A trip to Western Europe: Rome, part1

We've all heard the phrase "all roads lead to Rome" at one time or the other. Now this actually leads us there.

We woke up early in the morning for breakfast, and set out to go before the traffic getting heavy, but barely fifteen minutes after we left, our bus driver informed us that we should take a last look of Florence, and he meant it literally. Boy, we could never thank him enough.

Looking down from the top of the hill on our way to Rome outside of Florence, gave us an unprecedented, panoramic view of this magnificent city. We could actually view the whole city Florence and its surrounding areas. It was 100 times better than viewing it with google map's satellite. The only way to describe it, is being there.

Right in the center of this turn about is a huge sculpture of David. The view of the Duomo Plaza is best from here. We snapped a few pictures the hurried back on our way to Rome. We couldn't wait any longer.

It took us about 3 hours to get to Rome with a few stops here and there in between. We checked in to our hotel right after lunch. The hotel is right in the middle of the busy district on Via Cavour, half a block from train underground station, and half a mile from the beautiful but look abandoned church, the Santa Maria Maggiore. It took us no time before we were heading out for our little adventure before dinner. I had to memorized this place because after the tour, we would be on our own mini tour to Venice, Naples, Capri, Sorrento, and Amalfi Coast.

We walked to Santa Maria Maggiore church in the late afternoon, but the air was still pretty warm. It must have been in the high 80s. The church wasn't huge in any standard but not too small either. There was a 6 foot construction fence surrounding it. It looked abandoned and deserted for a while at least. We got confused to be certain which way was the front which was the back of the church because there were statues on both ends. Both sides of the church were adjacent to the streets, but both ends of the church had huge clearing areas with multiple steps to the entrance. The fence was locked so we could not get in.

We tried to see if there were anything ups and downs the streets closer to our hotel, but none was visible. We headed back and got ready for dinner.

After dinner, the sky was already dark. We decided to take a couple taxi cabs to Piazza Navona. It's a fifteen minute drive, and it costs between 10 to 15 Euro depending the size of the cabs. Trinh, and Uyên with Khiêm and Tan, my wife and I got there in a large van like taxi cab for 15 Euro. Navona Piazza is a large plaza full of sightseers, vendors, artists, and street performers that attracts a touristy, all ages crowd – but it’s always worth a stroll through to check out the performances and browse the makeshift galleries set up by local artists. We met another couples in our group there as well. We were fascinated with some kind of toys for boys in some forms of laser lights, and after some hard bargains, everyone spent some money to support these street hawkers.

In the middle of the square there were more amateur painting artists selling their artworks. Every now and then someone yelled "polizia" and the some of these hustlers scattered all over the place. But within minutes, they were all back in wave. There were so much fun just to walk around. After an hour or so, we all settled on a sidewalk cafe for a late night drink. It's more fun to sit on a sidewalk with drinking and watching people at the time. They are pretty expensive to any standard, 7 Euro for a 12 oz bottle, and 10 Euro for a glass of mixed liquor.

We got back to our hotel a little after midnight. Gotta be ready for tomorrow, our Rome tour. There would be tons of things to see and to do here.