Rome

While we fell in love with Florence, we did not like Rome very much at all.

We found it a noisy, chaotic, sprawling city and difficult to navigate.  The friendly vibe of Florence was definitely not evident in the capital city of Italy.

When we arrived at Roma Termini Station the chaos immediately struck us.

We needed to get the metro about ten stops and then take a bus a few stops which would deliver us to outside our hotel.

The first problem was getting a metro ticket because the ticket machine wouldn't accept my 50€ note, nor did it take credit cards.  I found another machine, but that one was only to purchase train tickets, not metro tickets.  Finally someone told me I could buy them at the newspaper kiosk.

Making our way down to the underground to our platform was very congested, hundreds of people squashed together like sardines. We took one look at the first train that arrived and it was so chock-a-block full we chose to wait for the next one.  When it arrived it was only slightly better and I was so grateful to a kind girl who offered me a seat.  She could probably tell I was about to collapse with exhaustion.  It was very hot and we had been wandering around for half an hour in our ticket search.  I was starting to wilt, with twenty kilos on my back and about eight kilos on my front.

Coming out of the tube station to catch a bus was confusing as there were three different exits and we had no idea which one we should be using, as the directions we had been given from the hotel just said to go out of the exit and catch number 889 bus.  After searching unsuccessfully for twenty
minutes for the correct bus, I gave up and we caught a taxi, gratefully, to the hotel door.

One of the best things about our visit to Rome was staying in the Crowne Plaza Hotel.  It was situated a fifteen minute bus ride away from the city centre and it's accompanying noise and chaos.  At the end of a busy day's sightseeing it was wonderful to go back to relax in a peaceful and comfortable hotel.

We did two guided tour sight-seeing trips.  One day we went to the Colloseum, Roman Forum and Palatine Hill.  It was a three hour walking tour.  Our guide, Alessandra, was friendly and knowledgeable with lots of interesting and entertaining stories.  It was amazing to see the Colloseum
and we took a lot of photos.

The next day we did a tour to the Vatican City, with the same tour guide, another three hour walking
tour.  This tour included the Vatican City, Vatican Museum, Saint Pierre's Cathedral and the Sistine
Chapel.

We had a free bus pick-up from our hotel for that tour, which wasn't until 1pm, so I took Miss S for a swim in the hotel pool in the morning.  She had a great time splashing around with some children she had met the day before, and when they left another two arrived. She really hit it off with them and was disappointed to have to go and leave them behind when it was time to get ready to catch the bus.

We enjoyed the Vatican City tour.  I was unaware that Vatican City is actually a country - the smallest
in the world, with an area of 44 hectares and a population of 840, predominantly nuns and monks.

As always, we took a a lot of photos, but once inside the Sistine Chapel, photography is forbidden, although I did see a few people sneakily snapping away.

After the tour we bought a few postcards, and a Vatican City stamp....they have their own postal service, independent of Rome.

As it was our last night in Rome, we also wanted to see the Spanish Steps and the Trevi Fountain.

We were exhausted from the tour, heat and general atmosphere of Rome, so we took a taxi from Vatican City to the Spanish Steps.

I was underwhelmed by them.  They were large, concrete steps, covered with tourists - at the top the building was under renovation and obscured by scaffolding, which admittedly spoilt the overall look
of the monument.  We stayed there about ten minutes, then took a rickshaw cycle taxi to the Trevi Fountain.

Trevi Fountain was nicer, but still, of course, crowded with people.  We took some photos and each of us threw a coin over our shoulder into the fountain.  Apparently the coins are collected each evening and donated to local charities, which is nice to know.

Legend has, it that if you throw a coin into the Trevi Fountain you are bound to return to Rome one day.  But I won't be going back in any hurry.