Roaming Rome!

Wow... been a while since our last blog and we have been quite busy! We had a fantastic weekend celebrating our 7 year anniversary in the Lake District -  with beautiful scenery and fantastic food to completely spoil us. On the way back to Edinburgh we visited Hilltop House, Beatrix Potter's Lake District House. It was so much fun to see some of the inspiration for her stories and drawings, unfortunately we didn't find squirrel Nutkin but we did spot Flopsy, Mopsy, Peter and Cottontail! :-)

Our dessert at Broadoaks Country Lodge

High Tea

Hilltop House

The Lake District...

We managed to get ourselves to the Royal Highland Show and had a wonderful day out with coos, chainsaw carving, first class show jumping, cart-horses, gun dogs, exhibitions and sheep-shearing!

We have done a bit of local travelling, visiting and spending a bit of time in Musselburgh, St Andrews and it's Castle and stunning University grounds, as well as North Berwick where we had delicious seafood and a walk along their lovely (by Scottish standards!) beach.

Lobster in North Berwick!

St Andrews Castle

NOW... time for details about of most recent adventure to Rome! We finally made it to Italy after a fair amount of stress trying to get our Schengen Visa from the Italian Embassy! But, passports safely packed we arrived at Edinburgh Airport at 5am, a bit bleary-eyed but ready for a taste of Italy. We stayed at a lovely, simple hotel called Hotel delle Muse which had everything we needed. We arrived at the hotel at about 2pm on Friday and after a quick recovery period and a quick change we headed out to find some sights. After spending over an hour trying to find the right bus, then figuring out that the map and current bus route did not match... (in other words, getting lost!) we had to re-evaluate our plans and just headed to the nearest park in search of some gelato. Luckily Rome is packed full of beautiful parks and piazzas and we ended up in a huge, beautiful park of fountains and sculptures called Villa Borghese. We took a stroll through the park, ending up in the spectacular Piazza del Popolo. This really felt like Rome! Fountains all around us, street performers, music, beautiful buildings and cobblestones!

A fountain in Villa Borghese

Neptune Fountain

Piazza del Popolo!

We found a small little side-street restaurant for supper and thoroughly enjoyed the delicious home-made, authentic Italian Pizza and local beer. Both of us immediately fell in love with the food from the little local cafes which are dotted all over the place. Everything is simple, fresh and so tasty with wonderful salamis and cheeses! Just yummy! :)

Saturday was dedicated to the Vatican City. We made our way there quite early to try to beat some of the crowds. The sight of St Peter's Square and St Peter's Basilica as you walk into the city just takes your breath away, it really is spectacular.

St Peter's Basilica

Luckily we pre-booked our tickets online and that made a HUGE difference. The queue to buy tickets at the gate was already insane at 9am and the wait would probably have been at least 2 hours! It took us 10 mins to get in and from there we took our time exploring the Vatican Museums...  which are just INCREDIBLE! The number of beautiful paintings, tapestries, sculptures and other artworks are mindblowing, there are just rooms after beautiful rooms of exhibitions. The rooms all lead towards the Sistine Chapel. You know when you start getting close to the famous Chapel because the crowds start to build again and it begins to feel a bit overwhelming, like cattle being herded through a huge, busy, very hot dairy! We did manage to beat the claustrophobia and were rewarded when we finally made it into the Sistine Chapel. There really aren't words to describe how beautiful a work of art it is and its actually difficult to take it all in. I absolutely loved it, even with the heat and all the people crammed inside.
After the Chapel, we took some time to recover with iced coffees in the gardens then visited a few of the rooms we previously missed. All in all it was an amazing experience that we both really really enjoyed! Unfortunately we didn't make it into St Peter's, but we enjoyed the views of it from the Museums and the Square. That will have to be on our "next time" list.

St Peter's Dome

Apollo

The Laocoon

(Helen wrote up to here yesterday and now she's gone to work and left you all mid-post. Bloody rude I think but you don't have to worry because I'll finish it off for you.)

