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Published: June 11th 2012
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Colosseum
upper level - rarely accessible - best tour! Rome was superb. I've heard so much about Rome from others and from books and was thinking it would be just another city -- it wasn't, it was ROME.
Our trip from Vernazza to Rome was underwhelming - cancelled train meant we missed our train to Rome and though we easily got another we ended up spending 4 hours in total waiting on train stations. So a very tiring day. By the time Robert met us and let us in to the apartment - lots more steps and me cursing luggage - it was close to 6pm, we'd left our room in Vernazza at 8am.
The apartment was huge and had all we needed - a washing machine is becoming a highlight for me!
The Campo De Fiori is just 20 metres away - lots of great food, great fresh markets and lots of noise - not noise noise but atmosphere noise. Will admit that at 3am - when most places close I do slip in my ear plugs some times.
I won't bother to try and tell you about Rome day by day - will hit the high lights. We walked EVERYWHERE, hours
and hours, our biggest day was the Colosseum - 11 hours pretty much non-stop. We walked the roman forum, Trevi fountain, Palantine hill, Piazza Navona, Vatican, Pax Romana Alter, Mouth of Truth, Circus Maximus, St Peters, Pantheon and stuck our heads in to many many churches. Blown away by every single one - they all looked so unassuming from outside - obviously not St Peters - just very plain brick walls - but inside they were full of art, shrines and frescos, over the top decorations and within each there were individual shrines/alters to different people. One church had 18 of these smaller "churches" within.
We had early starts to avoid crowds and heat a few days, had a rest most days and then headed backout at about 4pm to see and do more. Balanced old stuff with a few parks and toy shops and museum gift shops! A couple of late starts helped too. It was hot and sunny the whole time, not too hot but a lunch break was a good idea to get our of the sun.
We played punch priest - yep, like punch buggy (when you spot a VW) we punched each other
black and blue - gave up counting the number of priests we saw, lots and lots, so lots and lots of random punching. We saw lots of nuns too, no punching for them, Greg just kept making penguin (well i think that's what it was) noises!
Gelato everyday, our favourite was blue Ice, lots of flavours but the kids stuck with chocolate. I took a liking to strawberry granita too. Food was all so fresh, cheeses, meats and olives, amazing bread, fresh mozerella and great tomatoes. Wine very good as was beer and all very very cheap. I was torn between eating out and using all the great produce to cook - which I hadn't done for a while. i cooked a couple of times but we ate out a lot too, fantastic pizzas and risottos.
Most streets we walked - the back streets, we avoided main streets, were cobbled - so our walking boots come in very handy. We didn't really get lost, as much as found new things every day, it was amazing to walk around a corner and see a huge fountain or column.
We loved water fountains all over town, great to fill
our water bottles with ice cold water - not sure of fountain is the right word, more like a bubbler? We took a lot of house remodeling tips from the romans, i want fountains everywhere.
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