Monday a la Roma!

La Fontana de trevi
Originally uploaded by davidnmartin98

Well, here we are on the train to Florence! As you might have guessed I did not get to find an internet cafe that would allow me to use my USB stick to upload even the blog file I had written on Sunday night. Here in Rome, most of the places we have tried have been internet cafes who charge extra for everything. Waving a USB stick or a flash card around attracts a 5e surcharge it seems, and with our limited financial situation, that is not something that we can do at present. Even explaining to people that I just want to access a text file on the stick with Sundays blog entry doesn't work! Ah well....it just means that when I finally get to do it, you people will have lots to read! Heaven only knows when I will get to blog some photos at this rate. It is also making me a little concerned as to how I will get access in Menorca, but I'll worry about that when we get there! Maybe finding someone who has a hotspot service and signing up for that will be the way to go, as long as there are no horrid restrictions etc...

So, back to the real blog! Yesterday, Monday, we didn't have to get up to go and queue for anything, so we ended up leaving the hotel around 9am. A quick croissant and coffee, and then we decided that we wanted to go and walk the shops. These days with no cash this was sure to be a tempting situation. But we fared well and were very restrained as we walked past Prada, Chanel, Bulgari etc....it’s easy to resist temptation when you have 30e a day to live on in a capital city! We hit the Spanish Steps, which is right in the middle of the designer shopping area and then just wandered, wending our way up to the Piazza de Popoleo, which was full of expensive shops and restaurants as well! It's hardly a place for the people with Gucci and Armani in residence! We had a sandwich sitting down on the steps of the obelisk at Popoleo and worked out our plan for the afternoon. This involved a number of churches who had art that was on our list. We saw the St Matthew sequence by Caravaggio, some ceiling by a painter I can't remember now, and a lesser known Michelangelo sculpture, Christ and the Cross. Tramping from place to place was fun and we certainly saw plenty. We also discovered the Roman Catholic churches latest way of making money. When you enter these churches it is now easy to find the Caravaggio’s etc....they are the ones in darkness! The churches have put pay boxes and timers on the lights in the chapels/alcoves were these images are, and to be able to see them you have to drop a euro in the machine, and that turns the light on for 1 minute. That’s $1.50 at the current exchange rate! So being dead poor, we just sat next to them and waited for rich people to put money in. I guess it is the next RC church fundraising event since bingo. A few churches that went to had problems with the money boxes though, and people dropped the cash but the lights stayed firmly off! It reminded me of the way the RC church used to sell indulgences to lessen your stay in purgatory. I wonder what happened to those people when they found out they had paid the cash and it didn't work either!

Anyway, we then hit the Trevi Fountain. With high hopes of some campery to Connie Francis and "three coins in the fountain" we joined the throngs of people. It was really quite impressive. Certainly much larger than I was expecting. I think because it is attached to a building and not free standing it adds to its enormity. There were lots and lots of people there, together with the obligatory hawkers, this time selling roses instead of rugs, and shawls as the weather was slightly warmer. And really, isn't a half dead rose at the Trevi Fountain a little more romantic than a 100% polyester prayer mat, which is what some of the hawkers were selling in the cold on Sunday. I swear it was the same lot of people who were following us around Rome. James, bless him, was as usual always fair game for the camera and posed mightily with his coins in front of the fountain while I snapped away. I also shot 10 seconds of video with James flinging his coins into the fountain too. Bet you all just can't wait till I get to upload stuff eh!

Onto the Parthenon next. In the words of Victoria (Perfect Spice) Beckham, this place is MAJOR! It is just huge and the fact that is so old and still standing is just amazing. It has an opening in the roof, so the rain just pores in, but then drain holes in the cambered floor take over to funnel the water off to the sewers. The sheer size of it all inside was just stunning. Raphael is buried inside, and the crowds around his tomb made me wonder what he would think of it all. Perhaps his day wasn't really so much different. The hawkers probably still sold shawls and mats, but without the polyester! It was now raining and the hawkers were waving umbrellas at us, so we moved on once more. James had discovered a little gay bookstore in the Centre Storico that he wanted to go visit, so we donned our rain hoods and sloshed our way through the rain. Bookstore was pretty much the same as every other bookstore in different country. Full of books that are in a different language! It also sold the usual novelty and toys as well, one of which was a lesbian doll called Bobbie. On the package it says "Your very own lesbian to play with". In richer days some people reading this blog would have been receiving these in the mail as gifts! You know who you are!

Now it was getting darker, and we were fading. What better place to fade into than the wine bar we had been to on Saturday and Sunday! We spent another pleasant 2 hours over a bottle of wine from Umbria and then decided to go have dinner in the same super-cheap but really excellent restaurant from Saturday night. We had bread, pasta, water and an accidentally ordered bottle of wine by James (yeah right!) all for 20e! On the way to the bus stop we stopped in at what was listed as a gay bar, but is now a restaurant and got fleeced for 10e for a small beer and a bottle of water, followed by our trip on the bus back to the hotel room. There ended our Monday!

So now we are sitting on the train to Florence, where we will arrive in about 40 minutes. The Eurostar train is great, and it's quite nice not to be pounding the streets for a while! When we get there, we have to find our hotel, check in and then it's off to see some art! David (Michelangelo's) is on the agenda, as is the Galleria degli Uffezi, the big art gallery of the trip. Not sure which will be today and which will be tomorrow yet. We leave Florence tomorrow night on the 10pm train. So likely the next blog will be then. I'll save this to my flash drive and keep it with me in the hope that I may be able to upload them soon!

Hope all are fine and dandy!

Love D&J