Day 31

My apologies for the lack of photos but Blogger has decided that it hates the photos and refuses to upload them so you'll just have to wait until we get back.

We got up and headed to Termini to catch the Metro to Colosseo....can anybody guess what was there? When we arrived there, there was a massive queue. It turned out that it was some Arts Festival weekend and all government sites, museums, etc. were free entry to the public. That’s fantastic! Except that there were hundreds of people everywhere....

As we walked to join the queue a guy stopped us and asked us if we wanted to have a 2 hour guided tour of the Colosseum, Palatine Hill and the Roman Forum. We ummed and ahhed and then decided, why not. This would be the first guided tour that we had done and we had been expecting to pay to get into the Colosseum anyway.

Our tour guide for the Colosseum, originally the Flavian Amphitheatre, was very friendly and seemed quite knowledgeable. The tour group wasn’t too big so we could hear well and we got to bypass the public line and go in the group line. All in all it was a 45 minute tour/information session on the Colosseum and then we were given 45 minutes to wander around by ourselves before we reconvened again at 12 outside the exit of the Colosseum for our tour of the Palatine and Roman Forum.

This group was a lot bigger! There were over 100 people there I reckon. Luckily there were two guides so we headed over to the Palatine and then they split the group up into two. Because the Palatine is on a hill we had to walk up to the top. Steve and I felt a little bit like cattle, moving slowly in a large body of people...

This tour guide was Canadian which was kind of random. He was highly entertaining though and we enjoyed what we saw. After the tour we wandered down to the Roman Forum and had a walk through the area. We found a semi shaded place to sit and have a snack before continuing up towards Piazza Venezia – didn’t we just come from there?

There were two beautiful looking museums in this area but we decided not to go in as half the day was already over and we still had other things we wanted to do. We figured that if we had time once we had seen the major sites we would come back.

We caught a bus back to Termini and went back to the apartment for some lunch and a bit of a refresher before heading out again on the Metro to the Spanish Steps. There are only two Metro lines in Rome, Line A and B. We had caught Line B in the morning to go to the Colleseum and had to catch Line A to the Piazza de Spagna. Line A was deep, deep down in the subway. We walked for miles before we finally arrived at the platform. Thankfully the Metro station near the Spanish Steps wasn’t as far down.

We walked out of the station and were confronted with a sea of people. There were thousands of people in the piazza. They were blocking the roads so that cars were having trouble getting through, they were all over the steps, they were in all the adjoining side streets. We thought there might have been something going on but no, they must have all been tourists just coming to enjoy the Spanish Steps.

We took a few snaps and then we stopped by Maccas again for an ice cream and because Steve had read online that this one may have open WIFI. Unfortunately no so we decided that Rome hates foreign numbers and gave up.

I’m not sure if we mentioned this in an earlier blog but Steve was about to finish off the book series he started reading in Australia so he found another series that sounded interesting and then proceeded to drag us around London and Paris looking for bookstores so that he could buy the first book before he finished his current series. We managed to find it in Paris so he was happy about that, finished his old book and started on the new book.

Unfortunately, once we arrived in Rome he started panicking that he was going to finish the new book before the end of the trip so he looked up English bookstores around Rome to begin his hunt again. Luckily one of them was near the Spanish Steps so we made a way to the Anglo Americano bookstore where amazingly they had the second and third book in the series. I made him buy both because I told him I refused to be dragged around Athens and Cairo hunting for yet another English bookstore.

We joined the mass of people crowding the streets leading away from the Spanish Steps and headed towards the river. Rome is the first city that I have come across that hadn’t made a tourist use out of its waterway and the surrounding area. It was just simply a river with high banks, small footpaths and busy roads running on either side. There were little souvenir stalls along the footpath but that was about it.

We crossed to the other side and walked down to Castel Sant'Angelo. There was free entry into the Castle due to the Arts Festival so we went in. There was a terrace at the very top that was up a small spiralling staircase (it was just wide enough for one person to go up comfortably) which gave a great view of the city. The castle was also incredibly close to the Vatican so there was a really good view of St Peters Basilica from the terrace.

We left the Castle and caught a bus back to the apartment. The bus was packed – it was so full that peole weren’t able to get on when the bus stopped. Once again, we had gotten on at the first stop so we managed to score some seats and I’m glad we did because it was a long drive back and we were pretty tired from a day of sightseeing, especially in the heat!