8th ENTRY: To Rome… which meant that I could meet Marie again!

Rome was exciting because Marie (my lovely ex-flatmate) was our tour guide! Haha… she could tell us all the historical and of course, architectural stuff (She studies that) about Rome, which was great because I could truly learn about the city from a local. =)

The more than 2000 years old Colosseum, Marie and me



















The beautiful night view!


















The Pantheon


















Piazza Navona























Spanish Steps


















Trevi Fountain























The Roman Forum


















La Bocca della Verità ("Mouth of Truth" in English). There's this legend that says that if you put your hand in and tell a lie, your hand will be chopped off.























Michelangelo's Moses
























Marie also brought us to a super big ice cream shop that sold more than 70 over flavours of ice cream!!! As you can imagine, haha, I was in ice cream heaven.

Different flavoured chocolate mousse


















All the rich crazy chocolatey flavours! I loved the rocher flavour.


















Fruit flavoured ice cream... can you spot the kiwi, coconut, pineapple, strawberry, lemon, banana and rock melon! haha


















I don't know (can't remember) what these flavours are... haha


















The more creamy flavours... one of it is a very yummy "Irish coffee" flavour.


















And this is interesting, around Rome there are these water points that look like decoration… but it’s actually water for you to drink! It’s like really cool water coolers… haha. Obviously I would never have known that if it wasn’t for Marie.

























Marie also brought us to eat at this Italian restaurant because the food was good and cheap (which it is because the price is the same as a restaurant in Singapore). It was fantastic to finally eat authentic Italian pasta. And we had this really interesting and super-lious dessert called cestino… it is a waffle bowl that had a delicious cream with strawberries inside.



















On the second day, we went to Marie’s apartment in Rome cos she and her flatmates cooked dinner for us! So sweet right? Haha. It was nice to meet her two flatmates Fabiola and Elisa. Marie mentioned before that many female Italian names ended with “a” and many male names ended with “o”. (Marie’s full name is Mariantonietta). Anyway, they cooked ravioli, saltimbocca (which literally means “jump in your mouth”) and baked potatoes. Yummy!

Ravioli set on the table for us.


















saltimbocca “jump in your mouth” which is Marie's fav :)



















We went to the Vatican City on the third day… griefs. The queue to get into the museum was so super duper super duper long! This is even though we were there at 9am (it opens at 10am)! In total, we queued for 2 hours and 45 minutes. Never in my life have I queued that long. By the time we got in, we were so tired from the queuing that we didn’t want to see much. But I enjoyed being in the Sistine Chapel quite a lot… looking at Michelangelo’s amazing work.

Inside the Vatican Museum.



















Then we went to the St Peter’s Basilica which is also part of the Vatican City.


















Inside the church is another famous sculpture, Michelangelo's Pietà, which was one of his earlier works - makes me feel sad to look at this sculpture. Actually, I didn't know that it was Mary and Jesus in her arms after the crucifixion. I just thought it was a mother mourning for her son's death... which is technically true.























The Vatican city is guarded by Swiss guards whose uniforms are completely unlike the normal guard uniform. Haha, a bit like clowns right?
























Anyway, two really interesting things happened in Rome:

One,
Did you know that we saw the pope??!! Not that it means much to me personally, but I think it’s like seeing the president or someone important in the world. Haha, who would think that I would see the pope on my trip in Rome!

Acutally I'm not 100% sure that it's the pope, but it seemed like him. Cos there were many people waiting for him to appear and police surrounding the area.


















This the church were he was at. It doesn't seem like there's much people, but actually there are... the picture's misleading. Haha. This is the church near Marie's apartment also.



















Two,
Bush came to Italy on our last day in Rome and we witnessed a huge huge huge rally against him! Never seen such a thing before, duh, such things are illegal in Singapore. There were tons of policemen to ensure that the crowd didn’t go out of hand.

The many many police cars at the back.


















A small teeny part of the massive rally.


















One of the many anti-Bush banners.



















To end off, I’m going to say a bimbotic thing. I love the look of the Italian men compared to every other European country that I’ve been to. I think I like the dark hair, deep eyes look. Hahahaha!