Rome and Vatican City

---

For Wayne’s birthday I booked us a trip to Rome. We flew with Ryan Air from Stansted to Rome Ciampino Airport. The flight was just over 2 hours and went smoothly. We arrived in Rome late Friday morning, checked into our hotel and changed before heading out for some lunch and over to the Colosseum.

We had a lovely meal of pasta and pizza. We had miscalculated the location of our hotel so ended up in the wrong part of Rome so grabbed a Taxi to the Colosseum. We booked onto a group tour and waited for a few minutes before it started. Our guide was very good, spoke good English and was very knowledgeable. The Colosseum was inspiring, a magnificent building. After our tour we joined another tour at 4pm of the Roman Forum. Paul our guide was incredible, he knew so much about Roman history that the site really came alive. It was beautiful and a bonus was that the site had lots of water fountains around it so we managed to refresh ourselves regularly as it was so hot.

We got back to our room later in the afternoon where we rested and changed before heading downstairs for dinner in the restaurant.

The next day we woke fairly early and headed over to the Vatican after breakfast. Paul was our guide again, and he really knew his stuff about art too. We toured the museum looking at the key artefacts, saw the Sistine Chapel and then when on into St Peters Basilica which was magnificent. We crossed St Peters Square out of Vatican City several hours later and wondered the streets looking for lunch. We found a restaurant where we had some Gnocchi. We then walked to the Castle before overheating and decided to head back to the hotel for a much needed rest.

We came back out at 6ish and headed over to the Pantheon which was magnificent. We walked to the Trevi Fountain and then the Spanish Steps as well as looking at several other roads and squares. The cooler temperature made it far more enjoyable. We walked back to our hotel stopping en route for a meal and some wine. We collapsed exhausted and set the alarm to ensure we woke with plenty of time to get to the airport and catch our flight home.

---