Marina's Bloggariffic

2nd of June is Festa Della Repubblica here in Italy and it is a national holiday.

Already a week before, Cart and I noticed some temporary seating being constructed near the Colosseo and he deduced that there will be a parade going on on the day itself. We didn’t have any intention of going to see the parade though. Wasn’t in the mood for being crunched by the huge amount of people that will be expected there. But this lady was there though and blogged about it.

Can you spot something interesting by the way?

Anyway! Cart and I were having lunch at L’Insalata Ricca and I suddenly remembered.

I was watching the Amazing race season 1 where one of the legs was in Italy. There was a detour challenge where contestants have to head to the Vittorio Emanuele Monument or to go to the giant foot.

So excitedly, I asked Cartcart, “Lets go see the giant foot!”

The only thing is, being totally unplanned, Cart started to ask me which giant foot I was talking about, which made me a little stunned since I thought that ALL Italians would have known where it was. But we did a quick online search on the dinky little screen of my mob phone.

After we’ve finished our lunch, we were off.

It was super crowded with tourists when we reached the Piazza Navona area. The pantheon itself was crawling with people from all over the world as if there was a congress going on. Such a contrast compared to just a few months ago. The touristy season has already started.

So I blended in very well

And we did the touristy thing to do – snapping pictures, looking at interesting buildings, walking around and appreciating where we were.

And we walked to places where were lesser known to tourists. Like this elephant statue and the church next to it. AndCart, being the proud Roman man, explained to me every detail that he knew about the place.

Like the name of the road where these men playing checkers, had an actual fig tree like its name sake.

And being a kepokian, sometimes I couldn’t help but to go up to a restaurant’s menu board and look at the prices and feel a little smug.

Pigeons eat for free and true Italian pigeons eat pizza and gelato

And eventually we reached a corner of a road where we found a giant foot.

Huh? This isn’t what I had in mind. The shape of the foot was different. It wasn’t smooth and it was wearing a sandal. We must be in the wrong place. But it was interesting to see anyway.

That a big shoe if you compared it to mine. And we all know that gladiator sandals are so stylish that its been revived back in fashion. The irony is, I’ve yet to see any Italians in the present time wearing them though :p

I looked at the statue and wondered if it could be part of a larger statue while Cart was postulating that this statue could be a sign from a shoemaker, telling that his shop was nearby. Its still a mystery for the both of us.

But in any case, the search of the giant foot continues …

(insert dramatic music)

Hello! I look hot right?! *coughs*

Anyway, Cart and I were at the Rose Garden in Circo Massimo last weekend. Its been slightly over a year since we’ve last been there, so we thought that we’d pay a visit before it closes its entry in mid June.

The rose garden, or the Roseto Comunale in Italian, is a municipal rose garden here in Rome which is open to all from the 10th of May to the 10th of June. There are a huge variety of roses here and personally for me, is a lovely place to visit if you are in Rome during these times. The temperature is comfortable and being spring time, flowers are blossoming.

The Roseto Comunale is probably not very touristy destination, but like Parco Laghetto, its another side of Rome which I find very charming.

Unfortunately, we’ve been having a rather crappy weather for the past few weeks with it raining incessantly. And I think that it affected how the roses looked. For lack of a better word, they dont look so “fresh”. Nevertheless, its very picturesque here with the huge variety of roses of different colours and kinds and with the iconic Vittorio Emanuele Monument and some Roman ruins in the background.

In any case, one of the easiest way to get here is by taking the subway and exiting the “Circo Massimo” stop. One of the first thing you’ll see is this huge, eye catching banner. I’m not sure if its a temporary or permanent banner though, its been there since the beginning of the year.

Anyways, you have a slow stroll and before you know it, you’re already at the Rose garden!

There were a healthy amount of people already there when Cart and I arrived. I spotted out families, groups of kids, even monks, priests and nuns.

All of them looking around excitedly, smelling, touching each rose. Many of them camwhoring with the roses. There was a couple who snapped pictures of themselves before we arrived there, and they were still camwhoring when Cart and I left the place. There were even people picnicking and making out. Which is understandable, since it *was* a romantic looking place.

Anyway! There are so many kinds of roses here, its quite mind boggling! The area is divided into several segments, one part where there are the original roses as well as the modern cultivated ones.

There were signs every few steps or so where we could read up more information about the roses. And there were a lot of things which I didn’t realise till now!

Like, did you know that there is no such thing as blue roses? Even with modern cultivation, roses do not have the right cells to carry the colour. The closest colours that it could carry are lilac and purple. So even if you do see a blue rose, its probably dyed.

And it was interesting for me to read that in ancient roman times, the emperor would have frequent orgies where one of the highlights were a false ceiling would open to drop down rose petals. And there was once, a drunk guest got trapped and suffocated under the rose petals.

Man. What a way to go.

Did you know that it took 900kg of rose petals to make about 5 grams of attar of rose? That was one of the reasons why ancient romans decided to cultivate their own roses rather than importing it from Africa since it was such a lucrative business.

To me, what was interesting was that there were a lot of roses which didn’t look like how a “typical” rose was supposed to look like – multiple layers petals, starting from a long bud. Like this flower below for example.

So I was quite surprised to see these flowers below categorized as roses too. They don’t look like roses since they had only one layer of petals. But Cart pointed out that they had thorns which was a strong sign that they were.

The name of this rose below is “Queen Mother” by the way, and I like the shade of pink. It doesn’t look very rose-like but the shape of the leaves and the thorns are a dead give away!

And speaking of names, there were loads of interesting named roses, like ‘Aspirin’ (!) ‘Aladdin’, ‘Purple Rain’, ‘Isn’t she lovely’ and others you could check out from the video at the end of this post. I really wonder how they named their roses. some of them are really curious.

And obviously while admiring the roses, I camwhored here and played out that I was part of the royale family. Its easy to imagine that here! Too bad that we didnt bring a long some tea and cakes while we discuss about croquet or something like that.

Next year

Here is a video I took while in the rose garden. Check out the crazy names that the roses have! And please excuse my ramblings

Very beautiful yeah? So if you’re in Rome during springtime, don’t forget to visit the lovely and charming rose garden near Circo Massimo!

Oh! And just in case you were wondering, my favourite flowers are yellow roses

If you liked this post, you might enjoy

• A day Circo Massimo
• The rest of the Italy category

Sidenote : Sha’s post totally reminds me back of my days in IRC. I used to spend hours in them and my nick used to be |rose| and then spyrulina. A little corny huh?