Rome'n Around

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Day 14 Thursday 4 October 2007

Rome’n around

Wake up: 6am bags- last night Leave 7:30

We caught an early boat across the pond. Venice was covered in mist. We were glad to see the coach again. Today was a very long travel day again and most of us slept as we were not well.
The Italian countryside was beautiful but I was sick and couldn’t keep my eyes open. We stopped at a self service place for lunch and I was shocked. Huge culture shock. Rapid Italian was spoken everywhere and I had no idea where to go or what to do. Luckily Gary was behind us and interpreted a bit. Still - I ended up with a bland pear risotto. When we left, Polizia were turning up for their free feed. One of them walked in with an Uzi in hand.

We drove on and arrived in Roma at around 4pm. The rooms were nice - no iron, no kettle.
We went to dinner at 5:30pm at a lovely restaurant right opposite the Colosseum. It looked gorgeous lit up at night. We had anti pasta, pastas and pizza followed by tiramisu. There was lovely music and singing and we were all presented with a bottle of wine when we left.
We drove around a few sights, including Maximus Circus where the chariot races were held and Ben Hur was filmed. Then we walked to the beautiful trevi!
It was crowded, but we made our way to the front easily. Gary suggested we spend a good 20 minutes sitting there and soaking in the atmosphere. It was lovely watching people’s faces as they tossed their coins. The annoying part was all the Algerian sellers flogging their wares relentlessly.
We got back to the hotel around 9 and crashed.

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