2012 ROME
This visit to Rome was planned as a follow up to the previous year's Pompeii trip. Jamie and Paul had attempted to get to Rome from Naples 'for the day' but it didn't work out and they vowed to get to Rome the year after.
They planned a 3 day break in Rome, and soon found from the comments of friends who'd been, that 3 days was not enough to see all of Rome. Oh no! OK, they would be ruthless, they planned their two full days in detail, using a street map to 'join the dots' and make sure they made best use of their time. They shunned anything post-Roman, they weren't interested in fountains or the Vatican. They had their list.
They planned a 3 day break in Rome, and soon found from the comments of friends who'd been, that 3 days was not enough to see all of Rome. Oh no! OK, they would be ruthless, they planned their two full days in detail, using a street map to 'join the dots' and make sure they made best use of their time. They shunned anything post-Roman, they weren't interested in fountains or the Vatican. They had their list.
KEY TO THE MAP!
1 Good Rome – Bona Roma 2 Colosseum 3 Forum 4 Palatine Ruins + Museum 5 Trajans Forum 6 St Clemente Church + Mithraeum 7 San Sebastian Gate and Walls of Rome 8 Baths of Caracalla 9 Circus Maximus 10 Forum Boararium – Lots of stuff here! 11 Theatre of Marcellus – fee?? Tiber Island? 12 Insula Apartment Block 13 Pantheon + Giant Foot of Isis 14 Column of Marcus Aurelius + Temple/Hadrian 15 Castel St Angelo 16 Mausoleum Augustus + Ara Pacis |
"As it turned out, our travel plans went smoothly and we were at our accomodation at 3:00 on day 1, we hadn't planned anything for that day, so we were able to visit the Colosseum, picking up a pre-booked ticket that got us to the front of a 30m queue! We were staying in cheap digs up by the station, so we walked down to the Colosseum each morning to start our tour, and again each evening. We always spent the evening eating then hanging out at the floodlit Colosseum, very nice! Jamie picked up a piece of Roman mosaic on the path near the Arch of Constantine. Day 2 started very early, skipping breakfast, and we toured the walls of Rome then worked through our list of sites to visit. We saw everything we wanted to, really soaking up the atmosphere in the Forum and the imperial palaces on the Palatine Hill. Sipping wine at the turning point on the Circus Maximums (now a park) was cool too. Day 3 involved more pavement pounding! Sites to see, places to go. Everything went like a dream; for both of us the highlights were finding the old Roman ruins of an insula (apartment block) and being able to peer inside the rooms, and looking into an actual underground Mithraeum. Fabulous! Our transport connections lined up beautifully on the 3rd morning to get us to the airport with no fuss. But we did decide to quickly visited the Trevi fountain at 8:00 am, with barely a soul there. And because we found we had made extra time, and were close (at the Mausoleum of Hadrian), we did visit St. Mark's Square and the Vatican, but only briefly." "An awesome trip." |
Trevi Fountain at 8:00 am, deserted!
Toasting the dead at the Colosseum
Entering the Forum
Looking at the Theatre of Marcellus
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The Aurelian Walls, the 3rd century defences of Rome ...being 3rd century re-enactors, we could not miss these!
The Colosseum as seen from the Palatine Hill