It comes to an end

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March 6th 2009

Published: April 3rd 2009

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bally10

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Walking towards the catacombs

We sufficiently ran Mom and Dad into the ground sightseeing, so we did our own thing for their last day, and planned to meet for supper. We really had only one more site left on our list for major sights we wanted to see, the Roman catacombs. We had actually seen some catacombs at Alexandria in Egypt, but we wanted to check out these ones as well.

There are a number of catacombs you can go to around Rome, we decided on the catacombs of San Callisto from the guidebook's recommendations. The Roman catacombs began in the 2nd century, primarily because Christians did not believe in the Roman tradition of burning their dead, but rather chose to bury them. There were also catacombs established by pagans and Jews, but more of a response to overcrowding and shortage of land. The catacombs of San Callisto are about 20km long, and were the burial site of over 50 martyrs and 16 pontiffs.

Burials were forbidden in Rome, so all the catacombs are outside of the original city wall. Unfortunately for us, this meant taking a bus to get to them. Apparently the bus to the Appian way runs every hour, so

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You walk about a kilometre from the gates of San Callisto to get to the catacombs entrance. Some nice scenery along the way.

when you walk up to the bus stop and see your bus leaving, you've got a long time to wait. And of course its going to happen both on the way there and the way back. Fortunately we made it to the sight for the last tour before lunch, when they shut down for two hours. So visiting the Catacombs killed most of the morning and early afternoon for us, even though the tour itself was only about 30 minutes.

We got off at the Circus Maximus stop, and then wandered our way through the Jewish ghetto for lunch, and towards the Vatican to do a little shopping. One thing you see a lot of in Rome is the guys selling fake designer bags all over the streets. As we were wandering through the little market stalls by the Vatican, a police car pulled up, and these guys all took off running. They only ever carried about a handful of these bags, and moved from location to location, so I guess they must not be allowed to sell them.

We met up with Mom and Dad for supper, and after much discussion (and whining), I had to lay

Trajan's column

down the law to mom and tell her we weren't eating at her favorite restaurant again, we were going to try someplace new. After a good meal, we wandered back toward the Vatican to get a view of St. Peter's lit up at night. We then worked our way back to the hotel, stopping for the obligatory gelato at our favorite place, Della Palma. We said our goodbyes as they were off to Florence, and we had one last day left in Rome.

Last day - we didn't have a lot left in Rome that we wanted to see, and didn't want to spend much more money, so we had a fairly leisurely day. We went down to an English bookstore near termini station we had seen earlier, but upon seeing the prices they wanted, we left emptyhanded. We popped into another church along the way, cruised by Trevi fountain and the Spanish steps in the daylight, and bought a few things from the stalls there. We then went back to the Vatican to mail the obligatory postcard, and finally returned to the hotel to get packed up.

For our last meal we went out to a restaurant

Trevi Fountain

I had read some good reviews on, Restaurant Macchoroni. It was a bit pricey for our standards, but an excellent meal and nice way to end the trip. We went straight to the hotel after dinner as we had a 4am pickup for our drive to the airport for the trip home. Great trip, but time to go home to #1 - make money to pay for the trip, and #2 - start planning for the next one!

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