We took the train down to Eindhoven. Our one and a half hour of train ride through the gloomy, grey Dutch countryside led us to a small cute town in the South. Eindhoven has been a big spot of growth ever since budget airline Ryan Air made it their hub in the Netherlands. Later, I found out that the city's benefitted from a highly revered school of design, where students help design much of the city. We arrived much before our flight and had plenty of time to kill, as the security line and visa check took no more than a few seconds. Nick and I were anxious to get out of the Netherlands, and excited for the Italian experience to come, so much so that we played a game called "spot the Italian" in the waiting room for our flight.
As soon as we claimed a pair of seats in the back of a plane, the man in the third seat next to us began conversing with us. This young man, from the Netherlands, who's family was from Argentina, was making a large tour triangle between North America, South America and Rome and he spent most of the time asking us about our impressions of the Netherlands. Before we had finished the conversation, we landed in Rome and found ourselves with our first dilemma. Rome Ciampino airport isn't in the city, so we needed to go by bus down to the center of town (approximately a half hour drive). We approached the desks of the shuttles from the airport to the center of Rome, only to be wooed and coerced by two separate companies that had kiosks side by side ("Hey a-come on! Coma ride with us!"). Never have I felt so wanted, so the illusion was excellent.
We sat on our bus for approximately 40 minutes, seeing shops begin to close for the night and streets that reminded me of those I'd seen in major cities in the US or Amsterdam. We hopped off the bus at Termini Station, Rome city centrum, and made the 3 minute walk to our hostel. This was my first experience staying in a hostel ever! Though my expectations had been predicated on the image of these establishments in the film Hostel, I wasn't particularly disappointed that I wasn't being tortured by attractive hostel workers. We were met in our room by one of our roommates for the night, a young Argentinian man who had been travelling by himself for a few weeks and reaching the end of his trip. He had been in town for a few days, so we asked if he wanted to go get gelato with us, and, with his few days of experience with these roads, helped us navigate to Della Palma, a business that we frequented for the next 3 days to satisfy future gelato withdrawals. They had 40 or so flavors, from citrus based fruit delights to goodies in the chocolate family.
I had arranged an entire itinerary for Nick and myself. Every day had plans from beginning of the day to end, but much of it was reorganized because of the way Rome is laid out. For anyone who's never been, Rome is a city that sprung up from around a plethora Roman ruins. After the fall of the Roman Empire, this area was desolate, with not much cultural or economic activity happening until the Renaissance hit. From there, it was all growth, but much of old Rome still lays in the middle of the city. We awoke early in the morning and walked towards a collection of museums Nick and I were interested in seeing, but along the way became distracted.
In the large enclaves between stretches of road are vast stretches of ruins. Old roman columns lay amongst the ground, seemingly untouched from the crumbling of the vast empire. Constantly, around the entire city was a combination of old and new, ancient and modern. We then decided to enter the nearest building, the Tomb of the Unknown Solider. This gargantuan building towered over the entirety of the city, and could be clearly seen from most parts of the city, especially when standing on other larger structures. The interior was a (free!) museum that exhibited former Italian flags (or at least that's what I think, all of the plaques were in Italian), frescos of Jesus, nationalistic art, as well as an odd photo gallery based on the theme of caves in Asia Minor. The nicest thing about this little detour was that its tallest point gave us a magnificent view of the city, from Vatican City to the outskirts, with many different domes painting the skyline, some designed by Michelangelo, others by contemporaries or students.
Next, we climbed a staircase with a 40 degree incline, only to find that the museums we had initially been headed towards were closed till 4 pm to cater to a large convention. Unfazed by a small closure of tourist activity in a town full of ticketable history, we were approached by a tour guide for a bus tour, which I promptly rejected and continued to walk. Nick, on the other hand, had stopped and talked with the woman, negotiating a lower price than what she petitioned and got us onto a bus tour that may have been one of the best decisions we made in the day. The bus tour, which consisted of 4 customers including ourselves, was hosted by a cunning and humorous tour guide with a strong grasp on English, despite her heavy Italian accent. The tour was excellent, and we were shown so much of Rome that we would have taken for granted. The bus covered a lot of ground quickly, and after one and a half hours, I felt very familiarized with a lot more Italian and Roman history as well as got to see parts of Rome we would have ignored.
