Well today we did our best to wear down further the well worn cobblestones of the streets of Rome.
Breakfast at our hotel is on the rooftop garden. It overlooks the classical Roman roof tiled buildings, churches and so on and although the pigeons do their best to dive in on any scraps on or near your table, it is a wonderful location to start the day. The large continental breakfast offering was very tasty and Adrienne was very pleased with her freshly made cappuccino !
We had managed to sleep pretty soundly but woke reasonably early with our body clocks still adjusting although I don’t think we would have stayed asleep much longer as the garbage truck collecting the bottles in the alley way outside out did any alarm clock ! Even the doubled glazed windows which do an excellent job of keeping the general noise at bay could not handle the garbage truck !
After breakfast we collected our day bags and headed off. Our morning would be our own walking itinerary heading toward the Vatican where we were booked on a small group tour at 1.30pm
Not far up the street our first stop today was the Trevi Fountain. There were plenty of people around already but we had no trouble dealing with the obligatory photos throwing our coins in the fountain.
Our next stop down the twisting laneways was the Spanish Steps. We tested out our knees and climbed all the way to the top to take in the view. About half way up we came across one of the many “costume characters” who do their best to get into photo opportunities with the tourists – at a cost of course. Here a centurion was holding a dagger at the throat of one tourist and giving the “thumbs down” signal while the other tourist grinned madly taking photo after photo.
At the bottom of the steps is a fountain called the Fountain of the Ugly Boat.
We then headed down toward the river and walked along the famous shopping street called the Via Condotti – if you know a famous brand, it was in this street. We then walked on toward the river and onto the Ponte Umberto, a bridge over the river, where from here we had a great view toward St Peters Basilica. Further down the river we crossed the Ponte Sant Angelo where we crossed to visit the Castel Sant Angelo.
This “castle” was originally commissioned as a mausoleum by Emporer Hadrian for himself and his family. It was later used by the Popes as a fortress and (as we found out later) was also used to house some of the treasures from the Abbey at Montecassino during World War II moved there before it was bombed.
From here it was a short walk up to the Vatican. Along the way we stopped to buy a Panini and drinks for lunch and then headed up to the square in front of the Vatican which is completely filled with chairs at the moment for the outdoor weekly masses. We had to walk around the walls of the Vatican to the meeting point for our tour. When we met the guide, it turned out that the “small group” was just Adrienne and I so we had our own private tour.
Our guide, Francesca, was very good and very knowledgeable. Our 3 hour tour ended up 3 1/2 hours and included various parts of the Vatican, the Sistine Chapel – which was wall to wall people and they were having trouble keeping people “silencio”, and ended as the 5 o’clock mass was starting in the main hall.
We got a brief view of a couple of the Swiss Guards as we left and then headed back to hotel. Along the way we stopped at a little Gelatissimo for our first Gelato. Adrienne had ginger and fig and I had ginger and lemon and they were delicious ! We have already seen another that boasts 150 flavours so I’m sure it will be on the list at some stage.
Having been on our feet all day we put our feet up when we got back to the hotel – the Italian habit of eating late giving us plenty of time to relax before heading out again. When we did we thought we would head for somewhere near the Trevi Fountain but we gave that a miss as there were so many people everywhere ! We headed back closer to our hotel and in fact just round the corner from our hotel found a fabulous small family restaurant called Sabatino and the food was delicious.
So the end of another busy but fantastic day.