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Published: January 4th 2008
We drove from Cardiff to Bristol for our flight to Rome which was luckily not too early. We didn’t arrive till fairly late so we just got some dinner at a nice little restaurant close by and had an early night.
Our first stop in Rome was the Colosseum, which we reached by metro. We were very impressed by its size and spent a bit of time walking around inside. It was amazing to see the maze of passageways that lie beneath the floor and imagine all of the people who spent their last hours scrambling around down there. From there we walked through the Roman Forum and saw where Julius Caesar was cremated and where the Roman Senate was in ancient times. It was nice walking through the forum as there were many old roman buildings which were still impressive despite being mostly ruins. From there we made our way to the Gallery Borghese which is supposed to be one of the best art galleries in Rome. Karen quite enjoyed it… After the gallery we walked through the surrounding gardens before coming out at Piazza del Popolo which has the old Roman city gate. Along the way we have
discovered a few of the missing Obelisks from Egypt in parks and piazzas around Rome. From the piazza we made our way to the Spanish Steps and then onto the Trevi fountain before heading back to our B & B.
The next day we headed to the Vatican City to see the museums and St Peter’s Basilica. We went to the Vatican museums first and only had to line up for about 30 mins which is apparently very good. Once inside were a bit overwhelmed at the huge amount of artwork and artefacts. They had whole wings devoted purely to marble statues or paintings. Things like the tapestry of the Last Supper, Raphael’s frescoes in the Borghese apartments and the Sistine chapel were definite highlights. You could spend days inside the museums trying to see it all but we managed to see enough of it in a couple of hours. After the museums we thought we’d better send some postcards using the Vatican postal service and then made our way around to St Peter’s Basilica. Before going in we managed to get tickets to be in the audience for the Pope’s Wednesday service. Once inside the Basilica we were
amazed by the size of it and some of the decorations inside. We got to see the tombs of past Popes including John Paul II and we also climbed up to the top of the dome to get some great views of the city.
On the Tuesday we went to the Pantheon which is a famous ancient church that has a huge hole in the roof to allow the sun to come through and light up the interior. Inside is the tomb of the famous artist Raphael. After the Pantheon we wandered to Piazza Navona to walk around the markets and then on to Campo de Fiori to some more markets and then lunch. After lunch we made our way to the Capitolini Museums to see some more artwork…… Yay! Inside was a huge bronze statue of Marcus Aurelius, I think he was in Gladiator… That night we went to see the main sights at night, St Peter’s Basilica, the Colosseum and the Trevi Fountain.
On our last day we had our audience with Pope Benedict XVI (along with thousands of others). We weren’t really sure where to go, so we went to the Vatican and just followed
the crowds. We ended up in a huge hall with lots of Swiss Guards so we figured we were in the right place. Eventually the Pope came out and spoke in Latin (we think) for a while before blessing everyone in different languages, English, German, French, Spanish and Italian. Even though neither of us are that religious it was still pretty amazing to see the Pope in real life. After a busy four days we were ready to head back to the UK for a relaxing Christmas and New Years in Scotland.
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