Thursday, September 14, 2006

Roma...!

Bismillah.
We started our journey in Roma, Italia and it turned out to be quite different from what we had imagined. No fancy villas, just apartment buildings and streets that were quite littered for a nation with the reputation that it has...the subway trains had so much graffitti that we couldn't see out the windows to know what stop we were at! The odd part of the transportation system was that aside from the underground metro, we never saw people pay a fare, there was nobody collecting a fare (in fact, on the buses the driver was sealed off from the passengers)...there were just these odd yellow ticket 'stampers' that everyone ignored...so it was pretty much a free ride -- it wasn't until we got back home that we found out Italy's been running on an 'honour system'...and all that time we thought the yellow ticket stampers were just some guy's really bad idea that the country gave up on!
The first place to see was, of course, the Roman Colosseum...and oh, what a site! It's quite the feeling to stand inside something so ancient, so large, so famous -- something one has seen many a time in photos and history textbooks -- and suddenly one has been transported to it and is standing in it! We could not help it but wonder how human beings could have built something so sophisticated, so long ago, without any of the technology we have today...and yet they produced a far better architectural piece than anything in the modern world...
A view from the outside on a clear, blue summer day...

A magnificent view of the interior. In the centre are what used to be dungeons that held gladiators and animals...the floor has eroded to expose the place of much cruelty that lay beneath it...in the far back one can see the floor being restored.

To be continued, bi idhnillah

NOTE: All images on this blog are copyrighted and cannot be used without the express permission of Salikah Al-Tariq. All rights reserved.

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