Long Overdue - Holiday pics: Day 1

I went on a ten day holiday to Europe last Chinese New Year with Chris and Terry. Our itinerary was to do four days Rome and four days Prague. Our first day saw us flying from KL to Amsterdam on KLM and then after a three hour transit, to Rome, arriving there on an early Saturday morning.

Nothing much to talk about Amsterdam's Schipol airport except it's really really big and its layout is more complicated than KLIA (if that's possible). Oh, and we saw a little dutch mouse scurrying around the cafe where we were having a cuppa. It was searching for some warmth in the near-freezing cold terminal (outside temperature was -4ºC!) and ended up basking on the floor vents that was spewing warm air.

The flight to Rome was pretty empty. Not many Dutch or Italians believe in catching the early flight, I guess. Oh, On the flight to Rome, they served the best yogurt I've ever tasted, Hero's Blueberry flavoured Fruit Yogurt. Absolutely delicious and absolutely sinful. ;-)

On arrival in Rome's Fiumiccino Airport, we took the train to Roma Termini (like taking the KLIA express to KL Sentral). Roma Termini is really big and busy, a bit like Pudu only more modern and cleaner. And everything is understandably in Italian. Luckily we figured out that 'Uscita' means Exit, otherwise we'd still be hopelessly lost in the building.

After finally checking into the 'pension' and taking a much needed short nap to recharge our batteries, we decided to get some fresh Italian air at the Villa Borghese. Villa Borghese is a whole Lake Garden's type of place complete with really beautiful parks, footpaths, galleries and of course, the Villa itself. It once belonged to a Roman aristocrat who amassed a lifetime of renaissance art by the likes of Bernini and Caravaggio and is now open to the public.... for a fee of course. On the right is a sample of what I saw in the gallery - a 16th century oil painting by German artist Cranach of the Goddess Venus and her child Cupid. I guess paganistic Roman mythology was still alive and well in Roman Catholic Italy back then.....


Ok, enough about the gallery. What was most appealing about Borghese was the park itself. Trees everywhere with jogging paths that snake sthrough some of the most scenic woodland (Italian style); no wonder the Italians look so damm fit and attractive. The weather, the parks, the coffee..... sigh.

Oh, there was this big comemorative sculpture dedicated to Goethe.... hmmmm.... funny, I thought Goethe was German. Anyway,the sculpture was breathtaking in its detail and and the figures were so lifelike because they had really interesting facial expressions, not exactly happy faces though.


See what I mean about the facial expressions?

On our way out of the park, we chanced upon a bunch of hippie types offering pony rides. Chris was tempted to ride one.... nah.... but anyway, the pony looks so cute. Hehehe