Rome: Ist Night

Taken from: www.henrickatlarge.blogspot.com

This blog-post recalls the events of July 7th 2009




As previously stated in the last blog-post, I had arrived to Rome later than I anticipated. This was due to the less than 'Teutonic' attitude that the Italians have toward punctuality. During the ride there, I was a little stressed about not having a hotel room booked and waiting for me when I got there. "Will there be any rooms left?" "What if I can't find a hotel room?" "Where will I sleep if all of the rooms are booked up?" I was feeling quite irresponsible actually. So the stress and panic-level was quite hi. While changing trains in Milan, I saw a kiosk, which looked like they had hotel connections, and offered assistance in finding rooms for travelers. Maybe there would be one of those in Rome (hopefully).

When I got to the station, I spent the first 5-10 minutes looking around for aforementioned kiosk. Much to my chagrin, I could not find one. My mind started racing. I guess I would have to find the nearest hotel and ask. hmmm. I found someone near the entrance to the train station, and asked him about the existence of such a kiosk. It just so happened that he was with department of tourism (he showed me his badge and name-tag). It also just so happened that his job was to direct tourists toward any of the accommodations that they wanted/needed. So, within minutes I was headed toward a hotel about three and a half minutes walking distance from the termini (train station).

The hotel was cheap (I wasn't planning on spending much time indoors there). It was however, clean and safe (albeit small). I quickly set up 'camp', took a shower, changed into some fresh clothes, and head off for the city. This was approximately nine o'clock. I was about a five minute walk due-south of the ancient forum, the imperial forum and the Colosseum. I will let the pictures do the rest of the talking for this post. The photos aren't great. For some reason the iPhone takes crap pictures at night. There is also a lot of 'light pollution' from the way that the monuments are illuminated during the evening hours (they should go to Vienna and see how its done). The one thing you can't see from the photos, is the vast quantity of doves that fill the night sky in Rome! Its quite picturesque and beautiful. They float and hover on the tops of all the monuments. It was quite a scene, and I am a little bummed that the photos don't reveal there presence, but trust me, they're all over the place! After my little sight -seeing venture, I visited a Cafe (which would prove to become my 'end of the night' place in Rome), for a Americano and a Campari-Soda. I drank up, then cruised back to the hotel-room for some rest. The next day was going to be huge!