15th August in Rome

The city of Rome is place of historic monuments, & it is also the romantic city. The city which is most visited single city in the world. Two days was a very short time period for the city like Roma, but still I made most of it.

The main historic city is hardly bigger, may be of the size of Thane city, From Kopari to Ghodbunder road by length & Kalwa to Upwan by width, that's all. But is packed with number of attractions. You walk across & live the history with you. Remove the modern buildings (recently built, may be during the last 100 years & that too are not so modern, simple 5 to 10 storey) & roads & Signals from the sight & you will experience as if you are in past. That is because anywhere you see, you find big grand monuments each bearing many tales with it. There are as many as 100 churches, all big, 50 big palaces & some other 20 monuments, great country-side, atleast 20 museaums devoted to some topic, as many as 1000 statues in these monuments of full & more size of angles, horses, kings & what not and many many big paintings on the big walls inside palaces & churches.

The vatican city, the smallest nation on earth, houses the biggest church in world which is founded on St Peter's tomb ( St Peter was the first pope, who was favourite/first disciple of Christ). It requires half a day to roam around this church. It has two half-circular pillar structures which lead to main church. encompoosed between these structures is St Peters' square, which can house 30000 people for pope's address. The best part of this vatican church is going on top of church via lift to the height of may be 70 floors & see Rome around. It is marvellous site 6 can not be described.

Second & Third important stop in Vatican is the museaum & Sistina chapel building where pope is elected. I could not visit both these as it was holiday on 15th August. I will not write about the individual monuments but common features. All buildings are awesome in size. You just can't imagine how they were built 1000-2000 years ago. The buildings are robust to last these many years. The architectural excellence is seen in arches & pillars. The sculpture can be admired in the form of statues & designs of the arches & pillars. The minutest of details can be seen on statues. The big paintings, frescos, have their liveliness still intact, the emotions & colour bright.

In short, Rome was engineering perfection, architectural excellence & artistic impressions. All over the city, you can travel in bus or tram or metro in just 4 Euros for full days. You see only tourists allover the city. People know English / French etc. You walk 5 minutes & you come across some marvel. It was a trip enjoyed by me beyond my imagination and was very unhappy to leave Rome on the second day. That's Rome there & now permananently in my heart.

People in Italy enjoy life. They are always joking & laughing. In the evening, you will find most of the young guys at restaurante with wine-glass. They will drink wine as if we have cutting tea, only that much quantity for 2 hours. August, people enjoy annual holiday. Even the normal shops like, stationery, chemist, they display board on shutter 'Shop closed for 15 days' in the month of August. Sunday, nobody on roads, real holiday, shops closed. Even on week-days all shops are closed at 7.00pm. & closed from 1.00 to 4.00 pm.

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Visit to Venice

I visited two cities. Both cities have uniqueness but quite different from each-other. Both are loved & liked by international tourists. Venice, city of back-waters & Rome, an historic marvel.

Some common features :

When we visited on Sunday, there were at least 25000 visitors in Venice & around one lakh in Rome. Of which 25% were Italians, 25% other Europeans, 25% American, 15% Chinese/Japanese/Koreans etc. Rest from rest of the world. You will find Indians rarely. More Bangla Deshis & Shrilankans than Indians. The cities are very clean. Both the cities, the tourist attractions are closed on Sundays & Public Holidays ( & that is the culture all over Italy). Many hotels for comfortable stay, little costly in Venice & more affordable in Rome. Venice, foreign languages hardly spoken but in Rome, you will find shop-keepers, guides speaking all European languages. The shop-attendants, the taxi-drivers, boat-operators, tourist-guides, and all those who come in contact with tourists are perfectly dressed, with ties, shoes & clean-shaven & handsome.

Venice is an international city, the city of beautiful back-water canals.

Venice is full of old buildings very close to each-other. Concrete jungle but buildings are in shape & strong & nice to look at & city is very clean. There are small path-ways (the gullies) between the buildings & people can enjoy the stroll because of the nice shops at the ground floor of the buildings & Amongst these buildings are are canals, or water-ways, where the water is steadily flowing not gushing. Also amongst these buildings are big old buildings or big monuments. All buildings are 3 to 4 storeys with their bases in water, perfect in size & shape, may be 200 years old. Their exterior is damaged & you can see the brick structure all over, but the people staying in there must be rich, because these flats cost the gold. All buildings have shops on ground floor, well decorated, air conditioned & the gullies between buildings have nice pavements. Many buildings have residential hotels on first/second/third floor , i.e. 50% area of these buildings house the flats, 50% hotels. It created a very bad impression on my mind, because of many buildings & too less trees. It looked like an ordinary city. I think Kerala, which is also famous house-boats & back-waters is much more attractive & nice than Venice.

We visited that part of the city which is most visted, hence may be commercial. But that is the special attraction for which Venice is famous for. Venice is the city of canals. The island may be as big as 2 Thanes. The canals ( kalve in Marathi ) are in one part of the city, Second part is three small islands which can be visited by house-boats, black GANDOLAs similar to what we have Kashmir & Kerala. May be the islands are beuatiful. Surprisingly , there is no beach in Venice. Only one beach, THE LIDO, where one has to travel by launch. May be visiting these two spots, islands & beach, would not have given me bad impression, These two spots we could not visit because of lack of time & fund. Each boat journey cost around 20 Euros, 1200 rupees for 1.5 hours or so. The part of the city, with these water-canals has a very very big palace, beautiful GOTHIC structure. Very grand big building which houses muesium of antics & pictures, It has shops on ground floor & a big church. This was Italy's & Europe's entry point, gate-way, from East in 1000-1200 a.d. It is something like our gate-way of India.

The shops in the palace & in the gullies were largely of ornaments, glass items, ceramic items these two are products of Venice), beautiful glass murals, very costly again. And rest of the shops are the typical of any tourist cities, nothing different, cameras, golds etc. Many many restaurants around serving typical Italian food, with wine


There are taxies in canals, motorised boats in water. There are three or four pick up points for GANDOLAs to pick up tourists, They carry group of 6 to 8 people in one, may be 3 km in water & bring back to the point of pick-up. You bring Dombivali nala in front of you, full to the ream & double the size but clean, That's all, two Gandolas pass with difficulty. They ferry you with some stops for monuments, they explain you the importance of that place. Max an hour for 20 Euros, too much.

The city (if it is like VT) is connected to Mestre, a city like Dadar, by a big wide bridge for motorway & railway. You enter the city, park the car. No cars allowed in Venice. That is the best part.

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