An Unplanned Year

Our ferry arrived into Civitavecchia at 630am. Our AirBNB host was happy to let us park our car at the apartment block for the day, so by 7.44am we were on the train to Rome!

We left the train station, turned left and saw the Vatican. Or more specifically, the dome to St.Peter’s Basilica.

We continued walking along our planned route to find the start point for our tour that starts at stupid o’clock tomorrow.

Through the St.Peter’s Basilica Plaza, with a view to the balcony where the Pope stands to do things in front of crowds.

We looked in some souvenir stores for a toy pope-mobile for Kevin’s grandchild, no luck.

We found where we needed to be at 715 tomorrow morning and then just wandered.

We hit 10,000 steps at 11am and noted this achievement with a beer and bruschetta in front of the Pantheon.

From the Pantheon we walked to Trevi. It needs to be called Trevi, not Trevi Fountain as there is no water due to maintenace. It’s not quite Notre Dame burning down 6 weeks before you visit it, but is close.

We continued wandering to the Spanish Steps via a gelato place.

Our next location took us up the 135 steps and another km or so to the Moses Fountain.

By this time we needed food so stopped for lunch. Again Yum.

We then headed to Basilica Papale di Santa Maria Maggiore. Lots of past Popes are buried here. The Church is S.T.U.N.N.I.N.G.

If this isn’t the one that everyone raves about, how amazing must St.Peter’s Basilica be? We will find out tomorrow!

We walked to Roma Termini station,  eventually located the train we needed and headed for our AirBNB.

Now we just need the lady upstairs to take her shoes off or stop walking around. Either one would work.

Early morning tomorrow.

Day two in Rome started well. We woke on time, made it to the train on time,  and to the tour operator’s office with enough time to have coffee on the way.

The lights of the Basilica were still on when we walked through the empty piazza.

We then joined the tour operator’s queue to enter the Vatican Museums. (Shorter than the non-tour people’s queue, but not quite skip the line.)

Once inside we went through security and started the tour. Our guide took us through a seemingly endless number of rooms and galleries.

After the many galleries it was finally time to visit the Sistine Chapel. Michalangelo’s The Last Judgement has been recently cleaned. The covers and scaffolding were removed yesterday. Lucky us.

Having perfected the “I’m definitely not using my phone” photo technique in Peru, I managed to grab a couple of the Sistine Chapel. (Probably better than some where I actually try to take a decent photo!) As you enter the wrong way, you may need to turn your screen to see the pictures the right way up!

It was then on to St.Peter’s Basilica, the largest Christian church in the world. The guide told us that the letters in the words that run around the church are each 2m tall. That gives a idea of the scale of this place.

We could have gone up the dome or down into the crypts but we had 1h15 to walk across Rome to meet our tour for the Colosseum.

The #&$¤#% tour operator didn’t show up. To say we were annoyed is an understatement. It took an hour to organise a refund through the seller, but the actual operators – an allegedly reputable tour guide company with a 4.8 Google review rating- didn’t answer calls or respond to messages. 3 hrs later they still haven’t acknowledged anything! (We weren’t the only people they stood up today.)

We were annoyed as:

A. this was our only opportunity to visit the colosseum

B. They wasted several hours of our day when we could have done something else if they’d been polite enough to cancel in advance.

C. We discovered they had also downgraded our tour to a lesser option without any notification of discussion!

So we were left with no option but to sadly walk around the perimeter of the colosseum, peeking in to any gaps we could see.

We then walked to see the Michalangelo’s Moses in a nearby Basilica. It was closed. So we threw in the towel and headed towards the train station, stopping at a bar (it was open hooray) for a beverage to escape the strong, cold winds. (It was a 3 layer, jacket and beanie day. Not sunny like yesterday.)