Italy – lonesojourns

Full-length Feature: Tracing the Mediterranean (Part 4) – Lost in Translation (Part 2 of 2)

Romanticising about Rome is not the same as loving it. That’s something I wanted to clarify, given how I have waxed lyrical about the Eternal City in my previous post.
Beautiful though it may be, there were times I felt a little lost in translation. Prior to visiting Rome, I have been warned by many friends and family about pick-pocketing and bag-snatchers. I personally witnessed at close proximity a Roma (gypsy) woman try to put an arm around a girl (who’s probably no older than 20) while with her other hand, attempt to reach into her handbag. And this incident took place a few steps from the grandiose Church of Santa Maria Maggiore.

The irony of it all really, when you take into account that to get into the church, you would have to pass through security and bag-check. Here, a few steps behind the church, petty crime like stealing and pick-pocketing go on, unchecked.

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March 26, 2019April 5, 2021 by lonesojourns Categories: TravelTags: Arts, Culture, History, Italy, Lifestyle, Museums, Rome, Sightseeing, Travel Leave a comment

Full-length Feature: Tracing the Mediterranean (Part 3) – A Heart Full of Rome (Part 1 of 2)

Rome is drop-dead beautiful!!

I’m lost for descriptions every time I look at the Rome skyline at sunset. A plethora of emotions goes through your heart as you gaze and admire. Everywhere you look, all 360 degrees, there’s something that draws out from you a sigh of contentment, of admiration, of awe and wonder.

I’m not going to describe or go into detail about the sights I have seen in my one week stay in Rome. For these, you have a host of travel guides or blogs that will do these sights more justice than me.

Instead, I shall focus on my experiences and thoughts on what I’ve seen and felt in Rome.

DSC00098_copy — View from Victor Emmanuel II

I have to admit, I didn’t know where to start my exploration of Rome when I first arrived. I mean, I already had some kind of an itinerary in mind, but there seems to me, so much to see and do in the Eternal City.

For the first two days, I decided to follow closely a walking guide called Romewise.com by Elyssa Bernard, that was suggested to me by a young Polish girl, who bunked in the same room as me during my stay in Naples. She recommended the website because she and her sister had relied on it for their three-day tour of Rome and found it to be quite beneficial.

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Note: This post features only photographs taken from the first day of my walking tour in Rome. More photographs of Rome will be featured in Part 2.

March 5, 2019April 5, 2021 by lonesojourns Categories: TravelTags: Arts, Culture, Europe, History, Italy, Lifestyle, Museums, Parks, Rome, Sightseeing, Travel Leave a comment

Full-length Feature: Tracing the Mediterranean (Part 2) – The Best Coffee is in Naples

For many of you, I’m sure, Italy is no stranger. The country, which boasts 54 World Heritage Sites, including countless priceless relics / ruins from the glorious Roman Empire (which at its peak, stretched from as far as the Middle East and North Africa to the south of England), is abundantly rich in ancient history, tradition, food and culture.

For me, after 40 years of my existence, this would only be my first trip to the famous Shoe/Boot of the Mediterranean. And one that took me more than a month to put the itinerary together…

Now, back to Naples.

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February 23, 2019April 5, 2021 by lonesojourns Categories: TravelTags: Coffee, Culture, History, Italy, Mediterranean, Naples, Nature, Neapolitan, Pizza, Travel 1 Comment

Full-length Feature: Tracing the Mediterranean (Part 1)

I promised to leave Japan when I wrote my last post for 2018. As some of you might know, I failed to do so. This time, it’s for real.

This is a trip that has been four years in the making. I first had the idea of tracing the cities along the Mediterranean coastline in 2016, because I’ve always been fascinated with the Mediterranean region.

Countries like Italy, the south of France, Spain and Portugal are so rich in history, cuisine and culture. I had always been interested in ancient civilizations, in particular the Greek and Roman Empires.

Of course, to visit every major city in the Mediterranean region in one trip is almost impossible. I originally planned to spend four and a half months covering the coastline from Central Italy to Portugal, but due to my sheer ignorance of the Schengen ruling, I was forced to cut Portugal (and a side trip to Morocco) altogether and scale down the plan to meet the 90-day allowance for non-European Union citizens.

Still, three months of traveling nonetheless looks a bit daunting, given the longest I’ve continuously been on the road (not including my two-year stay in Japan) was a 24-day solo trip to Central and Eastern Europe (Germany, Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, and Austria) back in June, 2012.

*Central & Eastern Europe Trip – June 2012*

This time, I would spend almost three weeks to slightly over a month in each of the Mediterranean countries I planned to visit, starting with Italy, then to the south of France, and finally ending in Spain.

My first stop?

Naples, Italy. LS

February 23, 2019February 25, 2019 by lonesojourns Categories: TravelTags: Culture, Europe, France, History, Italy, Mediterranean, Portugal, Spain, Travel Leave a comment