Rome, Italy

---

23rd May, 2012

Arrival in Rome was hassle-free getting through immigration and customs. Long queues at immigration, but again we were fortunate in not being stopped at customs – but we had nothing to declare anyway.

We’ve been in Rome about 26 hours.

The flight from Dubai was about 6 hours – and seemed as long as the 14 hour flight the day before! I didn’t get any sleep for about 26 hours after Dubai (I can’t sleep on a plane), and Gail only had marginally more.

We met up with Gail’s friends Cathy & Rod for dinner last night, so it was a reasonably long day.

This morning we decided that we would stay in the same hotel until check out on Saturday (so 3 more nights here).

They have a “hop-on / hop-off” tourist bus service here, so we went for a ride on that to get our bearings a bit. It looped around the major sights. We got off a couple of times – once at the Colosseum, and once a bit later for lunch, before a leisurely ride back to almost the hotel.

The Colosseum is absolutely fantastic – well I think it… We spent about 3 hours on a guided tour of the place – it only costs a few more Euros to have a guided tour, and you get to skip the long queues of non-guided tourists (the wait when we got there was about 90 minutes just to get into the place!) It’s amazing to think of what those ancient Romans achieved with the tools available to them. There is history everywhere. They talk about a “new church” being built in the 1600s !

We’ve booked a 4 hour tour of the Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s Basilica for the morning – we’re being picked up from the hotel at 07:30(ish). Again, using the guides, you skip all the queues!

The hotel we’re staying at is about a 5 minute walk the Trevi Fountain – nothing all that flash – but it’s now peak tourist season, so it’s pretty pricy – but very convenient!

Internet connectivity is VERY spasmodic - so had to go out and buy a wireless broadband modem and 3-month plan - hopefully it will work in all regions of Italy in which we travel.

---