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. DSC00795_blog

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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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.

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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.