Thu 4 Oct 2007
Posted by mobile phone:
On sunday evening we got into rome and got settled in. We took a train into Termini station and the the metro to within a few blocks from our hotel. It took us a minute once we got out of the station to get our berrings and figure out how to get to our hotel.
Crossing the street has been one of the first things we had to aclimate to. Cars dont stop (unless there is a light involved). If you are in the street they night slow down, but its best to cross quickly.
When we got in on sunday we figured that that was the slow time. On Monday morning we woke up to hear the sounds of the city getting to work. The area that we were staying in was near the shopping district. All the boutiques you could ever think of were there. But as it turns out people don’t all go back to work on monday morning. Many of the shops didn’t open at all and the ones that opened late did so around 13:30 (1:30). Now that is a schedual I could support.
On tuesday is when the flow of Rome really became evident. There were so many more cars and people on the streets and people on scooters out. It is absolutely amazing how these the different entities move together. Granted the cars are tiny. You see alot of SMART cars and Mini-like cars. And the scooters that people drive are all newish and in good condition. In the flow of traffic the scooters weave around the cars and they both weave around the people that regularly walk on the side of the old streets In the time that we have been here we have hardly heard horns being used.
Clearly this style evolved over the last hundreds of years and it really is just amazing to watch. And experience. We took a cab last night during a fairly busy time and it wa crazy. Steph definately would not like being a passenger in one of those cabs.
