Day 30

Tecnically speaking I am home, but I wanted to finish the diary.

Today was a big day for us, we were finally going to see some of Romes biggest and most impressive attractions. Namely the Colleseum and Pantheon. However our iternerary pointed us in a completely different direction to start off.

We headed down the same old streets and ended up back at the all too epic "Momument to the forgotten soldier", tonight it was open so we headed up the steps and into the museum to see some of the more impressive modern sculptures around Rome. The place is epic, a huge marble monument made in the Neo Classical style, I for one, really like it.

After that we headed to the forum area, the true ruins of Ancient Rome. It was here we "bought" our tickets for the Colesseum and stuff too. I said "Bought" because they were actually free for under 18 EU citizens. Noice. We walked around in the baking heat and discussed the wonders of the city as it spread out before us, however something was on all of our minds. The arena.

We finally headed up to the Colesseum itself, we skipped the queues and scanned our tickets. Before stepping in to the immpressive oval arena. This 75,000 seater stadium is known for being one of the most impressive buildings in the world, and for good reason. It truly is fantastic.

However our mamoth day sightseeing did not end there, we wanted to go to the Pantheon and get inside, some of the lads hadn't been too impressed with the view from the outside as it wasn't all that cool. Once we were there though they had the oppurtunity to see inside the oldest Christian church, To stare at the almost perfectly hemispherical dome, with its circular iris, to marvel at the beauty of such a wonderful building, that had somehow surved the rape of the Catholic churchl.

Later we headed back to the hostel before intending to go out into town. This was a bit of an epic mess up. The river side was a promenade of classy bars and expensive areas, town itself was quite and boring. Drinking on streets was illegal so our bottle of wine got confiscated by an under cover cop, and worst of all Mac Ds closes at 11pm in Rome... WTF

Day 29 - Rome, where we finish Roaming...

Today we arrived in Rome after a pretty early train from Florence, we pretty much agreed straight away that Rome was a better option. We headed to the old station and bantered into the longest queue yet, there were some really weird people in there, and a couple of dogs too, wtf.

Eventually we got on our high-speed to Rome, I was sitting opposite a small child for the second time on this triop and honestly they need to stop stepping on my legs its far too annoying, like honestly, what the hell are they playing at.

We arrived in Rome at like 2pm and bantered to our extremely funny hostel. I am sitting in hgere right now, but basically what you enter is a laundrette, which has a table in the middle, they check you in, give you a map and show you a logical route for you to take around Rome, then they take you across the street to an apartment building to show you your room.

We basically then headed out on our first walk, we saw all 4 fountains, a couple of Piazzas and the outside of the Pantheon. Rome was hot, like 35 degrees as usual so we were dying, but we were presently surprised that the city was serviced by free water fountains which we basically dominated.

Later we headed back to the hostel, ate some pizza and stuff, and then two of us headed out again at around 10pm, me and Col just walked the streets aiming to see the city at night. Many of the sights including the "monument to the forgotten soldier" were bathed in white light. The Colosseum was of course epic as usual, and the whole place was buzzing...

Banter really. +1 Rome.