Rome was walked around in a day

Today was probably our biggest challenge so far this trip. Rome may not have been built in a day but we managed to walk a big chunk of it.

In the extreme heat we set out to walk around Rome. Our first stop of the day was at the internet cafe for the last blog post. We then walked about the minutes to find some breakfast/lunch (I think Rome has been the most expensive city so far but we haven’t really been thinking about it too much – we don’t check the prices of things until we go to pay the bill and then we get the shock :) )

Next stop was the train station to reserve our seats for the trip to Florence tomorrow – pretty easy, given that everyone we deal with here seems to speak English.
We then started our trek to see as many sights as we could. We were a little worried in the beginning because the park that our hotel guy had told us to walk through was packed with gypsies, gangs and homeless people and we were a little scared and a couple of times got a little frustrated as we kept getting lost as we worked our way around the trouble spots.

In the end we made our way to the Colosseo (Colosseum) and it was worth all the effort. We decided we didn’t have time to line up for the couple of hours it would take to get inside so we just took a walk around the outside which was amazing enough.

Next stop was much easier to find, right next door, Foro Romano (Roman Forum). This was by far the toughest part of the walk – the photos give some indication but it was like walking through the desert. It was so hot, almost no shade and what shade there was was occupied by hundreds of people trying to escape the sun. Again it was worth the sunburn (and yes we were drowning in sunscreen – it just doesn’t do much here) to walk through such an incredible place.

The next few stops included – Piazza Venezia, Pantheon, Mausoleo of Augusto (Opera), Piazza Dei Porto Di Ripetta, Piazza Di Spagna (Spanish Steps) & Fontana Di Trevi (Trevi Fountain). There were a heap of other places we stopped at along the way but couldn’t really keep track of what they were.

We’ve just worked out that pretty much we walked the tour bus route which would take about an hour to drive around. So not a bad effort we think.

The downside to walking around is that we don’t get to take as many pictures because we have to put the camera away between sights, but the upside is that we get better pictures of the things we want to concentrate on and we got a heap of pics on the bus on the first couple of days so together we think it works.

Anyway as we set on the last post we are off to Florence tomorrow so hopefully we will be able to get on line then if not we will definitely have access in Venice on the weekend.

Now off to dinner - PIZZA. We have to keep finding different places to eat because we are in the same clothes :)