Rome - Italy

We organised to spend three nights in Rome and cram in a lot of sightseeing so we booked a surprisingly cheap B&B right near the centre of town, train station and buses. When we arrived at the B&B we were moved to another building as they had an issue with the plumbing. Despite the extra walking with our gear it ended up being better as it was even closer to the train station. We had a large room and hardly saw the staff the whole time we were there. We got a basic breakfast of Yoghurt, Cereals and Toast and based ourselves from here for the following days.

We bought an open bus tour ticket for 48 hours which gave us unlimited trips of the hop-on-hop-off bus circuit around the city. On our first day we caught the bus firstly to the Colosseum area and after some research on the internet, lined up at the Palatine Hill entrance for tickets rather than the Colosseum entrance as the line is usually much longer. The tickets at either of these sites give you access to both and the Roman Forum as well. Despite the fact that we found the shorter line, we ended up waiting for two hours before getting our tickets at about midday.

Palatine Hill was worth seeing and had some excellent ruins to wander around but was nowhere near as epic to see at the Colosseum where we made our way to after an hour in the Palatine Hill and Roman Forum areas.

The Colosseum is as big as you have probably imagined it to be! The fact that it is all stone makes it feel even bigger. It is truly a shame they demolished part of it to use the materials to make other buildings in the past as it would be even bigger if intact. We spent perhaps an hour wandering around the building following one of the designated tour itineraries provided with the audio guide we hired. Since seeing the Colosseum we have met some people who only saw it from the outside as they did not want to line up for so long, but they really did miss out as it is as amazing from the inside as it is from the outside.

From the Colosseum we got back on board the bus and headed to the Trevi Fountain in the northern area of the city. Once again another sight worth seeing even though it was exceptionally busy! (Remember not to put your feet in the water as you will get whistled at by the police… Bec….) another must see place in Rome and to follow the tradition of throwing a coin in the fountain which they do clean out often and donate to charity… apparently…. From Trevi Fountain we headed back to our accommodation.

The second full day in Rome and we had planned to visit the Vatican to see the Sistine Chapel, but it was about 40 degrees and you have to wear long clothes and the chapel is actually located at the ended of a big museum area which takes an hour at least to get through… so we decided against it! By this stage of the trip we were a bit over museums! Instead we had a relaxing day catching up on some more sleep after two weeks of mainly camping and headed out on dusk to do the bus tour around Rome at night.

The tour at night is definitely worth doing as you do see a different side of the city. The monuments are all lit up and make for excellent photos if you manage to get a seat on top of the open bus. We broke up the trip by visiting the Rome ‘Time Elevator’ show which was an hour history lesson on the founding and changes to Rome over the years. It was a very interesting way of seeing the history (in moving chairs) but would have been better to do before we saw the sights they talked about in the show rather than after. From here we got back on the bus and continued around the city for another hour or two and saw the Vatican lit up at night as well as many of the other sites around Rome before getting back around 10:30pm.

The following day we caught the bus to Leonardo Da Vinci Airport to catch a flight to Crete in Greece. We had done some research into the best way to do the hour long trip to the airport including going by the designated airport shuttle bus or train but in the ended we found a bus out the front of the train station that was 3 Euro each (about a quarter of the price of train or shuttle bus) and only took 45 minutes…