When in Rome...

Go see stuff. That's basically it. There is no 'experience' here like Vienna or Venice. I thought that there would be so much stuff to see that I would be struggling to fit it all in in three days. After my first day I came away with a very different impression of Rome.

My Rome set on Flickr is now available:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645523086253/

I started the day quite late, and headed towards Villa Borghese. The Metro here compared with all the other cities I've been to is just average - the frequency at the station at the apartment is 'only' every 12 minutes in peak times. The Villa has enormous grounds, with a museum/gallery in the actual villa. While I didn't go inside the gallery, I did have a bit of a wander of the grounds. It wasn't anything amazing, there were a few small flowerbeds but otherwise it was just lots of trees and dirt paths:

Villa Borghese

Still on the villa's grounds, above the Piazza del Popolo, there was an outlook over Rome, and the views were amazing. The weather wasn't the clearest, but you could still see for miles around:

The view from the outlook

After I was finished there I headed down to the Spanish Steps. I'd previously learned before I headed out that Trevi Fountain was being closed for up to 2 years while they did work on it. There was also some work going on above the Spanish Steps, so most of the photos had some form of scaffolding in them.

The walk to Piazza Navona was absolutely full of tourists. All the major attractions in Rome are centred around the Old Town area, and every street was the same. Piazza Navona was a major letdown - it was basically a black tile square with a couple of fountains and an obelisk, and surrounded on every side by overpriced tourist-trap restaurants.

The nearby Pantheon was much the same. There were so many people there that I struggled to take any nice photos, it was very much 'people everywhere'. I didn't even bother trying to go inside:

The Pantheon. Just a few people here.

Lunch today was pizza - my first pizza in Italy. Most places were really quite expensive, and luckily I found a place that was a bit cheaper in the expensive area of Old Rome. Pizza here is much different to Australia: you always buy it 'per etto' (per hundred grams). You tell them how much you want, and they cut some squares off the pizza:

Pizza in Old Rome

I walked past the Largo di Torre Argentina, a small section of old stuff similar to the Foro Romano, which also wasn't open, but was quite a nice little place in the middle of town. Here the number of pedestrians was considerably fewer, and I felt far less claustrophobic:

Largo di Torre Argentina

It was getting quite late by this stage, so I decided to not go through with my original plan of seeing both the Roman Forum and the Colosseum today, instead just taking a photo of the Colosseum before heading home. I walked past the Altare della Patria, which is a big white building of some description. I never found out what it was, and I was too lazy to Google it.

The weather was quite nice, and I would never have forgiven myself if I didn't get all the way to Rome without taking a picture of the Colosseum in the afternoon blue sky. I got quite a decent angle of it, but almost the entire half that you can just see in this picture was covered with scaffolding:

The 'hero shot' of the Colosseum

Because I'm staying in Tiburtina, which is where the locals live, there are several pizza and gelati places downstairs that are really quite cheap, compared with the rest of the city. You can feed yourself with a decent amount of pizza and a small gelati for under AU$10. Easily:

Pizza in Tiburtina

That's all from Rome today, tomorrow I'll visit the Roman Forum. Until then!