The train ride itself was nothing so spectacular or out of ordinary. I did notice along the way that the sceneries reminded me of what may be central California. There were some arid places, and others were green. The houses too seemed to say “Californian”. In the way, it felt like home. It took about 4 hours to get to Rome. We did our best to keep ourselves entertained. I read my book. Sheilla took funny pictures of herself. I joined in.
We made it to Rome Termini train station. In an instant, we noticed how so much busier this train station was. In fact, it was the busiest station so far that we’ve come across. We wondered around in the station for a few minutes not knowing exactly where to go. We didn’t know if we ought to take the taxi or the bus, or even the metro. We weren’t even sure how near or far our hotel was. One thing for sure, we needed help. So we headed to the tourist information kiosk.
There, we learned that our hotel was only about 15-minute walking distance from the station. The person who helped us also convinced us to buy a Roma Pass that allowed 3-day worth of public transportation usage, unlimited, in addition to two free passes to any participating museums and discounted for any others. We figured, why not. So there went 40 €.
Looking at the map, the hotel was no more than 10 short blocks away. We didn’t see any metro-access within the hotel vicinity, not that we knew anyway how far anything was. There was one, but we rather take a walk to absorb the Roman air.
Roman air wasn’t all that clean. We found that the city was quite crowded. Crowds meant more modes of transportation, which included buses, cars, and mopeds. There were really a lot of mopeds in Rome. So number one, Rome was over-crowded. Number two, Rome had major pollution.
There were a lot of little shops that didn’t seem too appealing. There were also several small café and restaurants, primarily selling pizzas, Panini’s and the likes as to go. Pizza in Italy was like hamburger or cheeseburger in the US. We came across a cathedral, which on the map marked a turning point, where from heading west then we turn towards north where our hotel was. Given that we had two large, heavy luggages, the 15-minute walk seemed more like 30 minutes. The traffic didn’t look too friendly either. Crossing streets proved to take some guts and quickness. So far, within just an hour we’ve learned a lot about Rome.
Our first order of business after checking in to our hotel was to head out to the Coliseum. So we walked directly to it. The time at the moment was around 5pm, local time, and the sun was approaching its final descent. There was enough light, however, to make decent pictures. The first ones were called Foro Di Traiano.
It was basically some sort of ruin. By the way, at this moment we were already in Ancient Rome. We saw many broken pillars, broken building, … broken everything. Hence it was called a ruin.
Amazingly, as turned to another street, we gazed upon the infamous Coliseum. It was like a dream come true, to be able to see what we’ve only seen before in books, magazine, and on TV.
After a while when dusk arrived, we decided to walk towards our hotel, stopping by at a random Italian restaurant for more pasta. The food was decent, but pricey. It was expected, but altogether not a bad experience.
And after that was the end of our night. We were ready for Vatican City tomorrow.
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