globetrotter

Euro tour 2002
2002-06-13 18:10:06 (UTC)

top ten reasons rome stinks

1. it literally stinks...between the smog from the mopeds
and urine in the alleys...it stinks

2. everything is ancient--including the metro system.

3. 2 minutes in the city and bart gets his wallet stolen
(thankfully there was no money..and we handled the card
situation very quickly)

4. arthritis in my hands from clutching onto my bag.. why
you ask? see number 2

5. i have yet to see russel crowe walking around in armor

6. rome is no longer like an audrey hepburn movie. don't
expect a remake of ROMAN HOLIDAY any time soon. Some how
the vision of audrey hepburn nearly running me over in a
moped is not the perfect date movie.

7. Apparently traffic signs and lights are merely
suggestions to moped drivers and not actual laws or commands

8.??? ....8,9, 10 will be filled in later after i see my
life flash by my eyes a few more times in this city


anyways...i guess this is the first complaint i've really
had about a city. maybe it was just the bad start....when
our crammed night train car only had seats and some large
black woman started shouting at us in italian at 1:30 in
the morning saying that she had a reserved seat on a non-
reservation car....then every fifteen minutes the train
would stop and shadey people would come on...turn open the
door and turn on the lights in our car...AAAHHHH!!!!

okay so maybe that got me on the wrong foot in rome....i
must admit that the colleseo was pretty impressive and i
managed to envision russel crowe fighting tigers ....while
i was the empress and gave the thumbs up to let some poor
prisoner live (boy oh boy am i nice roman empress). We
went to the fontain trevi...and got whistled at by polizie
before we had time to think about putting our feetin like
the fifty others were doing to cool off on the hot day.

rome seems to really light up at night. the night and the
flood lights clear away all of the outlying crap and show
the gorgeous monuments in all of their glory. that and
once again after a gelati ...everything seems brighter :)

another thing i would have to say is it is breathtaking how
one can wander around this city ...and just around the
corner you find ruins of ancient rome almost as frequent as
a grocery store or something...and the main ruins give you
a great view of the city both past and present.

Well we have one more day in rome to see Vatican city and
the sistine chapel....and then we head off to florence....

until our next cyber pit stop...




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