Blogs from Rome, Lazio, Italy, Europe - page 11

I decided to get up early to head down to the Colosseum for some early morning pictures. First however, I thought I would go to the Spanish Steps. Even at 4.00 in the morning it was still covered in people, obviously chilling after a Saturday night out. It was the same at the Trevi Fountain. Furthermore, and despite the time, there was still a large number of soldiers on guard for whatever reason. One point to note, if you are walking around at 4.00am to get some photographs where there are a large number of soldiers, consider carefully how you carry your tripod, as it can cause a bit of unwanted and potentially perilous attention. It was even more worrying when I remembered I had forgotten my passport and it is illegal to not be carrying ... read more

The flight to Rome was on time, non eventful and nothing special to report (which is a good thing), other than some fantastic views over Geneva (recognisable from the water spout, even at 35,000 feet) and the Alps. Stunning. I had been to Rome before when I was Inter-railing, a life-time ago (see and ), and one memory was how magnificent the Italian train stations could be. Upon landing at Rome Airport, it seemed that that also applied to their airports. It just seemed wrong arriving on an EasyJet flight from Luton to an airport like that (and we saw a Ryanair plane parked-up). That said, they had given us the furthest possible baggage reclaim to trek to. From the taxi ride, we could soon see what an absolutely exquisite city Rome is, but there is ... read more

Before I start with today’s entry (again a day lag) I failed to mention one item from yesterday. When Jerry and I had finished our tour, we headed to the store to get a bit of wine for the room. As we arrived at Cavor street there was a large parade coming our way. We quickly crossed the street and then waited to see what the parade was about. Well, nothing fantastic as it turns out, just a very large anti-choice parade, mainly priests, nuns and men, a few women but the majority were clearly male, like they are the ones having the babies. Enough politics, today is about making pizza. Part of the reason for this particular trip was that Pino, whom I first met in a cooking class in Paris, has since opened his ... read more

The line for customs in Rome took about an hour, not bad considering the security officials looked as if they hated every second of their job, and basically grunted at you. Par for the course had a bit of an issue arranging our tickets for the train from the airport to the center of town, but it all worked out fine. Didn’t get the station we wanted but it took the same amount of time as if we had taken the express train. Once we purchased our train ticket and found the actual train station, it took about 45 minutes to get to our hotel. We got a bit lost on the way to the hotel, because of all the construction going on around the Colosseum and the big June 2 Republic parade being setup. From ... read more

It just seemed right to finish this 3 month getaway adventure in Rome. Everywhere we went in Spain and of course here in Italy we have seen the massive influence of the old Roman Empire. We had just 2 full days and as any of you who have been know well, that barely scratches the surface! But we did OK as, hopefully, the following pics will show. This definitely rates as one our top adventures together. We will have many great memories of both Spain & Italy to recount in the future. Until next time, Ciao!... read more