A week out of town for me during Easter, I'm posting this at Ali's request 
We had a fun week in Rome, family trip. Arrived on Sunday, just early enough to catch Roma - Parma and left last Sunday. The game was fun, pretty large stadium with tons of Romanistas and only 50-100 Parma fans. It was pretty loud with all the people but not a lot of singing, mostly just noise. Roma opened the scoring through Totti, not too spectacular, looked a tad coincidental. But he had some moves Parma couldn't quite handle, fouled him a lot but he also falls lightly now and then. Adriano who was quite dangerous for most of the match levelled the scores with an excellent powerful freekick, just like last year for Fiorentina. Then it was mostly Roma pushing for a win even though Parma needed the points more to climb to 4th ahead of Lazio. Substitute Gigou got the last word slotting in a cross. Candela stood out as a class performer once again, Dacourt was mostly just a waste of space. Around the stadium they had a lot of shirts and various Roma items on sale, seem to be popular right after a win.
The next few days we saw a lot of the sights... the Vatican, the Vatican museum, went to a Pope audience though it wasn't that spectacular cause I had been to one before, we saw the old Roman artifacts, saw a ton of various churches and less known places. What I like about Rome is that it doesn't have the feel of a metropoly like Paris. It's quieter and friendlier. And also a lot smaller so walking around the streets is pleasant. But as any tourist center the plethora of objects on sale aimed at tourists is overwhelming, every other street corner has t-shirts with the Colosseum on them. But then you also have stuff to see everywhere, Roman ruins all over the city and so on.
What always amazes me is how people blindly flock to the most famous places seemingly just cause they're in the tour book. Walking by they just seem to ignore everything else except for the target. There is one building I find quite impressive, I think it's the ministry of justice or something like that, not far from the Vatican but noone ever notices it cause it's not famous. You also have the huge building next to the capitol, facing the Piazza Venezia (can't remember what it's for) but that one's just semi-interesting and few people come and check it out, the masses march on to the Forum Romanum or better yet the Colosseum.
For a chill out place, the Villa Borghese is pretty cool, a large park overlooking an art gallery in the heart of the city. But more people take to the Spanish steps not far from there, especially in the evenings.
Come Wednesday, I had completely forgotten about the derby in the Coppa semis that was to be played. The buildup was a lot more intense from the Parma game, streets were flooded with people heading for the stadium, though all Romanisti. I just spotted a few Laziale on the way, it does seem like they all live in Lazio.. Seeing guys selling tickets on the street I thought it was sold out so I got mine from this guy, didn't quite know if it was real but they let me in eventually.. A fair share of cops lined up for any postmatch action too. I found out my seat was right in the middle of the crackers in the Lazio curva. Took a while before they let us in, game had already started by then. Lazio needed a goal and had some good opportunities. And Deki I really wouldn't mind at Juve, the heart of Lazio's defence and very skillful. The stadium was really loud, mostly filled up with Romanisti. Lazio fans were just in the curva and there were 20-25k empty seats. This time there was a lot of singing, very enthusiastic people evidently. A lot of the songs I made out to be not too flattering towards Roma, also accompanied by racist taunts at Roma's non white players. :groan: But it wasn't to happen for Lazio, Capello made sense by introducing Montella for the ineffective Cassano and the former scored the only goal. Lazio were denied a late consolation goal the reason of which I never found out. I thought Lazio were better overall but with no Juve I don't really care who wins the Coppa. The curious thing about the Lazio curva was that they had speakers aimed at the crowd, with some nutcase yelling stuff trying to rally the crowd. And it worked too. I noticed they usually sell that Caffe Borghese stuff before the games, guessing that's coffee to get them going. Walking from the stadium after a game is also cool, thousands of people crowding the street, traffic lights don't exist and it's just chaos..
On the Juve front, the fake shirts really suck right now, it seems they have to screw them up to make them different from the original, the result isn't impressive. I thought the Milan ones looked the best, Inter's was pretty close too. But they still cost only €10 to the original which is at €60-70 and to me that's a good deal. My brother got two Juve shirts and 3 others, still set him back less than the price of one genuine replica so... I wanted to get one of them stylish Azzurri shirts but settled for a slightly less stylish fake.
Oh and pics to follow whenever I get them done.
