Mike & Trace World Tour: Rome

DAY ONE

We thought we were all organised and turned up at La Spezia train station just after 8am ready for what we thought was our 9am train to Rome, this was not the case! The train was scheduled to leave at 8am, we missed it by minutes!

That left us with two hours to entertain ourselves at the train stations, the boys playing five hundred and the girls organised our itinerary for Rome. During this time we also got talking to some Kiwi’s from Bay of Plenty who had just seen Rome, they gave us a few “hot tips” for our stay.

After an hour on the train, it began to get hotter and hotter and hotter . . . . . the air conditioning broke down . . . . as it got hotter we began to get more hysterical. . . . .

After getting off the train the heat didn't really hit us in Rome, the mid 30s temperature seemed cool as the train was so hot.

We finally found our hotel (which by the way can not be classified as a hotel), there was a lot of graffiti on the street too!

This hotel has to be, by far, the worst hotel we have stayed in, but as we say, this trip is all about experiences and this hotel sure was an experience and one we hope not to experience again!

We were shown our room, the shower was broken which we tried to communicate to the manager, he thought we were saying it wasn’t clean (which was probably the case too) however he poured some toxic stuff down the drain which then produced a cloud of smoke. This smell lingered in the room for the remainder of our stay.

After that it was time to get out of the hotel for the night, we decided to splurge a bit of dinner to try and cheer ourselves up. A bottle of champagne helped with this! But the meal itself was a bit disappointing!. Stir-fried vegetables – spinach and onion how can you call that stir fried vegetables? Especially as a side for 8 euro? The portion sizes were extremely small and didn’t have the quantity nor quality were were expecting for the price!

After dinner we walked towards the Palatine Hill and around the Colosseum taking some snaps.

Josh pretending to steal the police car. Pete isn’t this your car? The light probably isn’t standard…

The Colosseum

We headed back to our accommodation not too late as were a little worried about our neighbourhood… It turned out to be fine.

DAY TWO

Breakfast was included but after the look of the room and the kitchen we decided to skip! Instead we had the most amazing croissant on our way to the Colosseum for 60cents! They had just pulled them from the oven.

At the Colosseum we signed up for a guided tour, this was great, the Colosseum is amazing and we really enjoyed looking around and hearing about its history.

From here we went over the the Roman forum and Palatine Hill for another guided tour, this was really interesting too! A lot of the history on this tour filled holes from the Colosseum tour.

After lunch it was off to the Vatican city for an audio tour – this was good but we struggled to stay focussed as it was so hot and we hadn’t slept well in our lovely hotel room the night before.

We also saw the Sistine chapel, this was so beautiful, Unfortunately you’re not allowed to take photos in here.

St Peter’s Basilica

Looking up at the dome of St Peter’s Basilica

Later that afternoon we queued up to climb to the top of St Peter’s Basilica which produced wonderful view of Rome. It took us an hour and a half wait and 350 stairs (and a short elevator) to get up to the top for the view but it as well worth the wait and the stairs.

DAY THREE

After a bit of a slow start we dropped our bags at the train station and went off to explore a central city park. This was a great little park, nothing like a New Zealand park, but it gave us a bit of a different look on Rome, which we needed! We found the locals in Rome far less willing to help than anywhere else we’d visited.