Rome Adventures I

Day 1
At 8.30 AM we left rainy England behind for the cloudless skies of Rome. We landed sometime around midday, but by the time we had travelled from Fiumicino Airport to the city itself, wandered a long way the wrong way down the street looking for our hotel, wandered back, finally found it and checked in and unpacked it was already close to half 3. Our hotel was the lovely little Hotel Termini, which is about a minute away from the main Termini train station in Rome and wonderfully close to lots of good eateries and gelato parlours-always important when in Italy. It was in an old apartment building and there was about 8 rooms in our section of it-it was subdivided into many many small hotels. The rooms were fairly small but very comfortable and a steal at only  €30 each per night-plenty of storage space, en suite bathroom, a safe for valuables and air conditioning*. Lovely.

Lovely little room!

By the time we had both showered and regrouped, it was pushing 5pm so we headed out for a quick bus tour of the city to highlight all the things we wanted to see. It was a little expensive at €21 but it was a 24 hour ticket allowing us to hop on and off whenever we wanted and it was really nice to just sit and enjoy the sunshine and listen to the audio commentary without having to do anything except taking photos. Plus Rome is a really gorgeous city, and there is so much to see that a bus tour makes sense so that you can start to drink it all in. An hour and a half later we arrived back at Termini station and sought out some food, and we even found a pizza parlour that would make me a pizza without any cheese, then followed it up with our first gelato of the week as we headed back to the hotel to sleep away our exhaustions.

Day 2

We'd already booked tickets to go around the Vatican museums for this day, so after a really disappointing breakfast (the only bad thing about our hotel, I think) we caught a bus for the bargain price of  €1.50 to just outside the walls to the Vatican City. A 5 minute walk from the bus stop brought us to the entrance of the museums, and because we already had tickets we got in rather quickly, side stepping the lines inside too.

The entranceway, which was taken as we came out
and was a lot more queuey when we went in, honest.

We spent a long time in the museums because there is so much to see, and it's all really really beautiful. It gets to the point where by the end of the day you're almost becoming immune to the amazing things around you because you've seen so many of them. It's definitely worth the money though, because it's such a collection of brilliant art work/sculptures/frescos that you will never see in one place any where else. And of course, the tour ends in the Sistine Chapel which is stunning-the ceiling tells so many stories and has the famous painting "The Creation of Adam" right in the centre. Even as a non-religious person it's a pretty awe inspiring sight.

The Creation of Adam (from here)-you're not allowed to take pictures

After we left the museums at around 4.30, we made our way back around to St Peter's Square where St Peter's Basilica sits, dreading the sight of the queue still curling around the courtyard like it had been earlier. To our surprise, there were much fewer people there than had been when we'd originally arrived and we didn't queue for more than 15 minutes. Inside (and out!) is another stunning piece of Italian architecture and they really do make some truly spectacular churches so it's well worth a visit, even if you don't go to the museums-it's free! 

Probably the best photo I got of the interior with my dodgy camera

After leaving St Peter's (with a large expensive gelato in our hands) we headed back to the hotel for a shower and change before dinner, where we were entertained by an exuberant Italian waiter trying to persuade us to have the lobster because it was romantic. Another gelato and a few games of cards (Rome designed, of course) later and we were ready for another good night's sleep. 

I'll leave this here as it's already quite a long post, and will do the rest in another one tomorrow.
Until then, then
-Jenni-

*Believe me, it's a wonderful wonderful thing when you've been out sweating all day.