The Sights

Yesterday we went to the Colusseum, you may have heard of it. A lot of other tourists seem to have. We lined up for hours and... Actually, it wasn't that long. There seemed to be a squillion people there, but we probably only lined up for 10 or 15 minutes. It just seemed like a lot longer at the time.

And it's big. And old. Standing in a building that is about 2000 years old is pretty amazing. We took heaps of photos, we hid from the rain, we took some more photos. We took some photos for other people and they took some photos of (for) us.

After that we went to Palatine Hill. It's right next to the Colusseum - a whole mess of ruins covering a few acres. There's churches that are nearly complete. There are columns standing on their own in the middle of some rubble. There's a really cool multi level pool thing incorporated into buildings built into the side of the hill. There was a woman walking around in high heel shoes-- which is exactly the kind of foot wear I prefer while exploring ruins.

After lunch we bought some souvenirs (sp?) and made our way down to the river. We saw the Ponte Fabricio, oldest bridge still standing in Rome which lead across to Isola Tiberina. And just down stream we saw the remains of the first bridge built in the city. From there it was back to the hotel on the Metro and an afternoon nap. We needed it, after all the walking today and all the walking from the day before.

We started Wednesday at the National Museum. The first funery (sp?) stone and urn were pretty cool. As was the first pot and headless and/or armless statue. The 100th of each was starting to wear a bit thin, by the 1000th...

Next was to a huge park-- via various statues and fountains-- that contained various museums and villas. We saw the zoo and the dome of St Peter's Basilica from a lookout called the Pinico. We made our way back via the Spanish Stairs. (We didn't know what they were at the time so we didn't go down them.)

Our final stop was justa couple of hundred metres from the hotel. There's a bit of an unimpressive (by Roman standards) stone wall that doesn't really appear to be attached to anything much at all. There's a sign on it saying 'Basilica St Marina (and some foreign stuff)'.

But then you step through the door...

The whole place is cross shaped, probably about a hundred metres along the longest arm. The domed, painted, ceiling would be at least 30 metres high. It was cool and quiet and almost (well, not really) made you believe in God. Not sure what St Peter's will be like after that.

We will find out tomorrow.

Today, though, is a rest day with some reading and sketching (I'm terrible) and maybe a bit of a walk to something close this afternoon.

So, we are off to rest...

Ciao

O.K. We know we've been a bit slack of late and there's lots of gaps to be filled in. (Like a little thing called a wedding.) We have, however, made the executive decision to leave the filling of said gaps until we get back from our honeymoon.

Scene Break

WEDNESDAY 29TH AUGUST 2007,
ROME, ITALY

We finally made it to Rome and the hotel at 4.30 pm (Rome time - 12.30 am Australian time) on Tuesday 28th Aug. This meant that from the time the plane left Brisbane at 8pm on the 27/8 to the time we reached the hotel we had been travelling for 28 & 1/2 hrs. (Insert exhaustion here.)

The hotel is only a couple of minutes walk from the train station. We were slightly worried as we walked down the street the hotel is on. It looks a bit grungy (but is actually quite normal for Rome). The hotel is very nice though. The room is small but the furniture is quite good quality and the amenities are well appointed.

Despite being completely shattered we didn't go straight to sleep. We unpacked so we don't have to live out of a suitcase for this first week. Scott also experimented with local TV and we were slightly horrified when the first show that came on was a dubbed episode of McLeod's Daughter's.

In attempt to re-establish that Italian feeling so cruelly crushed by a terrible Aussie TV show we then went to find a pizzaria for dinner. There are about 15 of them within two minutes walk but in the end we settled on a little place called Dominoes. Just kidding.

Actually, we don't know what it was called but it was very Italian and the pizza was fabulous. Kelly was in heaven with pizza topped only in sauce and three kinds of capsicum. Scott's tomato and herb pizza was also great, although a little firey.

On the way back to the hotel we stopped at a little Aldi type supermarket to get some supplies in case jetlag visited us with an attack of the munchies in the middle of the night.

Now, earlier at the hotel we had examined the minibar price list and decided that we could afford to splurge 1 Euro on a bottle of water (approx. $1.70 Aust didn't seem too bad). You can imagine our surprise when we saw bottled water selling at the supermarket for 16 Euro cents each. We bought six.

Back at the hotel we finally gave into our exhaustion and fell asleep at about 8pm. (we had made a point of trying to operate according to Rome time since boarding the plane in Brisbane in an attempt to limit the effects of jetlag. It seems to have worked as we slept through to 6am and feel pretty good.)

That about brings us up to date. Stay tuned and we'll try to keep you posted.

Ciao