Tag: rome

Yeah like Rach said yesterday we seriously walked for well over six hours with only a lunch break for a stop. We covered a lot of things and a large area in one day with no public transport except for on the way back. We walked from the Vatican city in the north west of Rome right down to the Colosseum in the south east. I’d love to know how many kilometres we walked in total.

The one thing about Italy is all of their monuments are just huge, very tall and very detailed. It must have taken ages for them to be built. So much effort and attention to detail went into them.

Today was a much light day. Both of us were keen to retire earlier than the other days. We first headed for the Sistine Chapel but the line was massive. I’d say close to a kilometre. So we headed back to the Colosseum for another quick look. As well as another look at the Roman ruins on the way back from the Colosseum. We then began our walk to the Piazza Navona (a piazza is a square or public place). It’s home to the Fontana del Quattro Fiumi (Fountain of Four Rivers).

 

Roman Ruins

After that we headed back towards the Sistine Chapel to have another go at the line and this time around there was none, which was great. The path to the Sistine Chapel goes through many other corridors, rooms and large halls. I’d say we walked at least a kilometre on our little trip. So many of them had fantastically detailed walls and roofs with paintings of all sorts of the things. A lot of sculptures around the place and the one thing we noticed was that a lot of the male statues had their private bit broken off them 🙂 But the ones with leaves instead did not. After a good half hour of winding corridors, rooms and large halls we finally got into the Sistine Chapel. Well Michelangelo was really an artist. The paintings are so detailed and cover a massive amount of space. There are lots of separate large paintings that apparently tell stories from the bible. Again like all the other Italian monuments, it’s huge, very tall and very detailed. Unfortunately they won’t allow photos (like in Paris with the Mona Lisa, hence the post card shot 🙂 ).

We ended the day at that as we’re both still a little worn out from the day before. We headed back to our place for a swim and spa. Relaxing….

Tomorrow I think we are headed for our worst accomodation. Tents! This’ll be character building 🙂

The Pope

Well today was the hugest day ever! We must of walked for seriously over 7 hours. We left at 11am and didn’t get home till almost 7:30pm and only sat down for lunch for about half an hour.

St Peter’s Basilica

Our first stop was Vatican City. The were literally thousands of people gathered in St Peter’s Square and after a while we wondered why they were all faced one way and then we realised that the Pope must of been making an appearance and sure enough he did! At 12 o’clock he appeared in his little window. It was a pretty cool moment but not being able to understand what he was saying and not being religious people, we quickly got over it and shortly left to go into St Peter’s Basilica itself. That place is huge and very beautiful another amazing building to add to my list that I’ve seen so far 🙂

Trevi Fountain

Pantheon

We then went to the Spanish Steps. They are just like the name says a set of steps nothing that great about them really. I’m sure they have some great history behind them but just to look at they weren’t that spectacular.

Our next stop was the Trevi Fountain. I was expecting this little fountain but again it was quite big and very pretty also just way too many people around which was quite annoying cause there was limited space to stand or sit around and just look.

Colosseum

Colosseum – Inside

We then checked out the Pantheon and you guessed it, it was huge! We’ve discovered the Italians love building big stuff!

Our last stop for the day was the Colosseum. We did a tour of the inside, the guide thought he was pretty funny but I didn’t think he was! He did give us lots of interesting history though, like the floor was built of wood and they just covered it in sand. I thought that was a bit strange, it no longer has a floor because of the numerous fires you just look down at this maze made of stone. Our ticket lasts until 1:30pm tomorrow so we’ll probably go check it out again.

Vatican Guards

Tomorrow I’m keen to take it a bit easy, there’s still a lot to look at but I think we’ll catch trains around instead of walking 🙂 The Sistine Chapel was closed today so I want to go check that out tomorrow hopefully there won’t be as many people around either because its a Monday.