Rome and Florence

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On the 9th July we flew out from London aboard a cheap Ryan Air flight to Rome to meet up with a friend, Erica from Melbourne, who had been in Europe for a wedding. We spent 3 nights in a nice apartment near Rome's main train station - Termini. Having an apartment was great, much more comfortable than a hotel room and more economical for the 3 of us. As we'd been to Rome before we just spent a few days wandering about enjoying the city. Finally we managed to find good coffee - the Italians really do know how to make good coffee! We visited the Colosseum, which is now one of the 7 wonders of the world, as well as the usual sights like the Trevi Fountain, Pantheon and Spanish Steps.

On the second day we decided to head to the Vatican museum to see the Sistene Chapel, as none of us had seen that before. On arriving we discovered that the queue was probably 400 metres long. Given that we were in the middle of the peak tourist season in Europe it wasn’t likely to get any better so we decided to join the queue anyway. The queue moved quite quickly and it took us only slightly over an hour to get into the museum. We then joined the crowds as we worked our way through the museum, following the signs to the Sistene Chapel. This is easier said than done, and it was another 90 minutes before we finally arrived at the famous chapel. Yes it was impressive, but by this stage all we really wanted to do was to get out of the place. But - we saw it but we have no photos to prove it as photography is not allowed within the Chapel.

The following day we caught the train 2 hours north to Florence and spent 5 nights there. We took it reasonably easy while we were there, but we did manage to get up to Sharon’s favourite place, “Piazza Michealangelo”, a hill overlooking the city, a couple of times to admire the views and take photos of the sunset. We also went into the main cathedral, The Duomo and climbed the 463 stairs to the top of one of the towers (Guy’s idea) for some more panoramic views over the city, and just generally wandered around. A heat-wave started while we were in Florence and the temperature was in the mid to high 30s most days. One day we caught the train to Pisa to see the leaning tower and to take the obligatory photographs. You can climb the steps inside but the temperature hit 40 degrees on this day so we decided against it.

On the Monday afternoon we said goodbye to Erica, as we were heading for the coast and she was heading to northern Italy to visit family. We would miss her - she had been good company, fun, knowledgeable, but most importantly her Italian was better than ours so she was extremely useful in shops, restaurants and trains stations.

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Photos

Inside the Vatican Museum
Only another 90 minutes till we get to see the Sistine Chapel