Roma, a city of contrasts ...

Feeling much better this morning, and having made a list (I'm good at them! Just cos I'm on holiday doesn't mean I can't get some control!) started on my day. I am feeling accomplished in manner of hunter-gatherer and all little baby-steps are to be counted. There are the basics (find place to sleep - done; find food - breakfast, coffee and chocolate croissant, included at hostel - done) I then moved onto bigger things: find food for day of sight-seeing at supermercati, done! Buy Metrebus ticket, done! Try calling Liliana again, which also involves finding telephone without someone sleeping in it or no suspicious puddles near it, done! done! done! Buy ticket for the train to Latina, and try doing it all in Italian, done! (Vorrei comprare una biglietto per il treno a Latina, domani mattina ...) Catch Metro Linea B to begin sightseeing, done! The Rome subway is so much worse than New York, maybe it seems so because I was warned so much about NY tho. And Zandra, the Rome subway DOESN'T HAVE ANY AIRCONDITIONING!
I don't want to bore you with all my sightseeing tales, but will give a list of what I saw: Piazza di Spagna and the Spanish Steps, Fontana di Trevi (Trevi Fountain), Pantheon, Bocca della Verita (The Mouth of Truth), the Roman Forum, Palatine and il Colesseo. Everything is so huge and amazing! It doesn't matter that my little camera doesn't have a zoom, it still won't fit everything in. And besides all these sights, I'm constantly looking around and up at everything amazed. All of the buildings must be older than the oldest buildings in Australia. My love of the New York apartment fire escapes has been overtaken by the Italian apartment shutters, and the colours! Greens and blues and those beautiful yellow-oranges!
There are thousands of other tourists (ok, well maybe only hundreds at a time) at all of the landmarks listed above. All taking there own photo of it, and who am I to complain, I did the same thing at most. There are souvenier stalls at all places, and beggars, and people dressed in old costumes offering to pose in people's photos (for a price of course, everything for a price ...)
So along with everything else I tried to take in that little bit more - people watching to try and pick the locals from the tourists, the Italian tourists from the other tourists. And then laughing at a restaurant owner, trying to get all the stall holders and buskers away from his alfresco dining area and diners. A small boy (looked about 8 years old) wanted to play his piano accordian, near them and the restaurant man was so red in the face, pleading: capito me! capito me! The boy defiantly played the first few notes of the Godfather theme before running off smiling!
By a city of contrasts, I mean it has some of the most beautiful landmarks, buildings, artefacts, art etc, yet is really dirty. It has this amazing wealth of history yet poor people begging on nearly every street, homeless people and many souvenier stall holders trying to cash in on it all.
Its incredible tho. I still can't believe I am really here.
Heading south to Latina tomorrow (yes, just like the pasta!) to stay with Liliana and her daughters, before going a bit further to Sorrento, on the Amalfi coast. Here I plan to celebrate my birthday next week.
Love to you all, I don't feel so lonely anymore, I just read your emails and am so glad the internet exists! I accidently deleted the last two emails I had received tho, before reading them or even seeing who they were from (I could try blaming the keyboard ...?) I did get the ones from Francesca, Vanessa, Belinda, Lauren and Tim. So if you've emailed and I haven't replied and you're not one of them, sorry! Could you try sending it again ... Ciao! E x