When in Rome

We eventually managed to drag ourselves away from our lakeside retreat on
Wednesday morning although we did deliberate about it for a while. Well when
you are having a nice time in a lovely location and there is no real need to
go anywhere in any specific time scale then it is hard to leave what feels
like 'home'.
Anyway, we hit the Autostrada and dropped down to Roma. We had a tip off
from a nice Dutch man at the lake about a site we were thinking of going to
but didn't believe it had any public transport near enough to make it
feasible for visiting the city. He had just come from there and said it was
no problem. And it isn't. The campsite provide a free bus to the nearest
station and then it is just 15 minutes into the heart of the city. The site
is nearly 15€ cheaper a night than the one we would have gone to.
So we arrived on Wednesday, settled in, and then headed into Roma first
thing on Thursday. We purchased a 7 day ticket for the public transport
(i.e. travel card), only 16€ each, and had a very nice first day roaming the
streets. Unfortunately not long after physically extracting the tickets from
the nice not so shiny ticket machine, had to hit it a few times to get it to
cough out what was required, we then found that there was a general strike
on all transport on the next day, Friday, so we would not be able to get
into the city then. Anyway, once in the city on Thursday we ended up at the
Colosseum, via the sights leading down to and including the Capitoline Hill,
but decided against venturing in as the queue was very long and it looked
even busier inside. We made a plan to return another day early in the
morning to beat the tour buses. We then took the returning long stroll back
to our train station via several of the shopping streets and the Trevi
Fountains, although we somehow couldn't find them.
Friday, the strike day, was still very nice enjoying the sunshine, getting
all the washing done, doing some shopping, and just relaxing some more.
Can't get enough of a good thing.
Today we headed back in to the city early to do the ancient remains before
the crowds hit. We left the site at 08h00 and arrived at the Colosseum just
after 09h00. Quite an amazing place although the several hundred weight of
scaffolding both blocking up entrances and also supporting the odd brick or
two kind of detracts from the overall atmosphere. The Forum and the
Palatine, the oldest of the Roman ruins, are also quite impressive but hard
to imagine what it once was as it also has the 'scaffold' effect and the odd
bit of reinforcement here and there.
The old town, Centro Storico, was very pleasant and more of a place to
stroll and take in all the sights. Eventually after a coffee and cake stop
and a bite of lunch we ended up at the Pantheon, one of the oldest buildings
in the city. As you can expect for a free entrance it was very busy, but
still quite awe inspiring given its age.
We had no choice as it was so warm to get a bit of light refreshment at this
point and navigated the streets to find a recommended ice cream parlour to
sample some 'healthy' local specialities, before then heading back to the
train station to get the treno back home.

Felice Compleanno Matt

Ciao

M&S