Rome in Diary

So, me and Dave are in Cumbria at the moment, staying at my parents’ house. They aren’t here, they are in Spain for five weeks and said we could come and stay in the house. It’s very strange staying here without them and I miss seeing them, but I’ve seen my sister, nieces, grandparents and school friends over the last couple of days, so at least I’ve been able to catch up with people.

Anyway, that’ll have to wait for another entry (I have a habit of saying that lately, I seem to be permanently behind on updates at the moment. I’m still trying to catch up on all your entries but I’m only on 13th March at the moment!)

I should comment on the future of PB; I did go back to OD and reclaimed my old diary. I have entries on there from 2005 and I seem so immature in the way I write (I used to write “cuz” instead of “because”. WHY WOULD I DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT??) and I added a few of you as friends, but I haven’t written anything. And now, PB is staying! There was a mad panic for 24 hours as everyone ran around waving their arms, and then Simple Mind came back, apologised, and handed over the reins. I get it, he’s been doing this voluntarily for years and has had enough. But I think his “PB is closing down” entry should have been more thought out. Oh well, the good news is, PB is staying. I like the new guy already, let’s see what he can do for us.

Right, onto Rome. It’s been about a month since were there, and we stayed for three nights / two days. It’s not a long time in which to see a whole city, so we stuck to seeing the main tourist attractions. They wer very impressive. We bought a city pass which gave us unlimited travel on the “hop on- hop off” tourist bus, entry into the Vatican, St. Peter’s Basilica, Sistine Chapel, Colosseum, Palatine Hill and Roman Forum plus cheap entry into a few other places, so we visited the Leonardo da Vinci museum, we also went to the Pantheon as it was free entry. So we have been to quite a lot of different places in just two days!

It rained. The ENTIRE TIME we were there. We had umbrellas; I decided to pack them which turned out to be a very good idea. However, there were still millions of people on the streets trying to sell us umbrellas and were thrusting them into our faces. DUDE! We already have umbrellas, how many do we need?? We didn’t have waterproof shoes, however; we both very sensibly only took canvas trainers, so we had very wet feet for the whole weekend.

We didn’t bother with using the Metro (trams) as the nearest stop was so far away from our hotel, it was easier just to walk everywhere. So we walked about 22,000 steps / 10 miles each day going to all the various attractions. Considering I was 16 weeks pregnant, I was SO TIRED by the end of it all.

Here, have a photographic interlude.

This is a monument to the first king of Italy.

An exasperated looking fountain dude.

That famous bit of the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel.

A wider shot.

The whole experience was awful. We were herded about from room to room, shuffling around in huge crowds. They pushed us into the Sistine Chapel at the end, yelled at us for talking, yelled at us for standing still, yelled at us for taking photos, and herded us out of the other end of the room to let more people in. Don’t get me wrong, the whole of the Vatican is full of beaufitul art and sculptures and it was amazing to see, but I hated the whole experience. We were herded and shuffled for about two hours before we go to the Sistine Chapel at the end, and the crowds were HUGE, I felt really claustraphobic. But I’m glad we saw it, regardless.

Some of the people in the room.

This is the size of the Vatican Museum; I had no idea it was so big!

Impressive ceiling in another part of the museum, and many, many people.

It was a nightmare just trying to get in in the first place. There are hardly any sigposts and, the ones we did see were very ambiguous and only really pointed in the vague direction. Trying to get into St. Peter’s Basilica, we queued up, went through security and the metal detectors, couldn’t find the way in and ended up coming out the other end and back into the queue! So we had to do it all again, this time making sure we went through every single doorway we saw to make sure we didn’t miss it again.

I went to a Catholic church when I was growing up, but this one is slightly more impressive!

Anyway, I took hundreds of photos while we were in there (we only got yelled at in the Sistine Chapel). They had a section on Ancient Egypt and everything. I’ve posted them all on Facebook if you want to see more.

This Roman Forum is amazing. It’s just there, hanging about in the middle of Rome. It’s been there for about 3,000 years which is incredible. Imagine what it was like in its heyday, when the Roman Empire was working its way around the world. And this was the hub of it all, where they held politial meetings and planned their strategies, and it’s still standing today! Things were built to last back then.

I love this photo, though I have no idea why. I just felt compelled to get a picture of it.

And here’s that famous view of the Colosseum. It’s a very impressive building. Again, imagining it 3,000 years ago. Obviously I don’t agree with what it was built for as they used to fight lions and bears in there, but considering how long ago it was, the architecture is amazing.

This was the queue to get inside. I’m so glad we had fast pass tickets!

Inside the Colosseum.

Inside looking out.

The Leonardo da Vinci museum. It only took an hour to go round, but it was really interesting. I knew he invented a lot of things, but I didn’t realise just how many things and how advanced he was for his time. Helicopters, scissors, tanks, SCUBA suits, automatic cars, cranes. A lot of it never came to fruition during his lifetime, I would love to see what he thinks of all the things that we use now on a daily basis, that he initially came up with over 500 years ago.

Hand flipper

Water skis

Helicopter

SCUBA suit, which is one of the creepiest museum exhibits I’ve ever seen.

We had to have some proper Italian pizza while we were. And pasta. And ice cream. Dave had my share of the beer, which was really distressing because everyone drinks Peroni, which is one of my favourite lagers, and it’s SO CHEAP. Here in England, it’s one of the most expensive lagers, so I don’t have it very often. In Rome it was almost half the price!

This is the Trevi Fountain. It was such a battle trying to get close to it, can you see all the people there?? It’s only in a tiny square as well.

Literally, everywhere you look in Rome, it’s full of ancient, impressive and beautiful buildings, statues and monuments. So, there’s another city and another country I’ve visited. And we can tell our child in the future that he or she has been to Rome. I sure hope they enjoyed it!

I’ll be very impressed if all of the photo links work when I save this entry, I don’t think I’ve ever posted quite so many photos at once…

Other things I need to write about
- Voni’s hen party
- Mountain climbing yesterday
- Visiting my grandparents
- Seeing my school friends
- Birthfit

Last updated March 31, 2018