Travel blogs are a dime a dozen here on this world wide web, yet some people were kind of persistent in letting me know they wanted to read about my travels. So here I am – day three in Rome (I’m not counting Friday since a one hour late night cab ride to my hotel room sharing the taxi with a paranoid English couple and a large American family doesn’t cut it as a day in Rome although Clark, our driver, was entertaining, pointing out the optional stop signs and complete lack of regard for any sort of traffic lane formation – driving in Italy is far more amusing when you’re just the happy observing passenger) and doing a blog post. I’ve taken a number of pictures since getting here, using my trusty HTC Sensation phone camera and also my Nikon 5100.

The hotel room is quite handy to everything yet smaller than I imagined (in my jet lagged stupor waking up in the middle of night to pee I mistook the wardrobe for the door to the bathroom – it’s quite difficult to sit on a non-existent toilet seat and I would recommend to future travellers no matter how jetlagged and half asleep you are there is always time to turn a light on. It will save on shin damage from errant low lying wardrode shelves pretending to be bathroom vanities) however we’re not spending much time in the room so size is not really a problem at all. Just so long as you check that you’re not going to brain your room mate with a door when emerging from the bathroom. Important step in keeping the harmony in any friendship humming along. So speaking of friendship – I finally got to meet my friend Nanette from Georgia, USA. She and I have been conversing via phone and online conversations/emails nearly two years now after striking up a friendship over our common love for some of our TV shows – Smallville, Merlin, Supernatural to name a few. This trip came about because I asked her to join me for the Rome experience that I wanted to take in before heading over to the UK and Belgium for the World Agility Open Championships. So here we are…in Rome sightseeing before we check into the Hilton and take part in Jus In Bello. An Italian Supernatural Convention where cast and fans get together to just basically share their love of the show, ask questions, chat with each other, get photos and autographs etc and hang out with like minded souls. When non-Supernatural loving people give me funny looks at this I just shrug and think – You wouldn’t understand, it’s a Supernatural thing.

I met Nanette Saturday morning in the hotel foyer after heading out for my first walk of the trip. I managed to be confronted by this sight as my first discovery of a typical Rome tourist stand.

I was planning only being gone an hour but that Colosseum is very distracting and the weather was beautiful so I ended up being gone nearly two hours.

So by the time I got back to the hotel Net had already checked in – it was great to finally meet the person behind the friendship we had formed and give her a hug. After Net got settled in we headed out. Saturday was quite a big day – we managed to cover quite a bit of ground with a walk around the Colosseum. We didn’t go in because the place was packed with lines spanning just about half the circumference of the place. Just walking to the main sights in Rome you find yourself stopping at several points on the way because quite simply the architecture of the city is just that eye catching. So the Piazza Del Repubblica was taken in on the way…

…before we made our way down the Via Nazionale to the place where Russell Crowe and Sam Worthington and those guys from Spartacus made gladiators seem like sexy, misunderstood savages. This was my 2nd time there and it was still just as impressive. We circumnavigated and took pictures and ended up at the fancy arch thing aka the Arca Di Constantino before strolling through some of the ruins of the Palatino and Arco Di Tito.

We ended up climbing a couple hills that ended nowhere except on the steps of a church but hey uphill walking is always gonna be a great work out.

After the Colosseum it was time to see the Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II who, from the looks of things, was supposedly a pretty important bloke or suffered from massive soul crushing insecurities.

What I do like about Rome (apart from their history and their ice cream and their pizzas and their thoroughly relentless disregard for what the rest of the world is doing) is their fondness for immortalising animals in sculpture. I mean sure 5000 animals were slaughtered on the opening day at the Colosseum but hey at least we pay significant homage to them.

So after that it was off to the Termini Station – the main train and bus station of Rome. Several purposes here – to find a supermarket, find an Italian SIM card with internet access for my phone and to check out the general ambiance. We discovered the Station has many shops, a few floors and a confusing lower level. We also found a gentleman in the Three mobile shop who spoke English so that was a positive. We had a meal there – I made Nanette try Gnocchi and we decided that her spiral pasta salad back home was much nicer than the one she picked up. After picking up some Baileys, milk, vodka and red bull we made our way back to the hotel for the night for some pleasant night caps. We wished Rome a very happy 2765th birthday and made plans for a big Sunday.

And what a big Sunday it was! I felt I had been given a very reliable tip by my cab driver on the Friday night that the two things to do on Sunday were to get myself to the biggest flea markets in Rome held in the Trastavere district called the Porta Portese markets and to see the Ancient Roman Militia March through the area of the Roman Forum. We had decided we’d get a fairly early start so headed off back towards Termini Station (to check in with 3 shop as my phone still had no access – turns out the guy on that day spoke no English and wasn’t all that fussed with solving the problem) and found ourselves a cooked continental breakfast which was scrambled eggs and some suspiciously salty bacon (this was no doubt fried prosciutto) which helped fuel us for the day. We then started the trek towards Trastavere which turned out to be about three hours of walking. Especially when you get distracted by men on horses like this.

So that was interesting to watch. There were certainly different levels of commitment on the part of the payers who were dressed up for it. I’m going to leave this post here for now. I shall continue it on another entry as for now true Italian Pizza beckons us and it’s dinner time. We shall need our sustenance for tomorrow’s trek out to Pompeii and Vesuvius.