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Published: March 12th 2008
While Anthony's brother Glen was staying, we took advantage of some cheap flights and headed down to Rome for a few days. Unfortunately Anthony has banned scooters so we were stuck walking everywhere!!
It always worries me when people constantly say how good a place is - just sets it up for failure!! Although in general, Rome held up to the hype. Everything is old... like really, really old. So old it's actually hard to believe it's true because it all sort of seems bogus... But Anthony assured me it was genuinely old and I should get over my delusions and just enjoy it!! But the other thing about
everything being so old, is that at some point you just get over it and it's no longer that interesting if there is a block of stone sitting on the ground that has been there since 70BC or something.
Day 1 There's heaps to see in Rome, but first and most important for us was the Colosseum. We had seen it all lit up on the way to the hotel the previous night and it looked just like a postcard - breath-taking. As soon as we arrived at the Colosseum
Marcus Aurelius equestrian statue
The real thing inside the Capitoline Museum I wished that I had listened to our friend Michelle's advice to watch Gladiator again. Anyway, whilst loitering outside we signed up for a tour group which had the benefit of skipping the line. Other than that it was so boring that it was hard to process what the guide was saying in his heavily accented voice... Except for his description of the central area when it was flooded "it’s a stinky swamp". It was very cool to see inside the Colosseum though - we have watched Gladiator since coming back to Prague and it's easy to imagine the place absolutely jam packed with people watching the spectacle. There is really a lot of it still standing which is particularly remarkable I think given how closely the roads surround it and trains run somewhere under it and tourists traipse all over it!
After the tour we headed to the Roman Forum which to our untrained and uneducated eyes was just a large grassy area covered by lots of bits and pieces of stone all strewn about. Turns out that we kinda needed tour guides no matter how boring they were!! After lunch we had a brief look at the
Piazza Navona
With the dodgy statue of liberty on the left!! Capitoline Museum (which dates back to 1471) which was pretty interesting and saw the huge (and original) statue of Marcus Aurelius which is thought to have been produced between 161-180 AD! There was also a replica of it out in the piazza del Campidoglio. According to Wikipedia, bronze statues like the one of Marcus Aurelius were melted down to make coins following Rome's conversion to Christianity, and they were also often destroyed because the medieval Christians thought that they were pagan idols. This statue survived because they thought it was the first Christian Emperor Constantine! Lucky!
We went on another tour in the afternoon of Palatine Hill which was more ruins. We then took a long walk up the Tevere River to Campo de Fiori and Piazza Navona where we sat in front of the fountain eating cake and watching a very bad Statue of Liberty Impressionist. Luckily Anthony was too busy eating his own cake to take photos of me 😊. Later on we continued to enjoy the local food whilst Glen attempted to get through his "large beer" (turned out to be a 1L beer mug for 13 Euro... not exactly what he was
expecting!!).
Day 2 Thanks to our rather demanding tour leader (Anthony) waking us up and making us get ready, we arrived at the Vatican bright and early on Saturday morning. After ascertaining that no, we weren't going to visit the Pope like the gaggle of old Italian women waving their papers and calling "di Papa, di Papa", we found our way around to the other side of the Vatican where the line for the museum snaked all the way around 3 sides of a large block... my misconception of going through passport control to get into the smallest sovereign state was immediately shattered... and we quickly decided it was worth going with a tour group for 45 euro just to skip the line! This actually turned out to be a fantastic tour. The guide was young and captivating and managed to escort the group of us through the hundreds of exhibits (and other tourists) to point out just the most important over the space of about 3.5 hours. Unfortunately due to the Pope hanging out unexpectedly in St Peters Basilica, we didn't get to go in there but we did see the Sistine Chapel, which strangely looks
absolutely nothing like a church. I guess they stripped all the church paraphernalia in order to cram more tourists in!? Who they then try to keep quiet by periodically yelling "be quiet!". Very effective!!! Or not 😊
We had a few more sites to tick off on our last afternoon in Rome, and despite my best attempts the boys wouldn't be distracted to go shopping instead. So we headed to the Spanish Steps. And in the craziest of coincidences, while we were sitting there enjoying the view, my friend Kendall Wanklyn (who I went to school with in Albury and haven't seen for 10 years) called out from a few metres away "Stephanie Allen!!" Whoa! She's living in London and just happened to pop over to Rome for the weekend!
Before heading back to the hotel, we thought we should call by the Trevi Fountain - and are so glad we did. It was beautiful, and massive, and so much more than just a fountain. It was like an entire 25 metre wall constructed into a marble marvel with horses and statues and water galore! And it was absolutely crawling with tourists!
Day 3 On
our final day, we headed off on a trip to Naples & Pompeii with Green Line Tours. Naples turned out to be a very thinly disguised detour to drop off another group of tourists at the port for their tour of Capri. After excessive "rest stops" conveniently located at dodgy souvenir shops, we came to another unscheduled stop at an equally dodgy factory in the middle of nowhere where they make 'cameos' carved from shells. We were all assembled for a demonstration which consisted of a three minute speech outlining that they import the shells from the the West Indies or Fiji and then carve and mount them onto a brooch etc, and that we should take a look around the showroom as we will get 20% off all purchases!! And we will meet back at the bus in 20 minutes... so we milled around the carpark and took pictures of ourselves with a cactus. Enthralling.
After lunch we eventually arrived at our intended destination. If Rome was hard to believe, then Pompeii was just on a totally different scale. It was completely buried by ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted on 24 August 79 AD (two days before my
birthday, but a few years before I was born...) and was rediscovered by accident in 1748. And other than the lack of roofs on the buildings, it's eerily just like an abandoned town. There was so much detail that they even knew which buildings were shops, which shops sold wine and beer, which 'house' was a brothel (complete with the original erotic depictions on the walls!!), which part of the houses were kitchens or bathrooms or atriums. It was incredible! We also saw some of the bodies which were discovered and although I think they were replicas, it was still very creepy!
The other highlight of the day (other than the part where the three of us were almost left behind by our tour group) was our very bright fellow bus travellers... Anthony started writing down their quotes because they were just so ridiculous. Now you need to imagine these in accents very similar to Fran Fine’s family from ‘The Nanny’, but favourites include "have you spoken to any of the natives?" ; "what, doesn't anyone own a dryer here?" ; "Oh it looks
just like South Bronx" , and our all time favourite, debating how much they would pay for a Big Mac after being forced to eat so much
Italian food - the bidding war ended at... wait for it... 16 dollars!!!!
And home again... Our taxi ride to the airport was scary - occasionally thinking we were going to die either by his dangerous driving or thinking we were going to be murdered and our bodies dumped down the dodgy back road detours he was taking. Needless to say we made it 😊. We then discovered what everyone else had before us - that Air Italia is crap - and arrived back in Prague almost an hour late, so I ended up running through the terminal and getting a taxi to work... which cost more than my wage! Oh well, another adventure at an end.
Lots planned over the next few months - so get excited about more blogs!! And lots more visitors on the way!
Steph xoxo
P.S. We are only 1 week away from our anniversary of arriving in Prague! (which is also incidentally our wedding anniversary!)
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Glen
non-member comment
CameoShells
I can't believe you didn't like the shell cameo tour! That was the highlight! He was just so passionate about cameos I did finish that beer by the way...!