ROMA!!
Trip Start
Sep 04, 2007
1
16
23
Trip End
Oct 26, 2007
Rome,
Italy
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
We were looking forward to our first high speed Eurostar train to Rome and wanted to compare the process against flying. After a fairly short train ride it only took three hours (door to door) to get from our hotel in Florence, to our hotel in Rome. Train is a great way to get around, no check-in, no security checks, and no baggage check-in/retrieval.
Piazza Navona, a two minute walk from our hotel was our first stop. Piazza Navona was laid out on the ruins of a stadium built in 86 AD, which is why the Piazza is shaped like an oval. This is the busiest and largest piazza we had seen thus far, the piazza was filled with restaurants and street performers. We then walked past Torre d'Argentina, ancient Rome ruins where Caesar was assassinated.... the place now houses a whole lot of cats!?
Next we headed for the Pantheon, Fontana di Trevi (did the tourist thing and threw a couple of coins into the fountain), the Spanish steps and St Peters Basilica. Looking at the state of the Pantheon, we couldn't believe it was in a fairly good shape considering it was built in 27BC. By the time we got to St Peters Basilica, our luck with great weather finally ran out, it started to rain and apparently it was the first time it rained in months. Walking around St Peters Basilica, we decided it was probably best to do a tour to appreciate the Basilica so we headed back home after a very long day.
September 28, 2007
It was 10am by the time we got to Vatican City and saw how long the queue was to get into Vatican Museum / The Sistine Chapel, which looked like a 2-3 hour wait time. We opted not to queue up and join a tour, where the tour leaders are already in front of the queue allowing us to slot in and jump the queue.
The exercise to immediately get to the front of the queue and join a tour cost us an extra 25 euro each, which was worth it considering the wait time and avoid queuing up in the rain.
The tour went for around two and a half hours, which took us through the museums, Sistine Chapel and St Peters Basilica, we were very happy with the tour leader, he was interesting and informative, especially when he was taking us through Michelangelo's Last Judgment, and Creation of Man. Unfortunately, two and a half hours is no where near enough to really appreciate the relics and artworks contained on the Vatican Museum.
We then headed for Ancient Rome to check out was left of it, although interesting because of the history, the area is bare, but there is still enough structure in place of the palace, forum and coliseum for you to use your imagination and envision how it once was.
EuroStar Train
Completely drained from all the walking over the last couple of days, we kicked back and relaxed at Piazza Campo di Fiori. The piazza had a cool vibe to it, unlike Piazza Navona, Campo di Fiori is more focused on bars and pubs place so it's a great place to go for a few drinks, it was like being in Madrid again.
September 29 - October 1, 2007
After seeing how bare Ancient Rome was, we decided to go back and join a tour for an explanation of the "things" there. We only paid 10 euro each for a two hour tour, which was excellent. We discovered that the reason why the buildings were bare was due to all the mosaics, marble and other relics were "recycled" to build and "decorate" the churches and other buildings in Rome today. The following days were spent roaming around Rome, which included watching the NRL grand final from an Irish pub.
