Of all the places we are visiting on thhe European leg, Rome was the one that both of us had been before: Amy visited Rome with good friends Sally, Andy and Ev and at that time promised herself that she would never come back (something to do with knife wielding maniacs) and even tried to make sure by not throwing a coin into the Trevi Fountain; I had been many times for work, but had never been a tourist in the city or seen the sites, something I really wanted to do…
In the end, my belligerence won out and Amy found herself in Rome, nearly 7 years to the day since she made her promise never to return. The flip side of my bargain was that we would be highly focused to minimize our time, hence the total of one day of sightseeing.
To this end we joined a Rome walking tour (http://www.enjoyrome.com/walking/index.html) and picked off the major sites in 3 hrs: The Colosseum (proper name Flavian Amphitheatre), The Forum, Capitoline Hill, Trevi Fountain, Pantheon and Piazza Navona. Of these, the most stunning was the Pantheon, but the most interesting was The Forum, which included the Arch of Titus, which was built to commemorate the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70 (see Mark 13: 1-2).
For the other must see in Rome (The Vatican of course) we got up at 5.30am to get to St. Peter’s Basilica at 7am. It was simply stunning inside and I would certainly find it impossible to concentrate if I were sitting there in a church service given every corner, column, wall, roof etc of the interior was adorned with art, sculpture and gaudy decoration! 45 mins later we were in the queue for the Vatican Museums which opened at 10am … once in, we raced around and past the vast hordes of people, checked out the Sistine Chapel (surreal) and were out in a record breaking 45mins, in fact, I think we were probably the first to leave that day!
So there you go, all Rome sightseeing done in a shade over 4hrs, plus 2hrs queuing at the Vatican! And I forgot to mention, we even managed to fit in a fun dinner with Reneé on the day we arrived as she was in town to meet up with Huw after his stint with the AYO was finished.
Next stop is the Italian Lakes, where the pace will be somewhat more sedate …
1 comment:
WOW it took us 3 days to cover that much of Rome and we were exhausted! Very impressive. Enjoy the lakes!
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