We had a fun week in Rome, family trip. Arrived on Sunday, just early enough to catch Roma - Parma and left last Sunday. The game was fun, pretty large stadium with tons of Romanistas and only 50-100 Parma fans. It was pretty loud with all the people but not a lot of singing, mostly just noise. Roma opened the scoring through Totti, not too spectacular, looked a tad coincidental. But he had some moves Parma couldn't quite handle, fouled him a lot but he also falls lightly now and then. Adriano who was quite dangerous for most of the match levelled the scores with an excellent powerful freekick, just like last year for Fiorentina. Then it was mostly Roma pushing for a win even though Parma needed the points more to climb to 4th ahead of Lazio. Substitute Gigou got the last word slotting in a cross. Candela stood out as a class performer once again, Dacourt was mostly just a waste of space. Around the stadium they had a lot of shirts and various Roma items on sale, seem to be popular right after a win.
The next few days we saw a lot of the sights... the Vatican, the Vatican museum, went to a Pope audience though it wasn't that spectacular cause I had been to one before, we saw the old Roman artifacts, saw a ton of various churches and less known places. What I like about Rome is that it doesn't have the feel of a metropoly like Paris. It's quieter and friendlier. And also a lot smaller so walking around the streets is pleasant. But as any tourist center the plethora of objects on sale aimed at tourists is overwhelming, every other street corner has t-shirts with the Colosseum on them. But then you also have stuff to see everywhere, Roman ruins all over the city and so on.
What always amazes me is how people blindly flock to the most famous places seemingly just cause they're in the tour book. Walking by they just seem to ignore everything else except for the target. There is one building I find quite impressive, I think it's the ministry of justice or something like that, not far from the Vatican but noone ever notices it cause it's not famous. You also have the huge building next to the capitol, facing the Piazza Venezia (can't remember what it's for) but that one's just semi-interesting and few people come and check it out, the masses march on to the Forum Romanum or better yet the Colosseum.
For a chill out place, the Villa Borghese is pretty cool, a large park overlooking an art gallery in the heart of the city. But more people take to the Spanish steps not far from there, especially in the evenings.
Come Wednesday, I had completely forgotten about the derby in the Coppa semis that was to be played. The buildup was a lot more intense from the Parma game, streets were flooded with people heading for the stadium, though all Romanisti. I just spotted a few Laziale on the way, it does seem like they all live in Lazio..
Seeing guys selling tickets on the street I thought it was sold out so I got mine from this guy, didn't quite know if it was real but they let me in eventually.. A fair share of cops lined up for any postmatch action too. I found out my seat was right in the middle of the crackers in the Lazio curva. Took a while before they let us in, game had already started by then. Lazio needed a goal and had some good opportunities. And Deki I really wouldn't mind at Juve, the heart of Lazio's defence and very skillful. The stadium was really loud, mostly filled up with Romanisti. Lazio fans were just in the curva and there were 20-25k empty seats. This time there was a lot of singing, very enthusiastic people evidently. A lot of the songs I made out to be not too flattering towards Roma, also accompanied by racist taunts at Roma's non white players. :groan: But it wasn't to happen for Lazio, Capello made sense by introducing Montella for the ineffective Cassano and the former scored the only goal. Lazio were denied a late consolation goal the reason of which I never found out. I thought Lazio were better overall but with no Juve I don't really care who wins the Coppa. The curious thing about the Lazio curva was that they had speakers aimed at the crowd, with some nutcase yelling stuff trying to rally the crowd. And it worked too. I noticed they usually sell that Caffe Borghese stuff before the games, guessing that's coffee to get them going. Walking from the stadium after a game is also cool, thousands of people crowding the street, traffic lights don't exist and it's just chaos.. On the Juve front, the fake shirts really suck right now, it seems they have to screw them up to make them different from the original, the result isn't impressive. I thought the Milan ones looked the best, Inter's was pretty close too. But they still cost only €10 to the original which is at €60-70 and to me that's a good deal. My brother got two Juve shirts and 3 others, still set him back less than the price of one genuine replica so...
I wanted to get one of them stylish Azzurri shirts but settled for a slightly less stylish fake. Oh and pics to follow whenever I get them done.
Buy on AliExpress.com
Can't wait for the pics. 
