This is severely overdue, considering the trip's been over for more than 3 months.
I can't remember every single detail (maybe not even close) of the few places that I've been to; not including the 'highlights' (i.e. boarding a train thinking that it'd bring us to Belgium but ended up in Switzerland eventually ahem*), but I do have very fond (and maybe personal too) memories of Italy.
Other than the very rude passenger service staff at the train station, everyone else that we've met in Rome were super nice. When we had the hardest of times trying to locate our hotel, the locals whom we've asked directions from were eager to help, despite the language barrier. I remember walking into a little travel agency that was manned by an elderly lady to ask for directions to our hotel, Domus Sessoriana. When she realized we couldn't really understand what she's saying, she even got up from her very comfortable seat, walked out of the door and pointed/gestured to the place where she was referring to; gesturing in the form of a big building, and repetitively saying the term "Accanto! Accanto!" to which we picked up nothing despite her friendliness and helpfulness. When we finally found the place much later, I learnt that she was actually referring to a church, and a little green door that's located just beside it (accanto!).
More on our getting lost later.
In our 3 days in Rome, we visited a few touristy spots such as, the Colosseum (my first ancient world wonder), Fontana di Trevi (my favourite fountain in the world for now), Vatican City, some museums where we sent postcards back home, the Pantheon, Piazza di Spagna, and probably a few other tourist hot spots that we didn't even know are hot spots.
At the Colosseum:
Following the Colosseum was the Trevi Fountain. Despite the hordes of tourists that were surrounding the fountain, taking pictures of/with it and doing other what-nots, I was still super mesmerized by its beauty. I lack the knowledge to appreciate this fountain as an artistic/architectural achievement, but, at a more superficial level (from which I'm definitely not giving enough credit to), in layman's terms, phwar is all I can think of whenever I think of this fountain. Beautiful.
We dropped by the Pantheon but it was closed for restoration works, so the place looked quite horrible; half of the columns were covered by construction ladders, green nets and other ugly stuff. We were not very lucky in a sense.
And... back to the part on us trying to locate our hotel.
Of the 3 places in Italy that we've visited, Rome left the most memorable impression on me because it was only here that we managed to 'miss' our hotel right under our noses, like maybe a thousand times. After getting out of the train station and checking directions from the owner of a little news-stand, we were glad to find our hotel wasn't too far away from where we were. He pointed to a giant archway that stood a few hundred metres away, and told us to turn right when we've passed that archway. Sounds impossible to miss right? Wrong.
We expected the hotel to be a building that stands on its own, but there was no such building when we passed the archway. Instead, there was a church (and of course you wouldn't the hotel to be part of the church right? Wrong but more on that later). And an old man who came running towards us; he was shouting loudly and angrily with his hands up in the air. I was so afraid as a result of my ignorance that I didn't even take a second better look at him before I assumed and decided that this old man's a racist who hates Asians, and I told F to "run for our lives!".
Worst.mistake.ever. I really hated myself for that afterwards.
We ended up wandering the same few streets and some of the alleys for the next two hours in the sweltering heat, still trying to find out how to get to our hotel from the locals. We walked and walked until we were so sweaty and restless, until a local grocer said something like "the green door and something-something" in a mishmash of Italian and English. The only green door we saw across the street was a little part of the church; that made me have some reservations about crossing the street; I mean, who would think that the church and the hotel are related right? Besides, the angry old man was there so I still had my reservations about crossing the road and I really wasn't looking forward to having him come after us again.
As you can probably imagine by now, the old man was not as angry or racist as we thought he were. When he saw us come back the second time, he didn't come running towards us but instead, he smiled broadly and said in a mishmash of English and Italian that he wanted to direct us to the hotel when he first saw us with our luggage, almost 2 hours ago. Awwwwwwwwwwwwww man. Don't you feel like kicking me?! I felt like an total idiot, told him I'm sorry that I thought he was angry with us when he's clearly not; to which he just replied "no no no..." with a smile and was probably thinking to himself, what silly tourists these two young asian girls are.
When we caught him sweeping the church grounds again the next day, we went up to him and talked to him for a bit before leaving him with a merlion keychain that I brought over (so that I can give them to nice people whom I meet on this trip; gave another one to a train ticketing lady in some part of Italy/Paris too and she was really happy about it); you can't really see it from this picture but that was what's clenched in his fist. I saw a sign that's displayed on another of his chairs that said something like "help me get home" (in English), so I guess he's probably not local?
I still feel guilt whenever I look at this picture now or think of the incident, and sure, I've had my laughs about it; but hey, it also reminds me to stay open to ideas and not be such a damned narrow-minded individual who comes up with inaccurate stereotypes of people all the time! And especially so after multicultural lessons in school.
Anyway, to prove my point of how easily the hotel entrance could go unnoticed, in the picture below, look at the bottom right hand corner. It's the green door on the left. You really can't blame me for noticing right?! I think it'll be a good idea for them to invest in a bigger signage.
End of hotel-hunting story. We visited Vatican City next, and... the crowds were absolutely crazy and killed all moods. Apparently there was some event going on.. just look at the people involved in this religious session. I admire people for the devotion they have towards their religions; braving heat waves and swarming masses of bodies in a confined space just so that they can gather to hear the pope speak, I'll never be able to do something like that. I can't help it if you think I know nothing about devotion to faith; you're right.
After we came out of St Pietro's, we drank from one of those roadside water fountains and I was pleasantly surprised to find that the water that came out from those tiny pipes are chilled! It was the best thing to have on such a hot day, right after a gelato cone of course.
And here's a picture of us standing on the Angelo Bridge; Angel with the whips erected right behind us. And now that I think about it, whips.. how kinky. *ahem*
Some other kinky stuff that were done inside the Vatican Museum...
And this shot-to-death picture of the spiral staircase that will be taken by nearly every tourist who exits the museum via this route.
Piazza di Spagna; while we were on our hunt for boutiques. Had absolutely no idea where this place was when we took this picture.
Pretty gate just outside our hotel; with many pieces of colourful rocks entwined in those metal wires.
And finally, here's one last picture of us on the night train from Rome to Milan; our 2-hour stopover station before heading to Zurich!
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