Rome

Slept in then hit Rome and the colosseum which is the first thing we saw from the metro station. No getting lost there. Many touts offering a quick route to skip the queues which we decided to take for a price. In the end, we skipped the queue after a wait of some length but we had a tour guide who didn’t really tell us much at all about the real working of the colosseum so we were a little disappointed. The colosseum is pretty cool. So old, so huge, so full of stories and drama. Despite the fact that chunks of it are missing you can still imagine all that went on. There are also some pretty good views from the top of the other ruins around.

After the colosseum, we walked to the Vittorio Emanuele II monument where the tomb of the unknown soldier lies. Some pretty impressive sculptures on a very grand scale on this monument. One of the sculptures took 20 years to create and in the end, the original artist died and it had to be finished by another. Very, very, hot. We stopped for lunch and to have a cool beer before heading for the Trevi fountain and the Spanish steps. It was so tempting to put your feet in the water but the whistleblowing police had other ideas. There were so many people and it was so hot, so while the fountain was impressive for the sheer scale, we did not linger. The girls each threw a coin in the fountain…and that was that.

The Spanish steps were somewhat unimpressive; just steps really. Many years ago there were flowers lining each side and in the middle but not so today. We looked, then sat our feet in the fountain at the bottom of the steps, withdrawing them just in time because out of nowhere came the policeman. Off to the supermarket. Grace made her signature salad, I had limoncello, bed.