Wherever We Rome

Last week we headed out for a couple of days in Rome. Stef got her passport not long ago and neither of us have been abroad for a good few years now, so we figured we'd head somewhere. Since I've been talking about wanting to move to Italy for a while, we eventually agreed to visit Rome.

It was a good little break. We took in a couple of the tourist spots - the Collosseum, the Pantheon and the Sistine Chapel. All of them are very impressive, but it was the Pantheon which particularly struck me. It's a very imposing building from the outside, with massive pillars and a huge entrace, and for some reason standing outside it made my legs feel strange. Apparently it's built on a congregation of ley lines though, so if there is spiritual significance to the area I guess that could explain it.
In case it's relevant, I'm agnostic and very much interested in things I can see rather than blind faith of any kind. However, I'm open-minded enough not to outright deny the potential existence of anything.

Of course I love Italian food, and we ate a rather large amount of it in our 3 (and a bit) days, stopping in at cafes and gelaterias (ice cream shops to you) when we needed something. We tried a couple of different restaurants and they was all very nice and seemed very pleased with our attempts at speaking Italian. Stef can speak a little more than me, but we probably understand about the same. We didn't do too badly for a quick 3-week pre-vacation learning burst!

Traffic in Rome. Bloody hell, there's a terrifying experience. Pedestrians pretty much have to risk their lives every time they cross the road because red lights seem to mean "stop, unless you think you can get through". And the roads were pretty wide out near our hotel, so it seemed much further from one pavement to the other than it actually was. We decided the only way to actually get across was to find a gap, grit your teeth, step out and hope that the next car slowed down enough to avoid hitting you. And they don't even seem to queue behind each other either, instead preferring to essentially pile up, overlapping corners and whatever part they can fit into the space available. Not surprising then that the vast majority of the cars we saw had dents and dings in them.

But our taxi ride to the airport, that was the pinnacle of our fear. It was like an insanely dangerous half hour rollercoaster ride. Being on board with a driver who drives like Pompeii is erupting behind him while all the other cars on the road swerve left and right into spaces only big enough for a gnat, braking at the very last minute. He locked the tyres at one point and we were only saved from hitting the back of the SUV by a last minute swerve. Madness? This is ROMA!

3 days wasn't quite long enough though. Too much to see in such a short time, so it was a little hectic and our legs and feet were in agony by the end of each day. That said, it's a great city with fantastic people and it's an amazing sight when it's lit at night. We'll be back at some point in the not-too-distant, I have little doubt.