Date: December 31st, 2008
The Plan: See Rome, Celebrate New years eve, Spend night in Rome
We woke up this morning and looked out of the window, and it was cloudy. The forecast had predicted rain, so we packed an umbrella and took the hotel shuttle to the city center. Once we were in the city center we decided to just walk around. Our first stop was, as you would have guessed, was for cappuccino and pastries. Once we were all warmed up, we were in quest for the Colosseum. As we were walking (and trying to locate where we were in the map) we saw lot of ruins in the city. It was shocking how the ruins were in the middle of the city and how life around it evolved while the ruins stood still in time.
Roman Ruins - I
Rome was by far the biggest city we went to in Italy. The streets were wider, there weren’t that many cars (maybe it was because it was new years eve), and most of the people around were tourist. There are lot of statues all over the city, the buildings are very ornate. The whole time I was in Rome, I was thinking how life would have here back in 13AD, when these structures were being built and all these were new. Life would have been so grand, that is if you were born into the right family and so hard if not.
Steps leading to a Building
We did not do any tours inside these building, we walked around the Roman Forum.
Roman Forum
Buildings with Roman Forum in the foreground
We saw the Arch of Constantine, the work is so detailed makes one wonder centuries ago how did people manage to do all this? What kind of tools would they have used?
Arch of Constantine
Arch of Constantine from Colosseum
Then we walked over to the Colosseum, we took guided tour which was very informative. The tour guide said the movie gladiator depicts a gladiator’s life correctly but the story was not all correct. The whole structure was build in 8 years by slaves.
The Colosseum
The Colosseum - Inside
The Colosseum - Inside
During the Colosseum tour, the tour guide told us that the Vatican City was closed as it was New Years Eve, so we had to scrap that plan.
All these travelling had finally gotten to me and I got sick, had a nasty cough and stuffy nose. So we deiced to go back to the hotel, eat some cold medicine and get some rest. So we got to the hotel, got some rest and woke up at 6.00PM. When in Rome, do as the Romans so we decided to go ring in the New Year at the Colosseum like every other Roman. We got out of the hotel by 7.30, had some dinner and went to the Colosseum. We were surprised to find that it was not crowded (we were there at 8.30PM, maybe that was the reason). So walked around the city a little more and came back to the Colosseum. By this time the party crowd had started arriving. So we hung out there, grooved to the Italian music, and partied like the Italians.
Party at The Colosseum, the crowd before us
Party at The Colosseum, the crowd behind us
Romans have this custom of popping Champagne at midnight and spraying it all around (we had no clue about this). Around 11.45 we saw people opening up there umbrellas, and everyone pulling up the hoodies of their jackets, we knew something was going to happen. So we dug out our hats and put them on and counted down the new year in Italian. And then came the shower of champagne. Both Sherry and I got drenched in Champagne, our jackets, backpack everything was drenched in Champagne.
Sherry had put the Camera in as he did not want it getting wet so we do not have any pictures of millions of liters of Champagne being sprayed, but it was worth seeing. People were still partying, but we decided to split as we had a huge day the next day.
Our hotel shuttle only ran till 11.30PM so our plan was to take the Metro back to the hotel. We asked couple of people directions and they gave us directions in Italian and we thought we understood and we started walking. It was around 1.00 AM by then. We kept walking and it seemed like there was no Metro station in sight. We were both so exhausted by that time, we have been standing since 8.30PM and our feet were in so much pain. So we decided to catch a cab and then we couldn’t find any cab. So we walked some more, then finally we got a cab and he took us to the hotel.
We got to our rooms and then rinsed off out hats, and blow dried them. Blow dried our jackets and sprayed a bunch of Axe on it (as that was only jackets we had for another 4 days of the trip). We finally got to bed around 2.30 AM. We didn’t even want to think about the next day as that was day we had 9 hours of driving (the longest driving time in the entire trip).
