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June & July 2005

Rome & Vatican City

Jeremy Koh
2005-11-05 11:48:59

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between 1895 and 1911 to honour Victor Emmanuel, the first king of unified Italy.

The building is built of pure white marble (which isn't so white now after suffering from the effects of pollution), and has majestic stairways, fountains and statues. It was closed when we were there but we'll back back in less than two week's time. More on that later. The monument is controversial. Its construction destroyed a large area of Capitoline Hill housing a medieval neighbourhood. The building itself is often regarded as pompous and too large. Nonetheless, in the setting sun, it looked, well, impressive and definitely worthy of a couple of snapshots.

Just across the road, we stopped for dinner at a cafe. The pizzas were pretty cheap but we made a big mistake of ordering mineral water. It cost more than our meal. By the way, the sparkling type of mineral water is pretty popular in Italy and if you want to avoid it, look out for water bearing the naturale sign and avoid those saying frizzante. After dinner, it was pretty late already. We decided to just make two more stops for the night.

First we headed to Trevi Fountain. It is the largest and most ambitious of the Baroque fountains of Rome. The fountain looked amazing but there was an amazingly large number of people there as well. If you've been reading all the guidebooks about Rome, you'll naturally be wary about large crowds because most of the guidebooks tell you to beware of pickpocket gangs operating in Rome. Anyway legend has it that if you toss a coin with your right hand over your right shoulder into the fountain, you'll be ensured of a return to Rome. We didn't manage to do that, though I do want to return to Rome someday. Well the legend only says that if you throw a coin in, you'll be ensured of coming back. It didn't say that if you don't toss a coin in, you won't return.

From Trevi ...