A day in Ancient Rome

The hot weather continues as does our walking tour of Rome.

Today after leaving the apartment we passed by the Vatican and walked through the tunnel at the end of Porta Cavelleggeri towards the Tiber and then down to the Trastevere area.

Trastevere is written up as a chic, arty place to visit but from our perspective it was anything but unless the write up was referring to all the graffiti on every building, well almost every building 

We crossed the river at Ponte Sisto and continued alongside the river to Bocca Della Verità

 After lunch in an air conditioned restaurant (air conditioning was a specific criteria in choosing a place for pranzo) we then continued along via Del Cerchi with the Palatino on our left

and Circo Massimo on our right 

It was then onto Colosseo

and the Roman Forum

The area from Bocca Della Verità to the Foro Romano is a total immersion in Old Rome with for example the Colosseum dating from 72AD.

Continuing back towards the Vatican we passed what we regard as the most impressive of the “more modern”buildings in Rome, Monumento a Vittorio Emmanuel II, construction of which started in 1855 to celebrate the unification of Italy that year

 A slowish trudge back through St Peter’s Square and a stop at a McDonalds to get us out of the heat got us back to the apartment and finished off a 2 day walking tour of most of the significant monuments in Rome, a very good refresh of our memory of them from our previous trip to Rome 12 years ago.

There was however one we still had to visit and that was the Basilica of St Peter’s which required good timing to avoid the queues so around 6pm tonight we went back down and got in the queue hoping we would make the cutoff at 7pm.

The queue moved reasonably fast and we were inside the Basilica in around 20 minutes, so our timing (at Sherry’s suggestion it must be recorded) was very good.

Putting to one side religion and extravagance this cathedral is simply outstanding and gives off the wow factor with a capital W. It’s internal size is difficult to gauge but I suggest Eden Park would comfortably fit in.

As we left I played Pope and took a photo of what he must see as he stands on the balcony

and also of a couple of Swiss Guards

There is also a bronze statue in the square, which was not there at our previous visit, depicting migrants and refugees moving across the world. It was installed in 2019, the first new statue to be installed in the square in the last 400 years!

A perfect ending to our day.

As I said after our first visit, Rome is the greatest outdoor museum in the world.

Kms driven to date 5389

Kms walked to date 691.3

Spent on Diesel €340.53 (estimate before trip €479)

Highest price paid to date for diesel €1.84/L Matera

Lowest price paid to date for diesel €1.479/L Freiburg

Spent on tolls €118.40 (estimate before trip €103.00)