Wednesday May 30, Rome!

Where do I start. Rome is like one big outdoor Museum, to turn a corner and see in front of you a world-famous building or fountain or piazza. Everywhere you turn there is history on display. And we loved it. The town is alive with tourists, of scooters zipping down narrow roads, horns tooting and the background noise of sirens everywhere. Pedestrian crossings where your take life into your hands and dodge the cars coming through. And police and soldiers, weapons in hand keeping an eye on everyone.  And city guides everywhere leading large groups of tourists through the streets with their flags in the air. And the touts, hassling you to join tours or buy goods. And the aching legs as you lose your way in a city that has very few signposts and everyone around is reading maps, or iPhones to work out where they are…just like us. And we survived…just!

Woke to rain pitter pattering on the roof and it was very grey when we joined the shuttle bus at 8.30 that took us to the local railway station. First impressions of seeing trains passing by covered in graffiti, just like ours when it arrived and the views from the window during the 20 minute trip into central Rome with litter and graffiti everywhere was certainly a bit off putting. But within a few minutes of leaving the train and finding sculptured monuments in huge piazzas, it all got forgotten. The forecast wasn’t good so decided to just start walking and get the feel of the place and then decide if we would take a city bus tour. It was still early and the city was just coming alive. Found the Trevi Fountain, quite amazing but surprised that there was no water running over it. We hung around for a while, just like all the other tourists but nothing happened do threw a coin in and continued. There was no sign of rain and decided that we would just keep walking with map in hand and exploring the sites. An early lunch stop for a pizza and coffee and then it was onto the Colosseum, seeming so familiar with all the photos we see of it. The touts were onto to us to take tours and jump the queues, telling us there was a two hour wait to get in and they could get us in straight away…at a price! We opted for the queue and within 40 minutes we were through security and had our tickets, the time passed quickly as we chatted to a very nice Belgium couple. Wow, what an impressive building, could not get over the size of it and had to keep reminding ourselves that it had been here for over 2000 years. So glad we were able to get inside and have a good look. By this stage our bodies were feeling the aches and we managed to have to retrace our steps a number of times as we got into the wrong area and ended up going up the Palatino.

Eventually back on the right road and it was time to stop for an Aperol Spritzer for awhile and watch the chaos in front of us. Very timely as the rain just bucketed down for about 30 minutes, then the sun came out again. It was time to head back to the train station via the Piazza Navonna and the Parthenon, another fantastic area where we could have spent a lot more time….and I did want a gelato from some amazing looking shops advertising 150 different flavours with queues out the doors but knew we had a lot more walking to get the train to be back for the 6pm shuttle bus pickup. We made it with 5 minutes to spare. Whew.

Would like to go back to the Vatican and St Peters Square tomorrow but Ian is a bit broken, so that is still work in progress.

Trevi Fountain without the water running...shame!

In the "poo"

We queued and made it inside the colliseum.

Photo shoot

Pantheon

Grafitti covered trains.