About Gustis, Metros and Euros - II

Day 1: Rome, Italy:
The first thing you observe about Rome is the abundance of tourists and tourism related businesses. Naturally, everything at the heart of Rome is very expensive. Water is 2 Euros a bottle while gas is cheaper at approximately 1.5 Euros per liter (more expensive than the US). Nevertheless you can't drink gas in Rome's weather and we had to resort in buying bottles near tourist locations. We learnt these lessons very quickly and my recommendation would be to visit grocery shops in residential areas to buy your ice cream or water or any other supplies you would need. The stuff there is inexpensive and we employed this trick for the rest of the tour. The afternoon we arrived at Rome we took the hop-on hop-off open tour bus to go around places of interest. The cost of the tour bus is around 18 Euros/per person/day. The buses circulate through Rome and you can ride on any bus between 9am - 7pm.

The tour started off from the Termini station and our first stop was Piazza Venezia. Rome is filled with huge stone/marble structures and all the roads are paved with stone. In our entire stay at Rome, I hardly remember seeing tarmac on the roads. "Piazza" in any Italian city is a circle (or a square) and the word pizza comes from the same root is my guess. Two guards, still as statues, guard the monument of Victor Emanuelle, the first king of unified Italy. My heart went out for the 2 guards who were weathering the heat and the place felt a little devoid of human rights. We then went to the Colosseum which is a few hundred meters from the Piazza. We were not very impressed with the Colosseum, though it could be a architecture marvel when it was built. Hoards of people visit the Colosseum, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world at 11 Euros a person. Many artists in ancient Roman military attire entertain tourists and pose for photographs with them for a price. There were a few outliers who had dressed themselves as Egypt's Pharaoh King Tut.


After a weary day, we thought of having some dinner before retiring for the day. Contrary to the belief that vegetarian food is hard to get, we found it relatively easy to find veggie food. A veggie pizza slice comes for around 3 euros, though later we found out that we could get an entire pizza for 4.5 euros. In the night, we decided to visit the fountains at Piazza Della Republica near the Termini station. It is quite a spectacle as it is surrounded by renaissance styled buildings and cobble stoned roads. On the automobile scene in Italy, we found many cars that were/are sold in India like the Daewoo Matiz, Cielo, Opel Astra, Fiat Uno among others hurtling across the stone streets of Rome.

Day 2: Rome, Italy

We were to visit the Vatican today and the tour would start at 9am. Rome has 2 metro lines, one that runs north and the other that runs south. The Termini station has a metro stop and it was pretty convenient for us. The ticket to use the metro is 1 euro. We took the metro at 8:30am to reach the Ottaviano, the starting point of the Vatican tour. Our tour guide was half hour late and we had to shell out 20 Euros per head towards the entrance fee to enter the Vatican museum. The Vatican, the smallest republic, is walled and appears like a fort on one side. The center of the Vatican is the gigantic St. Peter's square that hosts the St. Peter's basilica. The Vatican tour includes the museums, the Sistine chapel and the St. Peter's basilica (the biggest in the world). The most impressive aspect of the museum were the frescoes, paintings and the fantastic tapestries that were displayed. The ceilings appeared to be moulded carvings, but they were actually paintings in 2-d that give us a 3-d effect. Don't miss this aspect of the museum, it is very impressive. Over 4 million visitors visit the Vatican every year, apparently the most visited place on earth. I'm not very sure about the authenticity of this fact as I could imagine more people visiting Tirupati in an year. A quick check confirms my suspicion. Nevertheless, facts apart, the Vatican is pretty impressive. The tour guide explained to us the different messages Michelangelo had coded up in his world famous frescoes at the Sistine chapel. One thing that dawned upon me was the fact that philosophies of different religion had a unifying theme. The unifying theme is the detachment from the material world and the control of the senses.

Whenever we see renaissance statues, we observe the statues are blind. Was the sculptors of those times not adept at sculpting eyes? No, the truth is that gems formed the eyes of these statues and over time these gems were either stolen or lost. From the vast courtyard of the St. Peter's basilica the tour guide pointed us to the quarters of the Pope and the balcony from where he would wave at the people who come to visit the Vatican. After the visit to the Vatican we got back to our hotel and had a lunch of Pizza and pasta with pesto sauce at a nearby restaurant. Restaurants are pretty expensive, and our lunch costed around 25 Euros. We again set out later in the day and walked along side the Tiber. The Pantheon is another place we wanted to see and after walking through many small streets we did reach the place. People were very friendly in giving us directions even though they didn't know English. I remember the lady who showed us directions to the Pantheon walk half the distance with us, a very kind gesture. It reinforces my belief that people are basically good, it is only the circumstances that make them rude.

An observation I made about European cities is the presence of a river splitting the city. London has the Thames, Paris the Seine, Rome the Tiber, Prague the Vlatava, Florence the Arno, Vienna the Danube and so on. These smooth meandering rivers add to the appeal and romance of these cities. The heat was getting to us and we thought of having ice creams on our return to our hotel. In Italy, ice creams come in Gustis. One gusti is a scoop of ice cream and could cost around 1 Euro. By the end of our trip we were trained to observe the rates for a gusti of ice cream in any shop. In Rome and Florence, we couldn't find a place where a Gusti costed less than 1 Euro. But in Venice we found an American lady selling ice cream at 1.70 Euro for a couple of gustis, perhaps the cheapest I've seen. My wife's obsession with the fountains of Piazza Della Republica continued and we made another trip to that place that night. We were scheduled to depart Rome the very next day with memories of the Vatican paintings and the beautiful Tiber.

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