Sunday, September 20, 2009

When in Rome....











Thanks for all of your support over the past year and more recently the thoughtful emails I have received. I am lucky to have so many great friends and such a loving family.

It has been an emotional and fast paced last week or so, covering a lot of Rome by foot, a train to Naples, the unexpected task of driving a car out of Naples to Sorrento and now by luck, chance, fate, human kindness, coincidence whatever you want to call it, I am staying in an apartment in Sorrento overlooking the Bay of Napoli. Mount Vesuvias is the first thing I see when I walk outside each morning. It's going to be hard to leave!

For those interested in the weather, it finally rained, in Rome. Thunder, lightning, the works.

On my first night in Rome I managed to get my hands on some tickets to a football match. Home team Lazio versus Juventus. I went along with a Japanese guy, nicknamed Micchi, who I met in my room at the youth hostel. We got separated once we arrived at the stadium gates as our tickets were in different sections of the ground. I sat behind the goals in the northern end of the Olympic Stadium. A very passionate bunch the Italian football fans; lots of chanting, flag and scarve waving, animated hand gestures. It was a tight game until around the 70th minute when Juventus scored, a deep depression instantly engulfed the Lazio supporters and a couple of fights broke out in the crowd. The small Juventus section made a lot of noise. At 80 minutes Lazio supporters started walking out of the ground, disgusted, heads down. At 90 minutes Juventus scored again and I thought I was going to witness my first soccer riot. I put my dissapointed Lazio fan face on and met Micchi outside the ground.

I went to the colosseum, the Sistine Chapel, Saint Peter's, Trevi Fountain, all the usual tourist highlights of Rome. Not so touristy was a nightclub Micchy and I caught a taxi to on a Sunday night. Apparently it was the 'nightlife street', night yes, life no. We decided to walk into the club with 2 patrons rather than 1. We reached a room where the techno beats were coming from to find a man at the end of the room infront of a computer, this man was the DJ. There was nobody else in the room, although this was the dancefloor. Some weird interpretative dance movements from Micchi and I didn't help bring others to the dancefloor. Although a lady with a broom did come out at one point and sweep around our feet. I danced with her broom for a short period before deciding to leave. Micchi was in some kind of a trance, really getting into the music, which was terrible. I dragged him out and decided to never go out 'clubbing' in Rome again.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Jeremy, absolutely enjoying reading your travels. So funny about your night out "clubbing".

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