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Published: April 29th 2006
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Rome was
amazing!!
Our motto for this trip was "When in Rome...". This may account for our excessive consumption of red wine (vino), espressos, and carb-loading on pasta. We also adopted their crazy driving techniques when we hired a scooter for the day! Not to mention that crossing the road as a pedestrian was simillar to paying a game of leapfrog - Italians have NO respect for the green man!! This all paved the way for what was a great trip.
Friday 31st March 2006 What's this......UV rays.......warmth from the earth's sun!? It was glorious! Our skin soon went into shock with an overload of UV after a long UK winter and very soon it was time to locate our very unused bottle of sunscreen. We had tops of about 23 degrees over the 5 days we were there, but it felt more like 28 when compared to London.
We were staying at a hostel called Fawlty Towers, but despite the name it was a friendly and comfortable hostel with a lovely sunny roof top terrace. After dumping the bags we got stuck straight into the sightseeing on day 1 - firstly heading to Popolo Piazza and Park,
followed by a walk down the overated Spanish Steps which were heavily populated with people. We spent some time watching tourists and trendy Italians in big sunnies and suites....we soon got bored of this and made our way to the popular Trevi fountain.
At Trevi fountain we watched as hundreds of tourists were continually throwing money into the fountain. The fountain itself was actually quite impressive, but the guys trying to constantly sell you sh*t wore thin quite quickly! One funny sight was a homeless lady who was fishing money out of the fountain with a purpose built bamboo stick with a magnet attached to the end (not a bad idea!). The police would occasionally come by and blow their whistle and she would move on, only to return moments later. This lady would be making a fortune and obviously blowing it all on the drink in the paper bag she carried with her!!! We threw British currency in instead of Euros so she won't be buying her next fix through us. All this aside, the Trevi fountain was one of Rach's favourite places and we frequented it often over the course of the next 5 days with a
bottle of red and some plastic cups.....
Our next stop was the Pantheon, this is the best preserved building from ancient Rome, and quite an impressive engineering feat for its time. We figured we had earnt a break so we stopped for some of Italy's famous gelati! The shop we found had over 100 flavours and was described as 'not for the indecisive' by the lonely planet.
From here we just wandered the streets of Rome for a while, soaking up the atmoshere of the ancient city. We ended up stumbling into Novana Piazza, one of Romes most popular piazzas (square) which contains 3 beautiful water fountains along with a variety of street artists, buskers and cafes. After some more exploring we decided to head back to Trevi armed with a 1.5L bottle of vino and some pistachio nuts! We ended up polishing off the lot over the next hour or two and had a bit of a laugh with some Germans who were doing the same. In our slightly boozy state we went for dinner at a pizzeria, then walked back to our hostel.
Saturday 1st April 2006 We awoke with a slight hangover and a
little pink ready for another day of sightseeing. We firstly checked out a church called Santa Maria Degli Angeli - a former Roman bath house that was converted into a church by Michelangelo. The church had been modified many times over the years, however the original roof that he designed was still in place. We also visited the Roman bath museum. The history of this place is amazing, but there is only so much you can absorb, so after a while we beat the footpath again to do some more exploring. We ended up walking through the "Gucci" part of town, across the river, past the law courts and finished at the Castle Sant Angelo which we went in to explore. From the top of the castle we had some great views of the Vatican and the rest of Rome. On the way home we checked out some Roman ruins which now house hundreds of stray cats! (Amy Lod they need you over here). Dinner was again traditional with bruchetta, pizza, pasta and red wine - nice!
Sunday 2nd April 2006 Today we visited a church - Basilica di San Pietro in Vincoli (which translates to Church of Saint
Peter in Chains). This church housed Michelangelos statues of Moses, Leah and Rachel, not to mention (as you may have guessed) the chains worn by St Peter before his crucifixion which are on display under the alter. Following this we headed to Romes biggest and most famous market "Portaportese" in Trastevere. We have been to markets all over the world (thanks to Rach!), but these were the biggest we have ever seen, and they had some great stuff for sale too.
After lunch we visited the Parliament, Piazza del Campidoglio and climbed the hundreds of steps to the church Ara Coeli. For penance people used to have to climb these stairs on their knees! We had a quick look at the Italian history museum but this was short lived being that everything was in Italian. To finish the day off we went people watching at Piazza Novana, drank some wine and watched the street artists at work. We had dinner on our hostel terrace accompanied naturally with a bottle of vino.
Monday 3rd April 2006 We decided to take our lives into our own hands and hired a scooter for the day. We quickly got the hang of things
and began driving like real Italians, weaving through traffic, up the wrong side of the road...but we drew the line at driving through red lights. (Note to parents - disregard the previous sentence!). After a brief un-planned tour of the city centre we stopped at Maria in Cosmedin a church with the mouth of truth. You are suposed to place your hand in the mouth and if you tell a lie the mouth suposedly closes. Following this we headed to the Colosseum where we decided to join a tour. It was well worth it as there we some very interesting/shocking facts about this place that we would have otherwise not known. For example, in one year 135,000 large exotic animals died for entertainment purposes. Also, if a gladiator (who was a slave) lived through 7 years of fighting they were granted freedom....however this was highly unlikely. 4,500 slaves died on average per year for a period of 200 years. Also, there were some particularly strange fights between animals/people (eg. Dogs Vs porchipines and women Vs dwarves!)The Colosseum seated 60,000 people - pretty amazing for the time.
After this we continued the tour of the Roman Forum and Palentine Hill
(a hill in the centre of Rome where the main palaces were built). The whole area is full of ruins and was the centre of ancient Rome. All this added up to an information overload again, so we decided to head off for lunch. We grabbed some food from the local supermarket and had a picnic lunch on a hill overlooking the Colosseum - not a bad view!
After lunch it was time to look tuff on our scooter as we went for a ride around the city and did some more exploring. We ended up back at the Pantheon where we grabbed an esspreso from what was deemed to be 'Rome's best coffee shop'. Later in the evening we decided to check out St Peters and the Vatican city by night - a fantastic sight.
Tuesday 4th April 2006 After returning the bike and kickstarting the heart with some caffeine it was finally time to head to the Vatican City, the smallest country in the world. We took a tour of the Vatican Museums which included pleanty of Michelangelos and Raphaels works. The tour also included some of the rooms where previous popes had lived. The Sistine
Rach throwing money into Trevi
A custom to ensure you return to Rome. But really we were just funding the homeless ladies booz!! Chapel was a definite highlight and took Michaelangelo 9 years to paint. St Peters Basilica's size was equally impressive. As you can see from the photos the camera was working overtime!
Unfortunately we ran short of time to climb the dome or visit the tombs of the previous popes, but the experience was still awe inspiring.
As you can tell we have been having a fantastic time, trying to get away every month, which we have managed to do successfully since July 2005.
We hope you are all well, leave us a message and let us know what you are all up to.
Love
Jusin and Rach!!
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Kate & Fiko
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Still Jelous!!!
Hey Guys As usual yet another fantastic update!!!! We love seeing all the pictures!!!! Fiko and I have finally done it! We've booked our honeymoon for December this year! We will have a week in Europe and 4 weeks in Turkey!!!!! Can't wait despite the very cool temps in December!!! Look forward to your next update!!!! Keep having fun