Tripping diary, travelling stories of people and places far from mine

Friday, July 07, 2006

Rome, Italy

Rome, Italy
Backpacking in europe, the sort of trip were you spend a couple of days in each major city. This is about the Rome, Italy chapter. Four days in Rome, Italy, we spent, like most european cities we found it quite expensive. The place is all about ruins, and an empire that changed the world.


We stayed in a very, very cheap hostel near station Roma Termini, which was full of 20 year old american teenagers flirting around, sleeping until noon. We shared our room with around 8, or 10 other guys. The last thing I can remember about that place was listening to some american singing loud from the bathroom "GASOLINA" (reggeton hit), in a very strong accented spanish, while he was taking a shower (I still have nightmares about it ;)


The city itself is amazing, loads of history everywhere we would turn to. Like most tourists I guess, we spent lots of time trying to visualize the ruins in the Roman Empire Golden days, travelling back in time in our minds. The exercise was succesfull, the atmosphere could be reached for seconds, in some places like the roman forum, and the Colosseum where you are literally surrounded by history.

The Roman Forum was breathtaking, no wonder when people would come from places where they lived in huts, Rome would be like THE first world to them. It impressed me the size of the ancient baths that would host hundreds of romans, laying there, just cleaning themselves, and talking about politics and gladiators.I would always get the feeling that in order to really appreciate everything I was looking to, every ruin, every sculpture, I had to know more history than I knew.

By the way traffic is mad, bikes are very popular, pedestrians not that much.

This is my video recopliation about our four day visit to Rome, Italy (the video was made with Microsoft Photo Story 3), hope you like it ;)





And this is vatican city, enjoy.



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