A 5 day visit to Rome, September 2022

Sorry for a very late reply to your thread, the photos are great, I've never been there and your pictures make me much more inclined to make the effort to see Italy and in particular Rome, two millenia of history in the colosseum and clearly even more history almost everywhere you look.

I would love to visit many more of the major historic cities of this world, I'm not sure I will last long enough to get the chance but there is so much out there to see.

It's funny there are a couple of Irish pubs not too far from us in Las Pinas, well maybe about 5 miles down the Alabang-Zapote road, the one we most used to visit was the old Hobbit House in Malate or Ermita, it moved from it's original mouldy run down location but that's where I drank a very expensive Guiness in Metro Manila and an expensive McEwans export in Boracay

Found it, this is new one Ana was pregnant with Janna at the time, this was April 2008.


Yeah found the reason we found the new one.


Great Venue for music



Sorry don't mean to divert from Rome, the Irish bar connection just brought up some memories.

Jim Turner, yes American with Irish roots I think, 2016 at age of 77, Last Call at the Hobbit House of Manila | Philstar.com

Very sad I didn't realise that he had passed away back in September 2016, the business seems to have ceased in early December 2018 but their facebook page suggests they are still trying to reopen it.

It was anything but PC, it was a folk music venue where the waiters and bartenders were dwarves and midgets, it gave those people work and a life a purpose and they were lovely people, I hope he passed the business to them I suspect he did from the Facebook posts and the fact it continued running for a few years.

There is nothing in Ermita/Malalte anymore, it's dead compared to even a decade ago, and I don't mean the girly bars, I mean the good venues like the Library, gone, Hobbit House gone, the billiards hall on Adriatico gone, Bedrock gone, Golden Sala gone and moved to Makati (a restaurant owned by a Scot named Colin MacKay), the lovely Korean Palace restaurant gone, nothing left.

Back in May we went out with the kids hoping to maybe see some live music in the Library not realising it had closed, what we were offered by touts in the street was some kind of gay sex show, they were pushing that, I mean we were out with our kids and they are suggesting that we should go see something like that, the Library was an LGBT venue but it was fun and funny, everyone was welcome straight or gay and it is such a shame that it closed, for the most part it looks like it closed in reaction to Duterte's presidency out of fear.

I found this yesterday amongst all my documents.

Where are you planning for your next trip?

Love it