Our tour guide recommended us to a nearby, touristy Italian lunch place, where I had an incredible plate of gnocchi. After Nick upset the wait staff by asking for the drinks to come out at the same time as our food, we made our way back to the museum that had been closed in the morning. The National Museum of the Palazzo Venezia is one of the more famous museums in the world, home of much ancient art (from the all too frequent marble and stone busts to physical relics of ancient Rome) and Renaissance paintings.
We left the museum at sunset, having been in there for about 3 hours. Nick, thinking that he read that the museum contained art by Da Vinci, spent 20 minutes or so asking various staff if the museum contained any prints by him. When we said Da Vinci, the staff would squint at us, seemingly unaware of the artist. We'd repeat the name a few times, and one staff member would figure it out and say it to their colleagues in a more Italian accent (Da Vinci!) and they'd all echo with the sudden realization of what we were talking about (Da Vinci! Da Vinci! He's a-no here). We made way back to the hostel for a few minutes more rest and then headed towards an area that one of the most helpful hostel workers showed us.
In the southeast corner of Rome lies the area near the university, where many students go see live music and eat fairly cheap (and from what I saw, mostly Middle Eastern) food. After surveying the few venues we saw, one stuck out considerably. The venue, called Crossover, was a quaint and humorously decorated, small, college-music bar. Many of the walls were littered with photos of commonly found Classic Rock (Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin) and RnB (Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles) legends. The act performing was a Flamenco/Brazilian/Latin music duet, with one playing rhythm guitar, singing and taking the role of humorous head-bobber while the other played beautiful lead guitar lines over each song structure. At some points the music became repetitive, but the majority was more than pleasant, and paired with my excellent Italian wine, we were content with our decision. Around 11 pm, the band was as drunk as we were, and we decided to retire to our hostel.
We awoke early in the morning to grab a quick bite to eat and walk to the Roman Forum, a collection of Roman ruins from the capitol center that has been left intact directly in the middle of the center of the modern city. On the way, Nick and I were vastly impressed at a particularly excellent double parking job as seen in the picture here. It was one of many humorous automotive related sights we saw, most of which were as equally frightening as they were funny.
We arrived at the ruins to find that the ruins weren't open until an hour past typical opening time due to a workers strike. While musing at the absurdity of a closed sight of ruins, we struck up a conversation with a couple in front of us, who I'd heard speaking Dutch. For most of our trip in Rome, the Dutch would constantly be in our presence (though admittedly, we did go to quite a few major tourist spots). This couple talked with us about healthcare, and asked us about Obama and the United States system, to which a nearby EAVESDROPPING woman butted in, "Obama just has his hands tied. He could do it if he had more support." At that moment, the gates opened up, and the displeasurable task of responding to this woman was avoided. With that, we grabbed our free audio tour and walked the ruins.
Like many museums we went to in Rome, Nick and I made the mistake of trying to see everything from the very start. Immediately next to the entrance is a small museum, containing artifacts found and restored from the original site of these ruins. We gawked at all the old plates, mosaics, pipes, tile flooring, rings, and jewels for about an hour before actually getting back outside to see the actual forum.
The ruins towered in the sky, and though they appear minuscule when matched against the skyscrapers of the modern age, I found myself getting lost in the size of these arches and columns, marveling at their beauty and grandiosity. But then we hit a figurative wall, one that became so familiar at the Vatican the next day. The forum is humongous, maybe a mile and a half in most directions, so we started to get exhausted from seeing ruin after ruin. We approached another museum gallery, and while we spent an hour in the former, we spent no more than ten minutes in this one. There were so many ancient ruins, but I started to see that the column to the right of me is no different, has no distinction, from the one to the left of me. Sure, it's beautiful to approach a pillar that's older than Christianity, but at the same time, it's just a pillar.
By the end of our walk around the entirety of the grounds of the Roman Forum, we made our way to the Coliseum. It has been immortalized in countless films, been described in myriad books, and talked about for centuries, and all the hype matches its stature. Despite the obnoxious crowds of people there in groups, many which consisted of kids who really wanted to be anywhere but the colosseum, the ambiance of the arena was startling. We spent an hour gazing at the architecture and the layout of the arena, before we made our way to where the Pantheon is.
Before checking out any more Italian sites, we made sure to get some Gelato first. Luckily, our favorite place was a block away from the Pantheon, and we took our delicious cold treats back to the large dome. The Pantheon, a temple originally build to honor the ancient gods of Rome, has over the years become a domain of Catholic worship, yet the building is constantly swarming with people who have come from around the world to see it. As with many of the most popular religious sights in Rome/Vatican, the establishment attempts to keep the building quiet in order to create a holy atmosphere for religious visitors. The consistently humorous trend is that the building is quiet, then a small murmur starts and the volume quickly crescendos to a loud roar, and at this point get hostilely shushed by the staff. The cycle occurs once every 30 or 40 seconds, which we would experience again at the Vatican.
