camera case for sale.

'Rome is a fairly safe city- you are most unlikely to be assaulted. However, theives are very active around Stazione termini, at the major sights such as the colosseum and the city's more expensive shopping streets, especially in the summer and during holiday and festival times. Pickpockets like to work on crowded buses.'*

It was the ending of a busy day of sightseeing and walking around in the hot muggy air of roma, it was about 10pm, and we jumped on a crowded bus, heading back towards our hostel, which was situated about 100m away from the main transport terminal in Roma. the bus was crowded, about 20 people past the reccommended safety limit. myself and my 3 other travelling mates jumped on just before the colosseum, 2 of them jumped off at the colosseum to take some night shots, while we continued back to the hostel, i had jumped on with my little olympus mju mini, and had got off the bus with and unzipped, empty camera case. spewing, and i think i knew who it was who stole it, but by the time i had got off at my stop and had looked for an decently english speaking policeman to back me up, the bus was far off into the distance. on one hand, im dissapointed that i didnt just jump on there and confront them myself, but then; they also looked pretty rough, and were probably armed, so in hindsight im glad i just let it go. i have good travel insurance so hopefully thayll take care of it. luckily it was at the start of the trip, and i had previously dumped all my photos so i didnt lose any valuable shots. when we all met up back at the hostel, i told the other 2 the story, and it turns out, that the same guys had also tried to knock off their camera as well, when they jumped off at the colosseum, the case was fully unzipped and camera half hanging out. very lucky, cause her camera had all the wicked photos on it, and was worth about 3 times the value of mine.

Roma.

welcome to Rome, i know that wasnt a very positive way to kick off this post. now ill get back to the start and tell you the best stuff of the trip, which was everything bar what i just wrote before. we flew into campiano at about 4pm local time, and had to get a bus from the tarmac of the airport to the terminal, funny thing was, the bus only took us 70m, im pretty sure we all could have walked that, as opposed to waiting 10mins on a bus for everyone to get in. walked out of the terminal, past a guard carrying a huge machine gun, and jumped on a bus heading towards the city centre. it really dawned on me than, that i really was in another country- sometimes when you travel to places such as the uk or usa. there are many similar things which make you feel not to far from home. but when immediately out of the airport, you struggle to communicate with the bus driver, you struggle to read the road signs and determine whether you really have got on the right bus, and when the 3 people your travelling with are the only people speaking english out of crammed 92 seater bus. you immediately felt like you're in a new country; and it felt great.

well found our hostel very easily, and dumped our gear. the 4 of us where sharing a room with 6 other people, all were really friendly and turned out to be great fun over the next few days. the great thing about roma is that pretty much all the main attractions are within walking distance, so off we went. even just walking around the streets you can see so much history and culture, totally amazing. saw a guy cutting people's hair in a deck chair in the street, people cooking pizzas in a woodfired oven on the street, it was all happening. we crusied down to the collesum to have a look, it seems weird to say that, after seeing so many pictures of it, seeing it in movies, travel books and as one of the most recognisable features of roma, we had the luxury of just walking there whenever we felt like it. it flew me away, its sheer size, it held 80,000 people, even today rarely do they make stadiums with that capacity; we spent quite a while there just taking it all in, we continued down the street and were just drinking it in, all the ancient architecture. we saw heaps of other buildings and and palaces that night, too many to mention, to many to remember all the names.

No matter where you go in the world there are always Indian people setting little gadgets and trinkets on the side of the road, a classic in roma, was little tripods and paintings, they would sit there with an old painting kit and pretend to be painting the pictures themselves, but then the guy 15m away was selling exactly the same paintings, to be that similar they must have gone to the same art school and learnt the same techniques. and the guys selling roses were funny as, they would walk up to a couple and give the lady 3 roses and walk away saying they were free, but then 2 mins later they would walk up to the man and ask for 5 euros, we got targeted alot. i never bought any roses. being hounded by indian dudes selling stuff that we didnt want made us tired, so we went back to the hostel and crashed.

we woke early on the morning of the 23rd as we had a lot to do,we decided to jump on a tour bus and see absoltuely everything in roma then head back and see the stuff in more detail that we thought was worthy of out limited time. we again headed back to the coleseum, and checked it out in full daylight i was keen to do a tour inside but time didnt permit, we flew through, the palentine, the pantheon, the spanish steps, spagna, and the font di trivea all in a matter of hours, all was absolutely amazing, had lunch in a nice little cafe down a random back alley with some guys playing music on the accordian accompanied by his mate playing spanish guitar. the pizza was awesome, very expensive, but you had to do it for the atmosphere. i would liek to go into more detail about what we saw, but time is running low, and its best explained with pictures-so ill try to get them up here soon.

my internet time is about to clock off, so i have to run, still so much more to write, in my next blog we'll be going on a journey from st. Peters basilica through the vatcan city and the sistine chapel and ending up in pisa with the worst constructed tower in the history of time. stay tuned.

*Lonely planet guide, Italy