Rome (trip three) with Lauren May 08

Buongirono bellissima

well as it is May ... we are forced to suffer through not one but two bank holidays here in England - not too sure if I have worked a five day week for the whole month! So for the second bank holiday I headed to Rome

justification for Rome considering I have been twice already recently - it's half way between London and Krakow
I was meeting Lauren (who is working for our team in Krakow) for a weekend of la dolce vita ... good food, good wine and shopping italian style ...

Lauren arrived late on friday and I arrived on Thursday night ... so I had a whole day to myself ... so I headed down to Ostia Antica on the Roman coast
Ostia Antica is Rome's version of Pompeii except Ostia was a working port town and Pompeii was a luxury resort town
The ruins at Ostia were just amazing - I have never seen anything like them - I walked through the world's first block of flats, the world's first townhouses and sat in a couple of old bars ... there were a lot of amazing mosaics - especially in the old thermal baths
It was really hot down in Ostia - don't even want to imagine how hot - let's just say my back is still peeling from the sunburn

Lauren finally arrived and we donned some sex in the city style dresses and headed into town to explore and to feed our tired and hungry bodies ... after a couple of hours of wandering trying to find a restaurant to sit outside at we found this on first appearances quaint and fun but the waiter was a bit weird - he was fascinted with NZ - he called me Baabara and asked how many sheep we had at our house (why I decided to be from NZ this time I don't know might revert to being a Londoner again from now on) - the meal was not too fantastic (a theme of our trip) and they only had this disgusting fruit tart for dessert - that was still frozen and had a lot of geletine holding the fruit on - but the chianti was good as always so not so many complaints there

Saturday saw us joining the queue at the Colosseum - we got nabbed by one of those tours who charge you 20 EUR for entry and tour of colosseum and palatine hill - the tour guide was called Roberto and he was obsessed with lauren and her purity so much so that this old American lady decided that she needed to latch onto Lauren and become pure again!
I did learn some new things about the colosseum which makes those tours worth the price - the colosseum had the first lifts in the world which were used to lift the animals up into the arena and also ... the old latin word arena mean sand - hence why we still have arenas

Then after a little break it was time to move onto the palatine hill and look at the ruins of the old emperors massive houses with their own islands in the greek fashion and their own stadium to practice and watch private atheltics
they have recently opened one of the other houses on the hills which i think has a lot of cool mosaics and antiquities ... but it was too hot to join the queue to visit - so we headed down to the Spanish steps area for a quick bite to eat before heading into ... the shopping

rome has three main shopping streets which stem off via del corso like a three way v shaped fan - here you find all the big names
amarni, dolce and gabanna, prada, gucci, louis v etc etc and for some strange reason the shop attendants in these shops looked at lauren and I in amusemant - thank god lauren did some shooping here to show those stupid shop keepers to not be so stupid and judgemenntal ... but it is expensive there one scoop of gelati cost 15 EUR i'm not kidding you when you can get it by the station nicer stuff too for 2.50

Saturday night we consulted the Lonely Planet guide for some good bars - we thought we'd try out Jonathan's Angels which is a bit of a kooky bar with fairy lights and a lot of random things all over the walls - it had good reviews in the guide so we thought ok ... we got there and we had the place to ourselves - we decided on cosmos to drink keeping in with the sex and the city theme and they were potent as ... almost undrinkable ... so after that we needed to eat if we were going to last the distance and we stumbled upon this family run trattoria which had good pasta and good pizza and charged you for wine by the glass even thought you were given a whole bottle

Sunday was free entry to the vatican museum day (last sunday of every month) so we joined the queue which was not too bad - only took about 45 mins and had a free wander round the vatican's museums and a good long gaze at the sistine chapel and then we were back out into the sunshine and into St Peter's Square where we wandered into the pope giving his sunday message from his little window - have no idea what he was saying but everyone was repeating after him a prayer? then we tried to avoid another long queue for inside the cathedral but we caught the begining of it - a lot of the inside was closed off maybe because it was sunday but maybe the new pope has changed what we can see now?

then is was time for lunch but we got caught up in all the fake handbag sellers on the way to some food ... a handbag each later and we were sitting in a restaurant eating the world's worst cheeseburger with a small glass of fizzy which cost 4.50 eur - rip off central
then it was time for some shade and an ice cream before heading to the mueum of modern art in villa borghese

the museum of modern art was nice and air conditioned ... it must have been in the mid thirties - it was too hot
the pieces we wanted to see were of course on loan to other museums but there were still some gems
then we grabbed some dinner and went and saw the new indiana jones movie - we were in need of more airconditioning!

Monday we got up late, checked out - we were staying in an apartment about 10 mins walk from the main hostel
i left my bag at the hostel and lauren left here in the left luggage at the station
then we went back down towards the trevi fountain and it's garish tourist shops for the 5 EUR tack challenge
in ten minutes we had to find the most tacky gift for each other within the 5 EUR budget - lauren won - she found me a tacky gold plated clock with the trevi fountain on it (nicely displated on my desk at work) and I found lauren this bracelet with scenes of Rome on it which she liked ... ??

lauren's flight left in the early evening so we went our seperate ways in the early afternoon and I was planning on doing some more wandering but it was too hot that I went into Macdonalds ordered a large sprite and sat in the air conditioning until I could muster some courage to get my bag and catch a bus to my airport - it was lucky lauren donated me a new book to read cos i read the whole thing before I checked in! then I had to switch bag to my usual style of book and wait for our flight which was delayed (though not as delayed as the flight into Gatwick) ... got home at about 4am on Tuesday morning and slept for a couple of hours before having to be up for work

and now work is busy it's making the day go faster .... which is great!

hope you're all well ... ciao, Kylie x