As soon as we claimed a pair of seats in the back of a plane, the man in the third seat next to us began conversing with us. This young man, from the Netherlands, who's family was from Argentina, was making a large tour triangle between North America, South America and Rome and he spent most of the time asking us about our impressions of the Netherlands. Before we had finished the conversation, we landed in Rome and found ourselves with our first dilemma. Rome Ciampino airport isn't in the city, so we needed to go by bus down to the center of town (approximately a half hour drive). We approached the desks of the shuttles from the airport to the center of Rome, only to be wooed and coerced by two separate companies that had kiosks side by side ("Hey a-come on! Coma ride with us!"). Never have I felt so wanted, so the illusion was excellent.
We sat on our bus for approximately 40 minutes, seeing shops begin to close for the night and streets that reminded me of those I'd seen in major cities in the US or Amsterdam. We hopped off the bus at Termini Station, Rome city centrum, and made the 3 minute walk to our hostel. This was my first experience staying in a hostel ever! Though my expectations had been predicated on the image of these establishments in the film Hostel, I wasn't particularly disappointed that I wasn't being tortured by attractive hostel workers. We were met in our room by one of our roommates for the night, a young Argentinian man who had been travelling by himself for a few weeks and reaching the end of his trip. He had been in town for a few days, so we asked if he wanted to go get gelato with us, and, with his few days of experience with these roads, helped us navigate to Della Palma, a business that we frequented for the next 3 days to satisfy future gelato withdrawals. They had 40 or so flavors, from citrus based fruit delights to goodies in the chocolate family.
I had arranged an entire itinerary for Nick and myself. Every day had plans from beginning of the day to end, but much of it was reorganized because of the way Rome is laid out. For anyone who's never been, Rome is a city that sprung up from around a plethora Roman ruins. After the fall of the Roman Empire, this area was desolate, with not much cultural or economic activity happening until the Renaissance hit. From there, it was all growth, but much of old Rome still lays in the middle of the city. We awoke early in the morning and walked towards a collection of museums Nick and I were interested in seeing, but along the way became distracted.
In the large enclaves between stretches of road are vast stretches of ruins. Old roman columns lay amongst the ground, seemingly untouched from the crumbling of the vast empire. Constantly, around the entire city was a combination of old and new, ancient and modern. We then decided to enter the nearest building, the Tomb of the Unknown Solider. This gargantuan building towered over the entirety of the city, and could be clearly seen from most parts of the city, especially when standing on other larger structures. The interior was a (free!) museum that exhibited former Italian flags (or at least that's what I think, all of the plaques were in Italian), frescos of Jesus, nationalistic art, as well as an odd photo gallery based on the theme of caves in Asia Minor. The nicest thing about this little detour was that its tallest point gave us a magnificent view of the city, from Vatican City to the outskirts, with many different domes painting the skyline, some designed by Michelangelo, others by contemporaries or students.
Next, we climbed a staircase with a 40 degree incline, only to find that the museums we had initially been headed towards were closed till 4 pm to cater to a large convention. Unfazed by a small closure of tourist activity in a town full of ticketable history, we were approached by a tour guide for a bus tour, which I promptly rejected and continued to walk. Nick, on the other hand, had stopped and talked with the woman, negotiating a lower price than what she petitioned and got us onto a bus tour that may have been one of the best decisions we made in the day. The bus tour, which consisted of 4 customers including ourselves, was hosted by a cunning and humorous tour guide with a strong grasp on English, despite her heavy Italian accent. The tour was excellent, and we were shown so much of Rome that we would have taken for granted. The bus covered a lot of ground quickly, and after one and a half hours, I felt very familiarized with a lot more Italian and Roman history as well as got to see parts of Rome we would have ignored.
Our tour guide recommended us to a nearby, touristy Italian lunch place, where I had an incredible plate of gnocchi. After Nick upset the wait staff by asking for the drinks to come out at the same time as our food, we made our way back to the museum that had been closed in the morning. The National Museum of the Palazzo Venezia is one of the more famous museums in the world, home of much ancient art (from the all too frequent marble and stone busts to physical relics of ancient Rome) and Renaissance paintings.
