Not too bad a night’s sleep but my alarm did go off at 5 am UK time 6 am Rome time and we have to get up .. Breakfast is not until 7 so we do have a little time to snooze.
Up shower and the other “S” and we are off to the cafe for a coffee before our walk to the Vatican. It is about 7 am so everywhere is reasonably quiet as we head towards the dome. When we get there it is obvious that there is something on there are a lot of police, army and more telling a lot of chairs set out in St Peter square.
Obviously the Boss is poping out later: Chairs all set out
We queued to get into the Basilica, the largest church on earth and fter putting ourselves through airport like security we are in.. I even sneaked past in my shorts despite there being a lot of signs saying I was inappropriately dressed.
The Church was amazing HUGE and they even rolled out the red carpet for us
Rolling out the red carpet for us
Not too long spent in the church as between the age of 5 and 14 I went 4 times a week, sometimes 8 weddings in a day and 3 times on Sunday, I am all “churched out” but it was spectacular and a lot of the poor people in the world could be fed by selling off one or two of the trinkets in here!
Susan had her walking boots on and a map so instead of doing this over two days it was a walk along the tree lined banks of the Tiber to the Forum and Colosseo, actually again we walked much further than we needed to !
River Tiber
Interesting Parking
A quick stop for a beer and a snack and we arrived at the forum entrance. The ticketing system is a little strange, we bought a ticket for both but had to exit the forum then re-queue to get into the Colosseo a shambles actually.
The Roman Colosseum
The Colosseo did not disappoint but was bloody busy and by now Susan’s recently operated on feet were beginning to “smart” so it was time to book the hop on hop off bus so we could travel round the city at our leisure. I usually avoid these tourist things but we are only here 3 days and there is quiet a lot to see. It’s hot so we decide to do the round trip before getting off again near our hotel. I plug in the headphones and take in the history of Rome and the sights I am seeing so yet again I am told about Mussolini, Romulus and Remus, a couple interesting “facts” Christians were not sacrificed at the Colosseo but at the Circus Maximus next door and Nero once had 250 Christians burnt to provide lights at one of his dinner!
Circis Maximus
Tonight’s dinner is planned to be at the Angry Pig
Again diligent research by Susan.., 100s of beers and the best pork roast in Rome. Satnav now set to ignore roads and straight-line navigating gets us there in about 20 mins… How disappointed were we a very small hole in the wall that could seat 10 people and we were the only people there for about 30 mins… all of the raving reviews on the wall were at least 2 years old, so the moral of this story is don’t believe everything you read on the internet or maybe we are spoilt.
Dinner done it was back to the hotel via the wine shop, no corkscrew but obviously I will be able to overcome that.
In bed trying to sleep by about 9:30 after watching the highlights of day 1 of the Giro all in Italian but despite the foreign language on an earlier quiz show Susan and I both did better than we do on university challenge .