A Roman holiday: day 2 (I)
Our second day in Rome began with a visit to Trevi Fountain. The walk from the Barberini metro station to Trevi Fountain is a short one but I found plenty along the way to click. This was the first time I was seeing Rome in proper daylight and I was as fascinated by the colours of the buildings as their textures. Parts of Rome felt as if an artist had taken Paris and had applied a grunge filter to it in Photoshop.
Colours and textures
I heard Trevi Fountain before I saw it. It wasn’t the trickle of a fountain that I heard, it was the roar of a waterfall. That should’ve prepared me for the scale of what I was about to see but it didn’t. My jaw dropped at the sight of the 4-storey building they call a mere fountain.
Trevi Fountain
Hundreds of coins were lying on the fountain’s floor. According to local legend, throwing a coin into the Trevi fountain is supposed to bring you back to Rome. We didn’t throw any, but we’ll probably return to throw one in.
Coins thrown into Trevi Fountain
Our next stop was the Pantheon. On the way we came across a structure that looked suspiciously like it, but it wasn’t the real thing.
Pantheon (not!)
We also came across a closed shop that specialised in pendulum clocks. Christiaan Huygens would have been delighted. If you stare at the picture for a minute, you can actually hear the clocks tick in your head.
Christiaan Huygens delight
A Roman holiday: day 1
It took us a while to find our feet in Rome. The signage at Fiumicino airport was a bit confusing. We kept walking through long, empty corridors that looked like they would terminate into a wall but when we’d get there there’d be another long stretch on our left or on our right. We eventually made it to the train station at the airport, bought tickets for a ride to Tiburtina station and waited for the train at the desolate platform.
The platform at Fiumicino
Although we were carrying a printout of the map showing the route from Tiburtina station to our hotel, it took us a while to get to our hotel. I guess that bit of rear-view mirror wisdom, with a little change, can be applied to maps too - routes on maps are longer than they appear. It was just half past five in the evening, but this being November, the sun was already setting. The top floors of an apartment building close to our hotel caught the last of its golden-orange rays. The cluster of delicate, quaint TV antennas on the building’s roof reminded me a lot of India of my childhood (I am sure that the rundown/ramshackle footpaths did their bit too).
An apartment building in Rome
We were eager to make the most of whatever little was left of the day. We dumped our suitcase at our hotel and walked back to Tiburtina station. From here we caught the metro to the Colosseum. You see the Colosseum the moment you step out of the station. For a building of that size to be merely standing there after thousands of years is nothing short of a miracle. It’s beautifully lit up at night - a sight that’ll stay with me for a very long time.
We picked a detailed map of Rome from a souvenir shop close to the Colosseum. Emboldened by our latest possession, we spent close to an hour wandering around the Colosseum but only managed to find another Metro station for a ride back to the hotel. While I tried to sleep, the wife studied the map and chalked out our route for the next day. I could tell that there’d be no purposeless dawdling the next day.
Prague ✈ Amsterdam
Some random observations from our flight back to Amsterdam from Prague.
Czech Airlines’ ads had imagery that felt a bit odd for an airline ad. A commercial flight in which you get to experience zero gravity cannot be a very happy a one:
The sort of things you don’t want to see on an airlines’ poster
The in-flight sales catalog had a section dedicated to cigarettes. Dire warnings were plastered in big lettering. If this is the extent of their concern for smokers’ health, I wonder why they bother selling it on the flight anyway?
Well if you are so concerned, why are you selling it?
As our flight entered the Netherlands, we could see green fields with endless rows of windmills wind turbines through the clouds. They are quite a sight from that height:
On way to the Schiphol airport
On way to the Schiphol airport
I wish one could stop a flight mid-air, roll down the windows, and compose that perfect shot. Perhaps this is what the aforementioned Czech Airlines ad was trying to tell me?
Rain here v rain there
Woke up today to a rainy morning in Amsterdam. Rains here remind me of Chopin’s first nocturne:
Thinking of rains in Bangalore in terms of Chopin’s compositions brings the last movement of his first piano concerto to mind:
Plodding through the darkness
I recently finished reading Aldous Huxley’s The Devils Of Loudon. While the main subject of the book was the chain of events that culminated in the burning of Urbain Grandier at the stake, there were plenty of insightful asides that paint a vivid picture of the life in a 17th century French commune. I found this passage morbidly fascinating:
M. Adam and his fellow apothecaries sold Perpetual Pills of metallic antimony. These were swallowed, irritated the mucous membrane as they passed through the intestine, thus acting as a purgative and be recovered from the chamber pot, washed and used again, indefinitely. After the first capital outlay, there was no further need for spending money on catharitics. Dr. Patin might fulminate and the Parlement forbid; but for the costive French bourgeois the appeal of antimony was irresistible. Perpetual Pills were treated as heirlooms and after passing through one generation were passed on to the next.
We now look at the medeival doctors’ understanding of the human body; their bloodlettings, clysters and humors, with a sense of pity mingled with horror. Considering we began figuring out anitbiotics less than 90 years ago and that we were still discovering vitamins till as late as 1941, I wonder how much there is that we still don’t know. More importantly, will the generation 200 years from now look at our present medical practices and shake their heads in disbelief at our ignorance?
The fog has cleared
Within a day of writing this post, the fog in Amsterdam went away and so far it hasn’t shown any sign of returning - not even early in the morning. This is the view it had been cutting us off from:
Ghost ship
The view of IJ from our home at night
The houses across the river look like carved, lit-up Halloween pumpkins. It’s hard to imagine sometimes that each distant illuminated window is a house with people, lives and stories. I can stare at the lights of moving ships and ferries and their colourful reflections for hours without tiring.