When in Rome

We hit the ground running in Rome. We arrived at the train station on friday morning, checked straight into the hotel and then hit the sights. The city sightseeing bus took us to all the usual places of interest like the colosseum and vatican city as well as amazing buildings and sights that we'd never heard of.

The travel books tell you "it takes a lifetime to know Rome" and that photos can't capture all of its beauty. Hate to go along with the crowd but its so true.

We crashed by saturday. Too tired to do too much after running all over the city in 35+ degree heat on the roof of a bus the day before. We did however check out villa borgese and castel st angleo, an old castle that the pope used as a fort if the city was being attacked.

Sunday was the full tour of the colosseum and palatine hill. The guided tour was certainly worth while allowing us to jump the long queue, but more importantly get a true insight to what the enormous "sporting" arena had to offer in its day. Again, photos can't really tell the full tale.

Palatine hill is usually the free add-on to your colosseum pass, but it was actually just as interesting and had many more stories to tell about the life of romans. After all it was that place rome was founded over 2500 years ago.

After seeing the great value of our colosseum tour, we decided to take the same tour company for the vatican city. Again, this is worth every cent. You could see the people walking through the museums un-guided having no idea what they're looking at or what they've missed. Walking through the old pope bedrooms looking at the amazing ceiling and wall paintings done by michaelangelo and rafael was hard to comprehend. The size of st peters basilica is decieving when you're inside. In fact most melbourne skyscrapers would fit inside!

All that and no mention yet of the spanish steps. We actally stayed in a lovely little (and I mean little) boutique hotel almost on the steps themselves! Couldn't have asked for a better location.

What we found strange about Rome was the location of some of the major attractions. On the first day we went looking for the Trevi fountain. We wandered down some narrow laneways of appartments and shops, turn a corner and there is this magnificent fountain on the side of a building. Then the Pantheon - right in the middle of ordinary streets. It amazed us that you could just turn a corner and stumble across such things.

So we're now on the plane heading to seville. If this post reaches the website then we've landed safely. We don't have many plans for seville other than doing what the locals do eating paella, tapas and staying up late having lots of drinks! Sounds like fun!

If you haven't checked out the photos recently I've uploaded stacks more of rome yesterday, click the link on the right to check them out.

Ciao now becomes Adios amigos!