Visiting Emperor Nasi Goreng

Saturday 13 September 2008

“All roads lead to Rome where our included sightseeing tour is the perfect introduction to the Eternal City. Do as the Romans do and stroll past the Trevi Fountain, the amazing Pantheon, and Piazza Navona.” Contiki Itinerary.

Later that same day.

When I last left you I was staring at the Trevi Fountain in awe. Next up on our little walking tour was the Pantheon.

I swear photo’s do it no justice at all, and like all of Rome it still just jumped out of nowhere, I mean it’s in this huge square and all that leads into it is some random alleyways. Or at least it felt like it anyway.

Bridget shooed us inside to look and this photo really doesn’t give the place any justice at all. In the middle there were actually pews to sit down and pray I guess. It was really just a nice place for me to rest my legs for a minute.

The Pantheon is the oldest large-scale dome in Rome, originally built by Marcus Agrippa as a temple to all the gods of Ancient Rome, and rebuilt in the early 2nd century AD, the inclusion of all gods is probably the reason that The Pantheon was able to stick around for so many years.

It’s also been in continious use since the seventh century and is/was used as a sort of grave and place of worship. Also interesting fact, among the people buried there, and it’s not the sort of stone carving on the ground, they are raised up and still in caskets there is two kings of Italy: Vittoria Emanuele II and Umberto I, as well as Umberto’s Queen, Margherita.

Which I think is pretty cool, I had no idea of the importance of all the coffins but they were all so decorative and ornate espically when the light came in at just the right spot from the literal hole in the roof.

Also final fact about The Pantheon in the picture of the outside there are all these holes where the inscription is. We asked Bridget what in the world was all the holes. She told us that it used be gold plates over the holes, but during the years it all got melted down and used on other monuments. This fact is from Bridget so I’m not sure how much fact is in there but it makes for a nice story.

We were then lead away from the prim rose path and on to our next sight:

The Piazza used to be a sort of staduim where the Romans used to have all the games but you don’t really see much of that anymore.

What we saw was a huge square filled with resturants, tourists and millions of artists and their works all up for sale. I knew I was going to come back here tomorrow, I just love the artwork that they all displayed.

Bridget sort of let us wonder for a bit as I stared up at the Fountain of the four Rivers with Egyptian obelisk, in the middle of Piazza Navona.

Unfortunately while we were there they were doing maintence work on it. That kind of put a downer on it, it’s a beautiful work of art, and I knew that even before I read Dan Brown.

Bridget quickly rounded us up again and lead us to food. That was a wise move on her part, our group was fairly one track at times and it was now time for food.

We ended up going to this cute little milkshake/gelato/ice cream place that featured in Lonely Planet, don’t recall the name. Either way it had really nice food, though not as hyped up as Bridget said, but by that time any food was good.

And of course as we were sitting there who would we see other than our little stowaway Callum. He turned around when we called his name and I think his first expression really told me how bad we actually are.

It was purely RUN!

Cracked me up a little bit as we said our hi’s as he sort of waved us showing off his real group, I think he may have been relieved to see us move on.

But move on we did as Bridget led us back to the bus and to our campsite. Kevin had a lot of fun navigating back to our place.

Sometime I have to wonder about camping, you know at all. We passed through farm land, real farm land. It was after a really long ride through that we came to this sort of out of the way campsite.

It would be our home for the next three days. This was pretty much the first time we would be in one place for more than one night. That was enough to keep me excitied.

Me and Kristy took a while to choose where the tent was going up this time. We had learnt out lesson after Florence and did not put the tent anywhere near a tree or a slope. This was easy as it was a total flat surface for us. We were at the very bottom of the hill, fine coming home but going anywhere was going to be a pain.

But soon we were ready and eating as the only light in the campsite flicked above out heads. It was time for sleep.

Saturday 13 September 2008

“All roads lead to Rome where our included sightseeing tour is the perfect introduction to the Eternal City. Do as the Romans do and stroll past the Trevi Fountain, the amazing Pantheon, and Piazza Navona.” Contiki Itinerary.

