top deck - part five - rome

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Day 9 part 2 rome

We arrived in Rome, among all of its ancient splendour and magnificence on a walking tour that was to last 5 hours. The first stop was the Spanish steps, moving on to the House of the Capuchin Monks. An amazing building that is richly decorated with the remains of 900 monks, who it turns out, invented the Cappuccino Coffee. A macabre sight to say the least. Leaving there, we moved on to an interesting fountain recently mentioned in the Dan Brown Novel, Angels and Demons. More interestingly though was the crazy man who was running around near the fountain, pulling faces and spitting water at us and passed by. We have photos if you don’t believe us!!! Laughing our way to the next site, we reached the Trevi Fountain, which depicts Neptune and many horses and mermen breaking out of the stone and water. From the Trevi Fountain, it was time for dinner, outside the Pantheon. We ate some pizza, walked through the World’s first Christian church, which was originally pagan, and marvelled at its construction. We then walked on to a site not known to many, but believed to be the site of Julius Caesar’s death, not the Senate building as written in Shakespeare. Following a winding path, we walked past a massive structure which is a monument to Fannuchi, the man they created the Republic of Italy, the monument is massive, with the statue of Fannuchi on his horse alone, larger than our Coach. We then walked down the Roman Forum, the centre of the ancient city, and also the supposed site that Romulus and Remus came to the site and decided to construct the great city. A further walk down from the Forum, ends with the most revered of all Rome’s great achievements, the great Arena, the Coliseum. Named after a massive statue known as the Colossus, the Arena was home to great spectacles of the Roman Games, bloodthirsty and savage by today’s standards, but like watching a game of football. We had some photos taken in front of the arena, but as it began to get dark, we walked to the nearby train station and got the train back to our Campsite.


Rome. Day10.
On our second day of Rome, most people from our tour left early to line up and enter the doors of the Vatican City, a wait of apparently 3 hours, since Alex and Lachlan had seen it already, we decided to head to the Vatican later in the day, around 10am, where we lined up and entered St Peters Basilica, the largest Cathedral in the world, and the resting place of peter, one of the 12 disciples of Christ. We entered into the large halls of the building and were humbled at once, we also entered the under works of the site, where lie the interred Popes of the past Centuries. After seeing all this, we bade good bye to the Vatican and set off on a walk down through Rome to the Coliseum. We lost a few people along the way, 3 of the guys who were walking with us returned back to the camp site via train, and when we got to the Coliseum, Lach and Damo had gone off the idea of entering the arena which left Alex and I. We lined up and walked around inside it. Not much is left really, but you still get a grasp of the sheer size and grandeur of the building in its heyday. After this, Alex and I returned on the train to the Campsite, where most people were having a swim so we joined them for quite a while, before getting ready for dinner. They had a party going on at the Campsite that night, and as a few of our tour members were leaving us, we decided to have a big one. It was during this, that Alex asked me to shave his head, which turned into a Mo hawke. He and everyone loved it, but I wasn’t too pleased to say the least, it did grow on me however over the next few days....

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