Italy Day 1

Midsummer again! and this time, it's Italy!! that's one country I always wanted to visit. Ever since I was a kid, I used to dream of going to Venice. I was curious about how people lived in a place where there was water everywhere! And finally the dream came true.

We started off from Helsinki , took a flight via frankfurt and landed at Rome's fiumicino airport. It's also called the Leonardo da vinci airport. I got a jolt when I got out of the plane and it read Leonardo da vinci airport. There are many ways to get to the main city of Rome. But the train is the fastest. The Leonardo express starts at the airport railway station and goes to the Roma-termini railway station, which is the central railway station of Rome. The train takes 40 minutes to reach Termini, but our train took almost an hour to reach. On the whole give yourself at least two hours to reach the city after landing. Tickets to reach Rome cost 14 euros each on the Leonardo express. These tickets can be bought at vending machines or at the tabachi, which are tobacco stores, but also sell bus tickets. They can be recognized by a board with 'T' outside the stores.

Once at the Termini we had to take a metro to the hostel. There are two metro lines in Rome line A and line B. These lines cross at the termini. Reaching the line A metro station from the railway station seemed to take forever. We took a 3 day tourist ticket caled the BTI. This ensured unlimited bus and metro rides for three days. This ticket costs 11 euros. (One bus/train ride for 90 minutes costs 1.10 euros.)

The hostel we stayed in was a couple of stops away from the central terminal by metro. The owner was very helpful, he gave us maps and a list of places we could see and buses we could take to get there. Once we were fresh we all trooped out to see the city.

First stop :Piazza Barberini. Piazza Barberini was named for the aristocratic Renaissance-era family that made their home in the palatial estate located here, Palazzo Barberini. At the center of the Piazza is the Triton fountain, which was built in 1643. About half a kilometre away is the famous Trevi fountan. It is by far the best fountain I have ever seen. It is said that if you turn your back to the fountain and drop a coin into it, you will return to Rome. There were a lot of tourists at the fountain even as late as 10 PM . It was simply breathtaking and I just wanted to sit there and watch the fountain for hours together. The center of the Trevi fountain is a magestic statue of Neptune riding two sea horses. The lighting from under water made the place look fabulous.

The map showed us that the Spanish steps were only a few steps away from us, so we decided to walk there before returning home by the last metro which was at 11:30. We all picked up a chicken panini (delicious) and a gelato(icecream) each to munch on the way. I took a limone(lemon) favoured gelato which was like eating 7up :). On the way to the spanish steps we got lost and got to see the Piazza colonna and the fontana di piazza colonna which were not on our list at all. Nice to see though.

The Spanish Steps are said to be the widest stairway in all Europe. It has the Trinia dei monti as a backdrop. Honestly I felt it was not all worth the hype. it was really dark, so we wanted to give it a second look the next day and headed back to the hostel.