We left the museum at sunset, having been in there for about 3 hours. Nick, thinking that he read that the museum contained art by Da Vinci, spent 20 minutes or so asking various staff if the museum contained any prints by him. When we said Da Vinci, the staff would squint at us, seemingly unaware of the artist. We'd repeat the name a few times, and one staff member would figure it out and say it to their colleagues in a more Italian accent (Da Vinci!) and they'd all echo with the sudden realization of what we were talking about (Da Vinci! Da Vinci! He's a-no here). We made way back to the hostel for a few minutes more rest and then headed towards an area that one of the most helpful hostel workers showed us.
In the southeast corner of Rome lies the area near the university, where many students go see live music and eat fairly cheap (and from what I saw, mostly Middle Eastern) food. After surveying the few venues we saw, one stuck out considerably. The venue, called Crossover, was a quaint and humorously decorated, small, college-music bar. Many of the walls were littered with photos of commonly found Classic Rock (Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin) and RnB (Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles) legends. The act performing was a Flamenco/Brazilian/Latin music duet, with one playing rhythm guitar, singing and taking the role of humorous head-bobber while the other played beautiful lead guitar lines over each song structure. At some points the music became repetitive, but the majority was more than pleasant, and paired with my excellent Italian wine, we were content with our decision. Around 11 pm, the band was as drunk as we were, and we decided to retire to our hostel.
We awoke early in the morning to grab a quick bite to eat and walk to the Roman Forum, a collection of Roman ruins from the capitol center that has been left intact directly in the middle of the center of the modern city. On the way, Nick and I were vastly impressed at a particularly excellent double parking job as seen in the picture here. It was one of many humorous automotive related sights we saw, most of which were as equally frightening as they were funny.
We arrived at the ruins to find that the ruins weren't open until an hour past typical opening time due to a workers strike. While musing at the absurdity of a closed sight of ruins, we struck up a conversation with a couple in front of us, who I'd heard speaking Dutch. For most of our trip in Rome, the Dutch would constantly be in our presence (though admittedly, we did go to quite a few major tourist spots). This couple talked with us about healthcare, and asked us about Obama and the United States system, to which a nearby EAVESDROPPING woman butted in, "Obama just has his hands tied. He could do it if he had more support." At that moment, the gates opened up, and the displeasurable task of responding to this woman was avoided. With that, we grabbed our free audio tour and walked the ruins.
Like many museums we went to in Rome, Nick and I made the mistake of trying to see everything from the very start. Immediately next to the entrance is a small museum, containing artifacts found and restored from the original site of these ruins. We gawked at all the old plates, mosaics, pipes, tile flooring, rings, and jewels for about an hour before actually getting back outside to see the actual forum.
The ruins towered in the sky, and though they appear minuscule when matched against the skyscrapers of the modern age, I found myself getting lost in the size of these arches and columns, marveling at their beauty and grandiosity. But then we hit a figurative wall, one that became so familiar at the Vatican the next day. The forum is humongous, maybe a mile and a half in most directions, so we started to get exhausted from seeing ruin after ruin. We approached another museum gallery, and while we spent an hour in the former, we spent no more than ten minutes in this one. There were so many ancient ruins, but I started to see that the column to the right of me is no different, has no distinction, from the one to the left of me. Sure, it's beautiful to approach a pillar that's older than Christianity, but at the same time, it's just a pillar.
By the end of our walk around the entirety of the grounds of the Roman Forum, we made our way to the Coliseum. It has been immortalized in countless films, been described in myriad books, and talked about for centuries, and all the hype matches its stature. Despite the obnoxious crowds of people there in groups, many which consisted of kids who really wanted to be anywhere but the colosseum, the ambiance of the arena was startling. We spent an hour gazing at the architecture and the layout of the arena, before we made our way to where the Pantheon is.
Before checking out any more Italian sites, we made sure to get some Gelato first. Luckily, our favorite place was a block away from the Pantheon, and we took our delicious cold treats back to the large dome. The Pantheon, a temple originally build to honor the ancient gods of Rome, has over the years become a domain of Catholic worship, yet the building is constantly swarming with people who have come from around the world to see it. As with many of the most popular religious sights in Rome/Vatican, the establishment attempts to keep the building quiet in order to create a holy atmosphere for religious visitors. The consistently humorous trend is that the building is quiet, then a small murmur starts and the volume quickly crescendos to a loud roar, and at this point get hostilely shushed by the staff. The cycle occurs once every 30 or 40 seconds, which we would experience again at the Vatican.
