Our first day in Roma

Once we arrived at Roma’s huge main train station “termini” we set about attempting to find our hotel. The heat in Rome was crazy and as it was close to Midday it was about as hot as the day was going to get, this made wandering the streets trying to find the right one really difficult. I made the mistake of not checking satellite view on Google maps before we left so I didn’t exactly know how the streets related to the train station so we ended up a fair few blocks to far north of where we wanted to be. After some serious huffing and puffing we finally found the hotel and where “delighted” with it’s proximity to the train station! The room was ready so we embraced its comfy bed and air-conditioned bliss and proceeded to have a well deserved siesta for 3 hours before finally heading out into the heat again.

The Metro station was at the main train station so at least we didn’t have trouble finding it; we jumped on the train and headed to Vatican City. We grabbed a drink and a coffee at a café near the metro before heading to VC to have a look around. I had a macchiato and am happy to say that Italian coffee is as good in Rome as it was in Venice a welcome change after some of the interesting things I have been served up when ordering macchiato in other cities.

The Vatican is very impressive a huge round square (if that makes sense) greets you when you pass through the arches of its outer wall. There are two big fountains and a tower thingy with some holy person on top; I suspect either the man himself or his mum can’t tell the all dressed the same back in those days. At the pointy end of the round square is the basilica a pretty impressive looking building that reminds me a lot of st pauls in London, after taking the required photos of the statues, fountains and grandeur of the square (the round one remember) we headed to the queue for the basilica dreading what we might find, but in the end we didn’t want at all just a minute to get through the security scan then straight through, Em was wearing a dress that covered her shoulders but didn’t have sleeves and the dude at the gate looked like he wasn’t going to let her in for a minute, they are very strict on clothing for the basilicas in Italy and it made me chuckle a little when the girl in front of us who’s outfit really wasn’t leaving much to the imagination walked right by 2 or 3 signs depicting the dress code and then looked so amazed that they wouldn’t let her in!

The inside of the basilica was very interesting with all it’s painted roofs, statues and stuff but it’s all pretty similar to the other big churches we have seen, I did like the story of the grave of the apostle Peter that was found back in 150AD or something and was the reason the basilica was built there, you can just see the mosaic of Jesus that the tomb is supposed to be behind.

After the basilica we headed back to the Metro stopping for some Pizza on the way, we ended up with way more food then we could manage even though we hadn’t really eaten all day. Then it was a metro ride and bed.

written by  Chris and Emily on July 23, 2009 from Rome, Italy
from the travel blog: Europe 2009
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