sunscreen or shades with me on advise of the eccentric Roman who worked in the hostel… Had been advised after a morning of rain that “there will be no sun in Rome today …none”.
Felt a bit like the Alhambra in Granada again as I made my way to St Peters Basilica and had to queue again in the baking sun to get in…..The scale of the place blew my socks off though…. it was huge…. an architectural marvel……..

That evening bought some cheep cans of beer and headed to the Trevi fountains …hadn’t really met any fellow minded travels since the Minnesota guys had left the day before and ended up trying to avoid the rain by leaning beer in hand against a wall near the fountains ( which were totally amazing too btw ) . With all the American students wandering the place being 10 years younger than me felt a bit like a cross between Woodersen from Dazed and Confused and Herman Hess’s Steppenwolf. With beer typically costing 6 euros a pint in the local bars this was the only way to drink though. After a few lonely cans headed to the local Irish bar to watch the Brazil v N Korea match and ran into some guys from the hostel …..After they left the place filled up with annoying students and I decided to bail …Headed to a local square and saw a cool jazz band busking who, I was informed by a likeminded local guy, were from Romania….

With the night drawing to close and no action to be had so far decided to head back to the Irish bar on the way home to see if the situation had improved. It hadn’t, opened the doors to find 3 times as many annoying students in there all singing don’t stop believing on karaoke….decided that bar is the worst Ive ever been to in my life …by far !!! and left…

The walk home was uneventful apart from what I think was either an attempted assault or mugging by an irate Roman…luckily I managed to make myself big when he grabbed me in a quiet stretch of the street. This made his friend convince him it wasn’t worth it…..I moved on swiftly …decided enough was enough and went back to a restless nights sleep in the hostel…

In terms of things to see Rome takes the biscuit as best city I’ve ever been to and I’d wholeheartedly recommend anyone who hasn’t been to go ASAP…..The near mugging and vast quantity of American students/ tourists brought the overall experience down a bit though. I must have heard the world “like “ a couple thousand times over the three days I was there…( Derrick and Amanda I don’t include you guys in here …..you were both really cool!) …..still there was a reason so many tourists were there….. the place is mind bogglingly full of history !!


Next morning got the train to Bari on the south eastern coast to wait all day for an evening ferry to Patras in Greece …had my only Italian pizza and ice cream at the “ titti twister pizzeria” ( I shit you not, ) near the ferry port and summed up Italy mentally…..Better than France, still not as quite as good as Spain, though Rome is top of cool city leader board now…..

On we go to Greece