After the Vatican we went back to the hotel to recover and then went in search of the Trevi fountain which we weren't able to get to on Friday. We managed to locate the fountain but unfortunately it was being renovated and was covered with scaffolding which blocked much of the façade and the fountain was empty. There was however a raised walkway over the fountain so you can still walk past it but there was quite a queue so we didn't bother to take a closer look at the scaffold. From the fountain we wandered a bit further and came to the Piazza Navona where we had MORE gelato while we sat and watched the people and hawkers and took in the atmosphere as the sun went down.

Not enough Gelato!

A fountain at the Piazza

The next day was devoted to the Colosseum. Again, the professional travellers pre-book their tickets to skip the queues. They also don't take photos with the people dressed up as gladiators because they only tell you after the photo that it costs 5 Euro. And they have swords...

Awesomeness!

Guess where that is...!

While the Vatican had many different museums and gardens and maps etc. the Colosseum didn't. You go to the Colosseum for one reason only and that's to see the Colosseum. We walked around the first floor and it was very interesting to read all the information we hadn't bothered to research before going. I didn't know that the Colosseum was actually oval shaped, I didn't know that gladiators were paired up according to their weapons and that games were free to watch but seating was segregated according to social class.

We had lunch (pizza of course) in the shadow of the Colosseum. While eating lunch we overheard others waiting to get into the Colosseum and saw a great example of tourist-trapping. Helen and I paid 36 Euro each for our Roma passes which gave us free entry to two attractions in Rome, priority entry (no queues) and concessions on the others, as well as three days of public transport travel. For the unprepared American family we overheard it would have taken a couple of hours waiting in the queue and 16 Euro each. Or they could purchase a priority entry ticket for 80 Euro each!

At the forum

After lunch we took a stroll back along the Roman forum which used to be the centre of the old Roman Empire. It was incredible to see the old monuments, memorials, temples erected over 2000 years ago still standing and thinking that this is where it all happened. Once we'd passed through the forum we left by a small little gate and got more gelato which we ate sitting across from the prison where St Peter and St Paul were supposedly imprisoned. Once again, it was absolutely phenomenal to think that we were surrounded by what was the social, political and commercial hub not just of Italy but of one of the largest and longest reigning empires ever.

From the old to the comparatively new. Down the road from the forum we walked a bit further on to the National Monument to Victor Emmanuel commemorating the unification of Italy. We'd passed it on the bus on the way to the Vatican the previous day and only caught a glimpse of it and already it looked massive. We approached it from the side and climbed what felt like a mountain of steps to just get from street level to the point where you can enter the monument. Going up the back of the monument is a lift going all the way to the top of the monument and the view from the top is incredible. From the top you can see St Peter's Basilica, the Colosseum, the piazzas, the palace, the gardens and parks and all the way across Rome to our hotel on the other side of Rome. And everything we saw was against a backdrop of a huge thunderstorm slowly advancing across Rome towards us although it ended up spending itself out before it reached us.

The view from the top (spot St Peter's!)

Happy couple at the top!

The view to the top!!!

After taking in the sights from the top of the monument we went back down the lift and through to the front of the monument and down the broad sweeping steps that lead up to the face of monument. There's a large traffic circle with a lawn and flower bed in the colours of the Italian flag in front of the monument and a smaller piece of grass with some trees off to one side. Helen and I thought the shade on the grass would be a great place to either have a snooze or snack on the pastries we'd kept from breakfast that morning - that seemed to be the idea everyone else already there had and when in Rome...

We'd been enjoying the break for about an hour and thought it was very civilised that Rome had provided the grass and shade for the public to rest when out of nowhere a police man appeared and blow his whistle in very insistent manner with barely contained glee as he shooed us all off the grass. Guess who won the Go Piss Off the Tourists office sweepstakes that day! Since we couldn't lounge on the grass for the rest of the afternoon we decided to head back to the hotel and refresh before heading out for supper.

And the next morning we left and that was Rome, one more stop along the way. It was hot, chaotic, disorganised, ancient, grand, majestic and beautiful! Much like our own tourists who don't always understand concepts like African time and our own unique approach to order, I think you have to be born and raised in Italy, and perhaps even specifically in Rome, to feel completely in step and at ease with the strange, uncompromising but still hospitable nature of Rome. It's a strange mix of new, modern and familiar with old, majestic and beautiful and a long weekend was not enough to even touch sides.

Ciao
xxx