Sleeping on the bus is no way advised ever. It was uncomfortable and suprisingly noisy, mostly due to the fact that Kristy and a bunch of other people who had their tent flooded went to the Disco so they had to come in late and just sort of crash all over the place waking me up a few different times.

Not pleasant.

But there was nothing I was awake and we were ready to move onto ROME.

But first we were heading up to this place where they were taking the souvenir group photo. We hadn’t done it last night because it had been raining, so we were doing it now when it was only drizzling.

It is quite funny really last night we were all dressed up to the nines and now we were all in our comfy, dodgy haven’t been washed since Spain clothes.

It was drizzling and we had to hurry so they all chucked us in and took the photo, I love Florence.

Then just as we were moving Chucky stopped us. He wanted to do a video a la Where the hell is Matt? So the lady who was taking the photo took his video camera and there we were, with this beautiful backdrop, all of us doing a stupid little dance. It was a lot of fun.

About two minutes after that it started pouring down rain.

We scrambled back on the bus as it just got worse as we headed on our way to ROME! I was so excitied, this was one of those must see’s. I actually managed to know a lot about Rome and what I wanted to see. Not by actually doing any real research just by what I already knew.

It strikes me as ironic now that I am studying to be a Travel Agent, so now I have to and do know everything about the popular cities. Because of that most of the time I kick myself because I missed out on going to a lot of good places because I didn’t know about them. But if I sat here and listed them all I would have to start a new blog pretty much labelled all the things I didn’t do, and that I think would take way too much time.

Anyway my travel diary is a bit sketchy on what happened when and the memories are solely snatches of walls and alleyways which no sense so bare with me. But I think the first thing we did with going into Rome was the included sightseeing tour.

Which again was us in the bus driving around the city though we did get out as Bridget lead us around a few places.

First we went up to the Spanish Steps.

Like most of Rome all these monuments and must see’s sort of just sneak up on you when we aren’t really expecting it. Being a Saturday it was crowded but we sort of forced ourselves to get to the top while Bridget gave us about twenty minutes to explore.

That was the view from the very top and just because I was curious I looked up why the Spanish Steps are a tourist attraction when I got back. Never before I went though, that would make much too much sense.

The Spanish Steps were built to link the Piazza di Spagna at the base and Piazza Trinita dei Monti and is the longest and widest staircase in Europe. It has 138 steps.

I’m not sure what I was expecting, but that wasn’t it. I mean it doesn’t seem that long or that wide but either way, it was a really good place to tick off the list.

As we regrouped Bridget led us on to the next sight. What it was she wouldn’t tell us, I think to keep the element of suprise going. As we walked we passed through the main shopping way. It was pretty funny every so often there would be a car trying to slink through all the people. There was half a million people so those cars weren’t getting anywhere fast.

Bridget may have been trying to hide where we were going but she was doing a fairly bad job of it.

 I knew where we were going. Mum had already been to Rome before I had and she had told me all about The Trevi Fountain, mostly telling me about how all of a sudden it just appeared in the middle of all these buildings.

It’s a pretty bad picture I know, but that is where Bridget stopped us to tell us all about the Trevi Fountain, several times I thought about walking off, I knew that the Fountain was just at the end. But I waited as Bridget got the guys to cover the girl’s eyes until they walked up to the fountain, so they could really have the wow factor.

I just kept my eyes to the ground as I walked it was fairly easy to do as it was still so crowded everywhere.

WOW.

It was everything I really wanted it to be, next to me I’m pretty sure Bec started tearing up, it was her number one thing to see on the trip. Me, I was just excitied, it was so grand and just there.

It was odd to there was at least seven different roads that all lead into this one square all of them winding and leading off into the distance and not to mention the fact that the photos do this beautiful piece of art no justice. The photo I have is only a small section of the Fountain it was just to big to fit in any photo and the detail that must have gone into this one thing.

More later.