6 Top Tips -Rome

 

We found this welcome sign outside our window as we woke up the first morning in Rome

 
1) Don’t cut it short

No matter what anyone tells you, don’t cut your trip to Rome short. All of the major attractions in Rome can be “glanced” at in under a day (we did this, twice over) however if you really want to even scratch the surface of the history of this metropolis, consider staying on atleast 5 days. Read as much as you can process about the architecture, art and sculpture so you can appreciate the most treasured ruins of the world. But be forewarned that truly understanding Rome is a different feat altogether. I had my head spinning from reading the various guidebooks and texts to place everything in context. The entire city is an archaeological goldmine and every year newer sites are discovered dating back 1000 years while life above ground continues business as usual. As our tour guide explained, Everything you see in Rome is the past, present and the future – all at once. 

Some of the material that helped us with the research were the Metropolis series on Netflix, Rick Steves Rome on YouTube, The Blue Guide Rome among others. 

2) You can walk everywhere

If you stay in the centre of Rome (which you must), everything you must see is at a walkable distance. It is also highly recommended that you walk this city to fully experience its surprises and also because public transport within the centre is not very reliable. We stayed in a neighborhood near the Colosseum and were able to walk to the Vatican across the Tiber in under an hour. This was end of December, so walking in summer might be a breeze in comparison! Just carry a comfortable pair of shoes, a map and an appetite to sample all the good stuff you see along the way! 

3) Stay with locals

Ditch the hotels and stay with an Italian family in a bed and breakfast instead. Though this is a useful tip for most places, it makes most sense to do this in Italy as Italians like Indians live in big joint families in traditional compounds. We stayed in one such ethereal Air B&B property around Via Delle sette sale with a piece of history attached to its inception. Sharing walls with the compound of San Pietro in Vincoli which is home to Michelangelo’s Moses. Our hosts gave us excellent insight into the local life with their recommendations and tips and the icing on the cake for us was a home style three-course Christmas dinner prepared by them in our B&B kitchen(We still have dreams about that mean amatriciana sauce!) It was one of our favourite meals on the trip! 

We still salivate to the memory of our home-style meal at the B&B

 
4) Consider traveling Off-season

Never again were Spanish Steps seen so empty after Christmas

Rome is infamous for being too touristy and for good reason. Almost everyone we have ever talked to has always been put off by the hordes of tourists in this “eternal” city which made it impossible for them to truly appreciate its offerings. Fortunately, we arrived in Rome a day before Christmas Eve, and contrary to what you may think, Christmas in Rome is a closed family affair. Which meant that we got to experience Rome sans the crowds for 2 full days before they  descended in the city post Christmas. We could marvel at a near empty Piazza Navona on Christmas Eve, walk to St. Peter’s square at the Vatican and attend midnight mass at Santa Maria Maggiore – it was magical. Thus we highly recommend travelling in quieter seasons so you can really experience the elusive romance with Rome. 

One thing to keep in mind while travelling during Christmas though is that a lot of major attractions are shut down or have altered timings, so plan accordingly. 

5) Don’t forget the coffee  

Our Host said Panela had “the best coffee in Rome”. We agreed many times over!

It’s a no brainer – you never leave Italy without getting enough caffeine in your blood stream. But really, those tiny cappuccinos are to die for and can make you crave them for several months after you leave and they are bloody cheap! Ditch the tourist coffee shops and head to someplace that the locals swear by. Our host gave us several recommendations at La Merulana and we found ourselves alternating between cappuccinos and gelato at Panella and Ornelli respectively. If you want to pack this caffeinated nostalgia as you leave to cherish later, buy yourself one of those Italian coffee pot and a few packs of Lavazza. 

Bring a piece of Italy with you – make coffee the Italian way

 
6. Pre-book everything 

Seeing this piece by Caravaggio was the highlight of our churches trail day!

 

Remember when I told you about the insane swarms of tourists in Rome – don’t underestimate the lines at any of the Rome’s popular sights by any means. We had heard legends about the tickets/entry lines at these attractions and they were all absolutely true. Use your time wisely and book everything online in advance – the Colosseum, the Vatican Museums-Sistine chapel, Forum-Capitoline-palatine hill etc. Other attraction like the Pantheon, the various fountains have no entry fee so it becomes imperative that you visit these early morning to avoid the madness. Some of the most beautiful pieces of art, sculpture and architecture in Rome are free and reside inside churches. Zero on the artists you are interested and then figure out a church-trail that covers them. We did something similar and saw some spectacular works by Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Bernini and such. 
Have you been to the eternal city yet? What are some of your travel hacks for the city? 

Made of stars

We were made of stars, they of dust thought I 

Our love the warm glow of the winter sun, surreal like a fantasy 

While they lived in the shadow of winter, their love tainted by reality.

Ours shone bright through the day and come dark we became fireflies.

While they I thought could barely whisper at twilight.

And while their’s ebbs and floods through seasons,

Ours was a perennial river 

The depth of our connection, impregnable, invincible,

I believed we were eternity. 

And for years the webs of half truth spun around us, concealed from us our fragility.

But time has its tricks so fate gets to play its hand, to shatter naivety 

I slowly learned how we were part dust too, 

That winter does dawn on all

And no love flows perennially, for it grows and ebbs and dissolves even

That we were ordinary and extraordinary all at once,

Living our fantasy and reality, dreams and resentments 

That we could be fireflies in a moment, and yet be engulfed in darkness the next,

That love is faithful only to this moment and makes no promises to eternity.

