Rome, roam, Roma, aroma...

This city is fabulous and old and beautiful. And it smells, like many things, some nicer than others. Yeah.

There were fruit/coconut/chestnut stands on many streets. Horribly overpriced, of course, but very atmospheric. This was taken near the Spanish Steps, and Keats and Shelley memorial house.

This man is Italy, in my mind. A cliché, maybe, but look at him!

So you wander around in alleys in Rome, and you come across a door, and you know it's hundreds of years old, and it's really nothing special to the locals, but to you it's a marvellous relic, a little piece of history in a city so impressive, even if just for its age... I wonder who has the key?

The Hall of Statues in the Vatican City Museum. I took a gazillion photos of archway after archway, but the beauty got to be so thick and suffocating, I didn't think it proper to impose it all on you.

So here's another photo from the museum, near the Etruscan section, en route to the Hall of Maps. What a fantastic place; filled to the brim with fantastic, awe-inspiring works of human creation... wow. I honestly don't think I could possibly convey the beauty of the rest of the place, so these two photos will have to suffice. Just a little taste...

Even an ordinary apartment building looked wonderful to me; these people get to live in Rome, and they have a nice archway, too. Must be nice.

All the subway trains were absolutely drenched in graffiti, really colourful stuff (although this dark photo doesn't do it justice, I know).

This is the ceiling of a cathedral whose name I've forgotton, but it's a perfect hemisphere, and that clear circle is open to the air, while the patch of light is located on the curved inner surface of the ceiling... imagine those curved squares as being lined with gold, all around the ceiling. It must have glittered so brightly... and you could tell what time it was by the position of the patch of light.

St. Paul's-in-the-Walls, an Anglican church with fantastic doors, as you can see.

This guy looked even better from the back, with the suit-minus-jacket, smoking a cigarette at a red light. Somehow classic...

These golden tapirs are small reproductions of the 'prize' given by a satirical news program ("Striscia la notizia," was it, Jojo?) to public figures/organizations who have screwed up. Jojo and Stefano and I saw a real one in the backseat of the ISTAT (the big statistics organization) president's car, while walking through Rome. They (ISTAT) had miscalculated the rate of inflation (big uh-oh), and the public was understandably quite upset. So Mr. President got a nice big tapir.

At first it's no big deal, but when you add the kids for scale, you see the cause of my awe. I think the theme of my trip, if not just my photo-taking, was a general appreciation for the things taken for granted by most residents of these ancient cities. I don't blame them; they're constantly surrounded by relics and monuments. I'm just glad I can enjoy it for what it is to me: a completely different environment that just happens to be extremely easy on the eyes.

And here's a fountain of the sort found all over the place (in Rome, at least). You simply stop up the bottom, and the water comes out a hole mid-way up the pipe. I love it; I saw a grown man duck down and take a sip from one while waiting for his light to change. Little things...

...like this 18th-century Madonna, located above the doorway of a shoe store. Just like that, so casually!

Right by the Trevi Fountain was this man, who will give you violin lessons in your house! Well, probably not my house, but still, it's nice of him to offer.

Not pictured: the 400+ churches, the line-up outside the Vatican Museum, the Colloseum and Trevi Fountain (overdone? I just didn't want to give you the same photos the postcards do), large numbers of motorcycles, street musicians, and every single street corner, since I was entranced by pretty much all of it.

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