Travelling the world…

I suppose there aren’t very many pictures from Rome that I could possibly post that somebody else hasn’t posted somewhere else already.

Such as this one… A free beer for the first person to guess what it is.

But has anybody noticed these?

It’s an incredible city, where one really feels the weight of history… but it’s also a city that is noisy, fast and crowded. I’m not sure how the locals can survive among the hordes of tourists that fill the streets and the countless hawkers of tourist-related goods and services that accompany them.

Where would the poor Roman soldiers be without tourists?

Even the seagulls willingly pose for photos (but don’t demand spare change). Maybe they should get selfie sticks.

At some points, I honestly thought I would tear the selfie stick (curse the man who invented that thing) from the annoying guy’s hand and start beating him with it. Does he really imagine that that flimsy little rod can hold up my 2 kg camera?

Send all the selfie stick vendors to the arena!

The best part of Rome was that Maci was there (appiccicati!). And the ancient Roman ruins, all of which I have now seen up close.

I was the only one who took a picture of Apollo’s bum rather than the front (which had fallen off over the millennia)

If my last visit was devoted to the many churches my mum wanted to see, this time was almost exclusively Roman. We went to the Colosseum , the Roman Forum, the Palatino hill, the Pantheon, everything. 

Of course we also saw all the major landmarks, and tried to notice small details that people overlook in the mad rush to “be there, do that”. Just turning one’s head away from the souvenirs towards a side street or up at the buildings revealed many unique treasures.

Small churches tucked into residential buildings – very common

We spent a lot of time in the neighbourhood of Monti, which I truly believe is the best part of the city. Walking distance to almost everything, yet genuinely local in its feels. There is plenty of greenery covering the buildings, best of all is the jasmine that perfumes the air.

A curtain of jasmine in Monti

No visit to Rome is complete without an evening spent drinking wine on the Piazzetta della Madonna dei Monti. We also sampled considerable amounts of local Roman food, mainly street pizzas and of course the fabulous spaghetti “cacio e pepe”.

Behold the sitting spaghetti monster!

Sadly, we missed out on the Jewish style artichokes in the old ghetto district, and I’d really like more of the local porcini trifolati.

WHERE did they get those mushrooms in mid-May?

Lemons the size of melons

After 3 full days roaming the streets, my feet were sore and I felt saturated by the urban environment. I somehow have few words to add, so I will let the pictures speak, perhaps a few of them are a bit offbeat – because there are very few unbeaten tracks in Rome.

If the queue to buy a new car is as long as the queue to enter St. Peter’s the marketing people will have done a good job.