veni, vidi...

I'm back from my weekend in Rome with the girls. We had a great time and decided to go travelling together again soon. As you know I've known the Mermaid forever and love her to bits and my other travelling companion, known merely as C. until now but who will be known as"Coco" (the Mermaid told her about my blog and she requested to be renamed) is such a sweet-natured, soft-spoken cutie you can't but get on well with. In short - we made the perfect trio.

When we arrived on Friday afternoon, we were greeted by rain and not exactly Mediterranean temperatures. After we had checked into our suite (no, really) at Hotel Commore and were done taking silly pictures of each other sprawled on the flowery bed-spreads with flowery wallpaper as a backdrop, we went for a walk, then hopped on the metro and got off at Piazza di Spagna for a bit of window-shopping. We eventually ended up in a funny little trattoria with an interesting decoration scheme. As we were waiting for our pasta to arrive there was a strange sound, like a blender straining to crush ice-cubes. The Mermaid got up to find the source of the racket and reported that a huge parrot was perched on a table, daintily nibbling on peanuts. On my way to the toilet (where there was another heap of peanuts, by the way) I took a photo of him in his technicolour plumage. After a little digestive walk we wouldn't have minded taking the metro back as it was raining only to find out that in the capital city of Italy the last subway is at 9. Yep. N-I-N-E p.m. Needless to say our walk got a bit longer than intitially planned.

Walking actually featured pretty prominently and it was just as well that all three of us actually prefer walking to public transport when on vacation, not out of stinginess, but because you get to see so much more. Those among you who have been to Rome before (it was my 4th visit, by the way) and can vaguely remember the distances between the sights, please at least raise your eyebrows in disbelief when I tell you Saturday's route: From our hotel (pretty much opposite Santa Maria Maggiore, near Roma Termini railway station) we first visited the church and the nearby UPIM department store, then went back to our hotel to get rid of our shopping bags. Off we went to: Forum Romanum - the Collosseum - Circus Maxiums - la Bocca della Verità - the Trastevere district (lunch-stop) - St.Peter's/the Vatican - Castel Sant'Angelo - Piazza Navona- the Pantheon- the Trevi Fountain - the Spanish Steps and back to the hotel. Not bad, eh?

There was a looong queue on St. Peter's Square so we didn't make it into the cathedral this time.

Lots of bags (and shoes) were calling out to be bought but I exercised extreme restraint for a change. Well, as regards the shoes - after all that walking around in my sneakers I did not want to kill a poor shop assistant with the deadly fumes emanating from my socks...

I still haven't managed to get rid of my viscious cold which has now reached its cough stage. I'm barking like a rabid dog. Minus the foam around the mouth, I hasten to add.

Roman purchases: A summery jacket (in fuchsia pink), a bra ("nude-look-goes-flowery") with matching undies, a belt (brown with bronze sequins), a glass (?) ring (as can be seen on the first photo) for 30 cents from a Chinese shop near our hotel, a turquoise bracelet with the first letter of my actual name, tights (fishnet, what else) and socks, a tie for TD (Rome is definitely tie-paradise) and another one for favourite-male-colleague (FMC, not to be confused with FCN...), magazines (one with a free t-shirt, the other one with free knickers), chocolates and biscuits.