Talking 30s

ABOUT THINGS

It remains a mystery to me,

How the mundane arranges itself around us,

To reside in nooks and crannies we overlook for years together

Tiny scraps of paper, immaterial objects we once fancied,

Half-squeezed tubes for ailments long healed, memorabilia from people long gone

Talismans and chains, beads from broken jewelry, and books buried under dust and negligence

A Coaster you picked on a trip a decade ago, wires to electronics you no longer remember,

the train tickets from a ride last summer, still stare back at you from the pile on your desk.

And a childhood photograph that has not found space on your wall

The lamp that needed repair some fortnights before your last birthday,

And drawers that are too little to hold the things you don’t need

The notebooks and pens that have remained hopeful of your return

Miniature idols of gods that your mother refuses to throw away,

And a chair that seats no one but your discarded clothes from each weary day

How much of it do we really love? How much of it would we ever need? How much of what you own is really you? And how much of it would you get to keep?

 

 

Europe Ministory Series: Berlin Remembers #ministory1

Memorial to the Book Burning at Bebenplatz

“That was only a prelude, there
where they burn books,
they burn in the end people.”
Heinrich Heine 1820

6 years ago as a student of architecture visiting Berlin for the first time, I found the city overwhelming to say the least. It shattered my naïve, romantic ideas of Europe that had been planted and nurtured on earlier trips to Western Europe, offering instead a 3-D textbook of history, full of blatant confessions of its unpleasant past. I remember being sucked into the profundity of Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum, where recreated experiences from the holocaust can draw the most casual of museum visitors into moments of silence.

Diet Travel: 5 tips for packing light!

There is only one thing I love more than travelling- It is travelling cheaply. While I don’t mind spending on experiences and have also warmed up to the idea of spending a little extra on accommodations, I would still do anything to save money on flights.  Thus, over the last few years, as a result of this practice, I have signed up for some dangerously tight connections (which exposes you to multiple contingencies) and have sometimes been denied the luxury of a free checked-in bag.

Like on our last trip to Bali where we flew airasia, I was faced with the conundrum of choosing between looking stylish in my holiday pictures and travelling light! Not the one to make compromises, I took this as an opportunity to teach myself to pack lighter while keeping my sartorial choices intact.  Here are some tips you may find useful when travelling for a duration of 5-7 days:

Air Asia is great in every way except their policy for paid checked-in bags

TO SAY THE TRUTH

Last year according to a certain report, India was ranked as the worst country in which to be a woman, beating nations like Saudi Arabia (where women are prohibited to drive). It should have been easy for me to dismiss that statistic as bizarre. After all, I am in a way the face of the urban woman in “new India” – the one who had access to equal opportunities all her life, is financially independent and works for a multi-national company in the busiest part of town. I wear the clothes I choose for myself, hang out in the company I enjoy and pay for my own luxury. In theory, I should be the last person to agree with a statistic that represents our sorry state of affairs, and yet, as someone who has had a far better life than some other women in our country, I know that those numbers only confirm what we have known all along across the rural and urban landscape of India.

Of January and some creme brulee

I have been good this January or I have tried really hard to be. Though if I were to honestly score myself for sticking to every resolution I made, I had a success rate of about 60%. But due to the structure of my resolutions chart, I think I did well in navigating through everything that the month had in store for me. This included some disappointments, some disagreements and work challenges that had the potential to make me quit the happiness project.

Remembering-Forgetting

They say, memories slip away
Through the long tunnel of time
Details fuse in a fog, ungraspable
Yet sometimes, why do patches unlock appearing in cruel clarity?
The whiff of a lost lover, somewhere in a crowd.
Calmness of a landscape that once pierced through your being.
The warmth in a stranger’s eyes when the conversation is long gone.
Or when you are 12 once again, and learned about mockery at school
The time you stopped to breathe in the freedom you knew would be soon gone
Or the day you saw traces of the girl your mother once was, confirming your own mortality
Why sometimes, does the fog clear, through an endless night,
To reveal this in cruel clarity.

A Spoonful of Sugar.

When I began my Happiness Project at the beginning of the month, cutting out refined sugar seemed like the most daunting task on the menu. 10 days in, I figure, it is the least of my challenges (though no one has tempted me with a good enough cake so far, in which case I may not stay good!) But waking up at 6 a.m at the peak of winters and getting 30 MINUTES of exercise daily are definitely looking like my problem areas for now. One of the things I am trying often to have myself wake up early is to assign myself a specific task for the morning. Having a task to wake up to (other than doing stretches, because that isn’t good enough a reason for the morning me), makes me better negotiate with myself the purpose for which I am sacrificing the extra time under the warmth of the blankets.

One of the most helpful resolutions for January have been – ‘ RESIST SARCASM’ AND ‘ CHANGE ATTITUDE ABOUT ONE THING’. Sarcasm has been my favorite tool for humor over the grown-up years, but more often than not, it has made me appear less friendlier to people than I actually am, or hurt people unknowingly. It is not to say I lose a part of my personality, but I want to be more mindful of what comes out of my mouth this year. Also, everyday, when I hit a road block about something, or struggle with a familiar annoyance, remembering to ‘change attitude about one thing’  can help me move on quickly sometimes, and I earn a point on my resolutions chart!

Designing my resolutions chart during the holidays was one thing, but implementing it in the fabric of my set life, with real people and situations is a challenge. When this month is over, maybe I will reward myself with a little dessert! 😉