Rome 23rd -29th Sept

Hint for people traveling to Rome, If you are going to arrive on a weekend book in advance.
Matt and I didn’t so we ended up in this dodgy “hostel” that was really some extra rooms in this woman’s’ apartment that she rented out at €20 per bed (and she had 12 beds in 2 rooms) so a nice way to pay of the mortgage. Luckily we managed to move into a much better hostel after the weekend and were ecstatic to find the first form of self catering since Berlin.
Yes folks this hostels kitchen consisted of …a microwave! Never had I been so happy to have a supermarket soup in my life. (It’s the simple things in life that you miss when traveling.)


Rome the city is a pretty amazing place.(With possibly the worlds longest zebra crossing.) We had made a rough plan of what to see on Friday: St Ignatius (the church where they ran out of money and had to paint the dome on), Trevi fountain and the Spanish steps, but while we were walking back to our hostel we could see out of the corner of our eyes the colossuem and forum that we planned on seeing on Saturday.





Luckily for us on Saturday the colusseum was free so we could afford to do the guided tour, which was fairly informative, although the guide was very hard to understand.

I had read in my guidebook that the Vatican is free on the last Sunday of the month, which was pretty cool. So Sunday morning Matt, I and about a thousand other people queued up for 2 1/2 hours to see the Vatican museum. It’s strange that once inside a lot of people go straight to the Sistine Chapel and miss all the really cool stolen artifacts. Part of the Vatican is built from the bricks used to build the Colosseum.



Our favorite exhibit would have to be the micro mosaics room, which is right at the end and a lot of people miss it.
To be honest I was a little disappointed by the Sistene chapel, it could be ‘cos we just saw sooo much stolen art.






Monday we went to check out the castle, only to find that it’s closed on Mondays, then to Santa Maria della Concezione de Cappuccini where monks used the bones of friars to create art. It was a little bit disturbing but well worth seeing. Next we went to checkout a Pyramide, its only 37m high and surrounded by the city.






On Tuesday arvo Matt and I met up with my friend from Oz, Lisa. As we were asking how her flight was some people came back to the hostel and said that the Vatican was free again, so we quickly went down there and joined the queue and managed to get into the Vatican about 15 minutes before they stopped letting everyone in. It was a bit of a rush, as we got lost in an entire wing of stuff we had never seen before, and by the time we got back to the main track they were rushing people through and had closed off a lot of the side galleries.

On Wednesday, Matt, Lisa, Justin and I did a self made walking tour of Rome and managed to see most of the Major sites. It was heaps of fun, although it was very hot that day so we had to cool down by consuming massive amounts of Gelato.






On Thursday morning we did a free guided tour of St Peters Cathedral and boy is that place big. We learn’t so much stuff,. had a quick wander round and stopped by the train station for Pizza Cones, which are a brilliant idea. Pizza in a cone shape so they’re super easy to eat. I wish they had them everywhere.
In the evening Matt and I caught a super cheap flight to Glasgow Scotland.