And Outside The Rain Fell...

In Rome. What can I say more?

For a city so replete with history, we created a little bit of personal history ourselves. For starters, we finally would be staying over in a hotel. This was due. Having survived, and successfully, Europe for over a month and a half without staying in a hotel or hostel (the colloquial term for a hotel where you can share a room, like a dormitory, but fully furnished) is quite extraordinary. And tired of train travel out of my senses, I really wanted this to happen.

Early morning, and we had another train joy ride to a nearby station, having our breakfast and freshening up in a totally random station, which we realized is also the entrance of a little used airport in Rome.

Our train joy rides are immense fun, where we run all permutations to find a station which would give us enough time to catch up on some sleep, freshen up and have our breakfast. 2 hour joy rides, often back in the same train again.

Back to Roma Termini, we dumped our bags in the hostel lobby and set out to see Rome. We had 2 days to 2000 years of history.

The Colosseum. Magnificent, huge, and surprisingly intact, all of us simultaneously went 'wowwww' at first sight. Home to Merciless animal fights and gladiatorial duels, the Colosseum once had 25000 beasts killed in a span of a few days! Huge travertine arches cover most of the arena, which once could seat 50000 Romans.

Paying an outrageous sum for entry, the Colosseum on the inside was every bit as splendid, but the authorities could have done a lot more to make it more visitor friendly. Nevertheless, the inside had the arena, a huge oval platform where the fights once took. It really is difficult not to imagine 50000 Romans screaming in joy at the sight of their favourite gladiator winning a duel, with the king looking on. Splendid and a fantastic, this was a testimony to how Roman architecture was (for it is vastly different from the Baroque and Gothic sites I've seen).

Having spent almost half our day there, we had to move on. Hungry, we picked up delightful pizzas and proceeded to the Vatican.

It is indeed funny when you're crossing a country on foot. Even more when you're standing on no-man's land. Even, even more when the country is an all-male little country housed entirely within another city.

And there stood undoubtedly the most amazing, massive church I've witnessed. I wouldn't call St. Peter's Basilica a church at all in fact. A monument to the Popes, or the Papas, as the Italians call them. Celebrating them rather. St. Peter occupied the centre stage, quite obviously, and around him, in much opulence were sculptures of more Popes, often shrouded in controversy.

The dome was hard to miss, it was simply massive. And surprisingly, there was no full statue of Jesus at all! The crypts below were grand, and I loved the moment when I was passing by the tombs of each of the Pope, recalling history I'd read in Wikipedia years back.

Rome was fast becoming my favourite city in Europe (too, yes Nyx, I join your gang). The whole aura around the city just grew and grew. And there I was, sitting under the huge obelisk opposite the Basilica, admiring what the Roman Catholic Church is, what it was at once. At the splendour of it all.

Walking out, we went on to the city centre. En route, a certain call made me miss home immensely, but soon enough, I was laughing in splits. Thanks. To the caller. You rock.

The River Tiber, the castle upon it, and the best place in town for pizzas. The first time we were in a full blown restaurant, Pizzeria da Baffetto. One of Italy's best Pizzeria, we were almost shoved in by the owner into a little, serpentine staircase up to the attic-like dining hall. The ambience immediately reminded me of Vidyarathi Bhavan. What a place! We waited for almost an hour as our Margaritas came along.

The delicious smell of tomatoes and cheese hit our noses almost seductively. The charred wood burnt edges of the Pizza, a thin crust that melted in my mouth, cheese that smelt fresh out of the diary, expanding in our mouth as the tang and spice of the pizza burst almost simultaneously. It really was the true Italiano pizza experience. Walking out, very, very content, I was rather surprised to see a huge queue of people outside, waiting to get into that little place in the heart of the old town.

Walking home, final a hostel, we came across many historic monuments, some in ruins, and many intact. Every turn, every single road had something dating from almost 2000 years back, and it mingled so, so well with its neighbourhood. Rome was captivating.

Our hostels. I was quite looking forward to a comfortable sleep, and I was rewarded rather handsomely. The hotel rooms were amazing, a little too bright for my eyes, but the bunker bed quintuplexes had everything we could want, and a quick shower later, and a week long shave after, I drifted off to sleep. Sooner than ever. Probably in milliseconds. It felt so good. A cosy bed that didn't rock, and no evil ticket checkers and polizei knocking doors at 3.

I miss home so much, and the people back home, but Rome. It was amazing. Roma. So, so easy to fall in love with this city.