DAYS 11 - 12 | FLORENCE TO ROME | ROME

On the 11th Day we left Florence and began the drive towards Rome. We arrived in Rome at around 5pm and decided that we would have dinner, and go out and see the city at night.

On arrival, the city was incredible. Traffic was intense, little scooters everywhere with no regard for law or traffic rules, cars everywhere, and the streets packed with people. We drove around quickly by all of the most important monuments and squares, and arrived to our hotel which was on Via del Corso, a few blocks away from the Piazza Venezia, the Fontana di Trevi, the ruins, and the Colosseo.

We went out that night, had dinner and after by-passing the pub crawl of Rome, decided to take a cab to an area called Testaccio which had one club after another. After a night of buggin out we got back to the hotel around 4am. Suren knocked out, and accompanied by Sergey, I grabbed my camera and equipment and we decided to walk the city at night. This wass the best time to see Rome because during the day all of the beautiful monuments, and sights had been packed with obnoxious tourists.

The first spot we hit was the Fontana di Trevi. For me, this is a really special place. One of the reasons I wanted to visit Italy was because of Fellini's and Antonioni's movies. On one level, they are masterpieces in cinematography, on another level they romanticize Italy. The famous scene in Fellini's La Dolce Vita (one of my favorite movies of all time) with Anita Ekberg and Marcello Mastroianni wading through the fountain made this location even more incredible. Even at 5am, people were still sitting around.





After a few shots, and some video we decided to head towards the Piazza Venezia. Again an absolutely stunning site. The scale, the detail, were mind-blowing. The amount of time, dedication, and engineering necessary to create such a masterpiece must have been enormous.





We continued towards the Colosseum following the Via del Fori Imperialli. This street holds statues of all of the Emperors of Rome, each in his own military stance. It's incredible to see the ruins to the left and to the right of this street, with statues of it's leaders adorning it. Whats most impressive is the massive structure which stands at the end, the Colosseum.






At around 7am I decided that it would be best to head back to the hotel room to get some sleep.
That afternoon, we saw the remainder of the city. We visited the enormous St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. The scale, the detail, and feeling of overwhelming authority and power being pressed upon you was undeniable.

















Eventually, we headed back to the hotel. In the evening we decided to leave Rome (we canceled our hotel room) and left for a small town on the east coast of Italy called Riccione, to italy's biggest night club, Cocorico.