Eat Pray Love - The Eternal City

My neglect to my blog recently has been down to a poorly laptop, that has only got back up and running today. I promise to keep it regular from now on and I've a few posts waiting in the wings...

So, my first post of 2011! I wanted to share my latest read, 'Eat Pray Love', by Elizabeth Gilbert. I'm sure you are no stranger to this title with it recently transformed into a motion picture, featuring Julia Roberts. 

© amazon 

Liz begins her search for herself in Rome, where she totally indulges in everything the glorious city has to offer. Reading through her tales has only got me longing to return myself, and I may quite possibly have to pass through when I finally get myself sorted for a bit of solo adventure! 

Having studied Classical Civilisation and Latin, Rome was like my guilty pleasure with history come alive (nerd!). One of my favourite places I visited was the Colosseum. After a sweltering day in the sun meandering around the Forum and inside the Colosseum, we sat for a few hours on the dusty street watching everyone else go about their business. Men were dressed as gladiators, stalls were selling merchandise (including some very appealing paper parasols) and it was at this point I noticed that all bins in Rome featured metal cast figures of Romulus and Remus. When the stalls started to wheel away and the gladiators took off their helmets, we crossed the street to find a sweet restaurant and ate pasta al fresco. By the time we had finished, it was nearing dusk and the air was cooler, so we walked uphill to a park overlooking the whole area, sat on the grass and watched the moon come up. 

© wikimedia

Away from all the tourist traps, we took to the beaten track and simply walked our way across Rome. As I love to travel and sap up all the culture of a given place, even the simple streets of Rome won me offer with their dusty cobbled roads, pastel fronted apartments and rows upon rows of scooters, typically European and Mediterranean.

© c.photoshelter

The food...the pizza...the ice cream! It's a wonder to why England, or anywhere else for that matter, bother to make pizza. Or why has no-one 'borrowed' the Italian secret? I can't describe how delicious and melt-in-the-mouth these pizzas are - utter perfection! The ice-creams were a treat to the eyes are they were an explosion of flavour - pineapple, lemon, toffee, mint, pear, melon, tiramisa...every day without fail we built towering concoctions of different flavours. 

© commondatastorage

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I know this isn't exactly 'fashion' related, and really about me reminiscing about a trip to Rome (a lot of which I have been doing lately). It has nothing to do with the company at that time, but the feeling I got from simply experiencing the place and the culture, and it's something I haven't felt in a while now having been caught up with work and other matters. I was happy, and those memories are so precious. So it's been a while for me to put it in words, but for this year and the ones that follow, I am going to try live for that feeling and follow through my dreams, even if I have to do so alone. What is life if you are waiting for someone to hold your hand? 2011 will be a new start for me, in every sense.