La Roma Part 1

6/1/10

Rome, what to say about rome. The weather is what we'd expected of Italy coz it was 15 degree on the day we arrived but the people there are cunning. Well, not all of them but that was my first impression. They try to rip you off especially everywhere especially at tourist sites. So whoever dreams of going there, you have to be careful. When we arrived at the airport, we were looking for the shuttle bus to the city as the airport is quite far from the central. Then this one man approached us and ask us couple of questions. We thought that he want to help us but then he took us to a black van which seems like a private shuttle bus. I know at that moment that this was not right as we expected a white bus which says shuttle bus. Now we had to pay double of what we were expected to pay.

After we checked in to our hotel, we head out and the hotel personnel asked us to get the 3 day public transport pass as it's easier to get around. He said that all the places are far apart and far away to walk from one place to the other. This is the second time that we got ripped of as it turned out that the places were not that far from our hotel except for Vatican city. So 2-0 to us. Most of the places here were churches, that is quite expected in Rome as it's the center of Christianity. We also stopped at Colosseum, took pictures of the place at night. Tomorrow we will go there again inside the Colosseum. Well,our hotel was not that far from this place.

Buildings in Rome

Basilica S. Maria Degli Angeli E Dei Martiri

Fontana dell Naiadi

How people in Rome park their car

Colosseum at dusk

7/1/10
Today we went to the Roman Forum, Piazza Venezia, National Monument of Victor Emmanuel II and Colosseum. We bought a ticket that allow us to enter all the above attractions for the price of 12 euro. It was quite worth it as we took the whole day to explore the above attractions. Looking at these places, where the Roman Empire used to be I felt amazed with them With limited technology, their architecture are very detailed and strong. Imagined that these building has been here for centuries and you can still see some of the remains are still standing strong despite of their age.

But again we were conned today. Early morning we came out of the subway station near Colosseum there's people wearing Roman costume that asked us to take photo. We we re very excited as we thought that these people are here to attract tourist. After we happily took a few shots, they asked us to pay them for the photo even though the photo was taken using our camera. We were like WTH!!! So we paid them a bit and not the full price claiming that we'll delete some of the pictures. But the amount that we paid them can feed us till we're full. 3-0 to us. After that, we vowed that we won't believe anybody here again to save our money. Hopefully tomorrow will be better for us.