A Walk Through Rome

                     A Walk Through Rome

Rome! This word reverberated in my head a few times before the city engulfed me and I came back to stark reality. Endless rows of BMWs, Porsche's, Ferrari's you name it; were spread across the parking lot of the Leonardo da Vinci airport. The excitement took over my natural conscience and I absentmindedly sat in the taxi along with my parents as I began a trip through Europe.

The city was pretty crowded, dirty but still it had certain aspects that distorted your focus from the dirtiness. It was a classic Europe city with wide streets and old architecture. The city was brimming with energy, its lifeline being the tourists coming here to understand the Roman Empire.  Blue unpolluted skies formed a sheet above and the fact that the Sun set at 8:30 pushed the tourists to move around more.

We reached there at about 4:00. Due to the jet lag we were too drained to go out much. We went for a stroll  and tried out the world-famous Gelato at a closeby Gelateria. A Gelato is like an ice-cream but it is very light so it feels like you can have as many as you want. We took the ice-cream and turned around and Voila! There it was! The Colosseum. We suddenly remembered that the taxi driver told us that our hotel was in the midst of Rome, next to the Colosseum.Its massive structure struck a chord and the gateways just filled me with wonder. This image constantly distorted by moving cars lay embedded in my mind.

The second day it rained. The rain in Europe is different. There is always just a slight drizzle providing a cool breeze, yet not ruining any outing. We went to the Vatican City for a tour. The guards wore the clothes you would see in a painting- clothes worn by the original guards there. Vatican City was huge with the church St. Peter's Basilica as the dominant building. There were many gardens, paintings and sculptures and since I did not know much about Christianity I got bored pretty fast. The Vatican tour was very long so we only had the evening to ourselves. We went to Pantheon which was formerly a Roman Temple but is a Catholic Church now. It was very small but the architecture was impressive. It was in a narrow alley, hidden away and thus took some time to find. Then we went to Spanish Steps which are the steps leading to the Spanish Embassy. Now it is banned to sit there. After that we went to Trevi Fountain which was magnificent. It had sculptures of gods and goddesses with water coming out of their mouth and is a must-see. I didn't know a fountain could look so beautiful.

The third day we went to the Colosseum, Palatine Hill, Roman Forum and Arch of Constantine. All of these places are close to one another. The Colosseum was humongous but a walk there is amazing. The imposing structure of the Colosseum, the arch next to it and a crossroad shape a perfect view. The floor of the Roman Forum was 10m higher than the one now so buildings were higher with doors in midair. The Roman Forum was a very accurate model of ruined architecture that we read about with churches, an assembly hall and a market. Colosseum had a seating arrangement alike to the one you see in a cricket stadium with a small circle in the middle for the gladiators to fight.

What surprised me most was the calm and cool of the citizens. Never in a hurry, living every day as if it was their last. The weather was brilliant not too cold nor too hot- just enough for a perfect vacation.

The next day we boarded a train to Venice- a journey of 5 hours. 

Next up - Greetings from the City of Canals.