I'll always remember 3 days in Rome

Almost everywhere we've been in Europe there has been some evidence of the Roman Empire. Starting in England with the remnants of the ancient wall around the City of London, as well as the ancient thermal baths of, well, Bath. Coming into Italy it got a lot more condensed, from the Verona Arena in the north all the way to the mixed Roman and Greek ruins of Sicily. It felt like it was all building up to Rome.

While I find the history of all these ruins very fascinating, I'm far from educated on the Roman Empire, so I've mostly been picking things up as we come across them. Scattered ruins here and there throughout Europe are one thing, but to be in the middle of a city that had a million people living there 2000 years ago is hard to imagine. Rome's ruins are so vast it's a little overwhelming, the area around the forum and the Coliseum is massive with excavated ruins everywhere. Little is left as it was so it takes some creativity to visualize just how significant where you are standing was, and how many important and bizarre events have taken place there. It's a very humbling place, and if I can hold the inspiration a while I might even research the history of it more. Hopefully there's some good documentaries. We did just watch Gladiator. Inspired.

The Coliseum was as impressive as I imagined, but in a lot worse shape than I thought. It was interesting to learn that after the games were banned the place was left to ruin until they decided to plunder the materials for other buildings. It's a stark contrast to the one in Verona that's still in use. My other favourite was the Pantheon, which is the only building still standing as it was 2000 years ago. The engineering brilliance behind the domed ceiling is so impressive. It's amazing how advanced the Romans were. It looks like construction stayed pretty much the same for 1500 years once they figured it out. Even now many of their ideas are still in practice.

Religious Rome didn't particularly interest me, but we did go to Vatican City because you kinda have to. The intensity level on people trying to sell you shit really picks up around the Vatican, and its not hard to draw the conclusion that they too have figured out religious people are walking dollar signs. It was really interesting to see St. Peter's square and we climbed to the top of the dome for an awesome view of Rome. The building itself is very beautiful, must have cost a fortune.

Anyone who's visited Rome will know that trying to cross the street is gambling with your life. I know I've already griped about Italian drivers, but holy shit do they pick up the crazy in Rome. Little old ladies in nun costumes have to wander through 5 lanes of buzzing traffic because nobody stops at crosswalks.
The bus was a nightmare too, when it showed up it was always packed full, like those Japanese metro videos where they push people on with sticks. Genevieve ended up the victim of dry humping by some dirty man who took advantage of the situation. Trying to get off a bus like that is a joke, nobody steps off to create space like a rational person would, they just stand there and scowl while you force your way off. We learned that after 'hello' and 'thank you', 'get the fuck out of my way!' is the next most useful phrase.

We went out to an area south of the river called Trastevere one night, as we were told it was where the cool kids hang out, and there's cheaper eats and drinks than the more touristy parts. We found a Greek restaurant that was a welcome change from the monotony of pizza and pasta.

(Side bar: Easily the worst part of Italy so far has been the food. Wouldn't have guessed it, but it's true. While pizza and pasta are amazing, it's seriously all they have here. There is no variety. They also suck heroically at breakfast, pastries and cappuccino, where are the eggs! Grabbing a quick bite is non existent here, if you don't want a bag of chips then you are sitting down to eat.)

Anyways, after that we went to a cool little jazz bar where a band was doing readings from Keith Richards' biography, in Italian, then playing Rolling Stones covers. It's funny to hear songs in English with an accent, and sometimes I think they just knew the sounds because they weren't actually saying words. It was great.

Rome, almost surprisingly, seemed like a very liveable city. Despite all the tourists and all the many ruins they have to build around it felt authentic, and like you could get comfortable there when you figured it out. It would be nice to give it more time, to explore more of it's history as well as see more of what it's like now.

-Justin