Personal Post: Day 7: Rome

The train ride from Florence to Rome was beautiful. We saw the rolling hills and expansive fields of Tuscany, Umbria and Lazio. There was a certain peacefulness passing through this landscape. The farms and small villages showed a simple way of life, juxtaposed to the rolling hills and scattered trees. There were few roads connecting the towns, and even fewer vehicles on the roads. The land was a lush green, albeit less green than it would probably be during the spring and summer months.

One thing really struck me about Italy. When we arrived at Roma Termini, we saw people completely making out in the public. I don't mean just pecks on the lips but full on making out on the platform, right in the view of every traveler that came off the train. During our stay in Rome, I saw this a few more times on the streets. It's just kind of different than here in the US.

After dropping our luggage off at the hotel -- which, by the way, was again way further than we thought it would be -- we went to lunch on the way to the metro. We stopped off at this delicious authentic Italian restaurant for pizza. The menu outside showed us prices that were reasonable. Somehow, the owner-waiter sold us three appetizers. We thought he was only going to bring one when we agreed on it. And the three appetizers somehow came out to about $50. Meanwhile, the six of us each got $7 pizzas. Wait, that's not all! When he was bringing back the change for our check, he pocketed the extra $10 or something (which may or may not have been the tip for him, but that's beside the point). He mumbled something about the change as he was handing it back, and when we replied yes, he walked away with it. All of this after the fact that they already charged a service fee. What a scam! But at least it was delicious.

The metro in Rome was pretty clean and relatively new, although I guess it was really because we hopped onto the newer line. We got off at the Colosseum. It was pretty amazing when we walked out of the metro station and the Colosseum was just there right in front of us, with the Roman Forum to our right. I just didn't imagine it right out in front of the metro station, right in the middle of the city. We got to skip the line because we had the Roma Pass with us. It was kind of surreal seeing the Colosseum in front of me after seeing a million photographs of it previously. It towers over all the people, and you just have to wonder how it was ever built all those thousand of years back. We had wanted to go to the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill after, but they stopped admitting people by 3:30pm. We would just have to return the following day.

We headed to Trevi Fountain afterwards, which was so completely full of tourists. There was barely enough room to get a good view of the fountain. Maybe it was because the fountain is so small in area that it felt like there were many people. We migrated to the Spanish Steps from the Trevi Fountain. There were equally many people there. My parents took a rest on the Steps, while I viewed a Roman sunset at the top of the Steps.

We walked along Via del Corso among the nice stores of the world. For a moment, I thought I was in Causeway Bay in Hong Kong. It was packed with so many people and you were barely able to walk between them. At the same time, there were cars that tried to make their ways through the streets. Eventually, we reached the Tiber River, but there was nothing to see there at night. We returned toward the center of Rome, and passed through multiple piazzas, including Piazza del Popolo and Piazza della Repubblica.

Before returning to the hotel, we went to see Colosseum at night. We walked along the entire periphery of the structure, but were unable to find the spot where the famous night photos are taken. Everywhere we went, we were too close to the Colosseum and couldn't get the entire structure in the frame. We got a few photographs and took the metro back to the hotel.