We woke up to another seriously hot day and caught a bus, train, bus and finally a train to the roman forum. it was soo hot there and very dusty and soo many ruins to see- we had our big drink bottles with us and had to keep filling them all the time from the fountains that are everywhere. the forum is massive and took us a good few hours to wander around. We had a guide book that i found in Paris so it was interesting to read about all the locations in the forum. At 3pm having only had a muesli bar all day we decided we had to get some food. We exited the forum and got some food from a food cart outside and people watched in the shade. there was a gypsy walking back and forth with a very short cane so they are bent in half with a head scarf on to completely hide their face. we couldn’t decide if it was a man or a woman cos the biceps looked too big for a woman. Apparently it is quite common for these people to be men- maybe cos they get more sympathy. After lunch we walked down the end of the street to the colosseum. i expected the colosseum to be in an out of the way place- but there it was right at the end of a busy street. it was cool to go inside and there was no line which was great. it’s hard to believe being in these places what actually used to happen there and how many people and animals were killed. The colosseum is much larger than I imagined even though a lot of it has been destroyed, we walked around for about an hour. After the colosseum we had to get a gelato as we were dying from the heat and then we caught all the public transport back home. We went to the supermarket and bought salad for tea and sat by the pool area to eat it. That night was the when in rome toga party. None of us girls had been to a toga party so this was exciting. it took us a while to figure out how to put our bed sheet on us to make us look remotely attractive :). it was fun- everyone was dressed up. We stayed until 2am when the bar shut. There were actual Irish gypsies at the camp ground and they all drive brand new Porsche 4wd. and the girls are so young with their babies. They were trying to dance with me- the female gypsy mothers, at the toga party. Made me really uncomfortable, as they are really aggressive dancers and kept pushing me away from my circle of friends and into theirs. Very weird experience. we woke up at 8am to head to the Vatican on the 9am bus as it was free day at the Vatican museum. we were getting ready to go and i got a muesli bar out to put in my bag, looked at it and realized that there was a huge bite out of the corner of the wrapper. steph was like a mouse has eaten your muesli bar. this was in one of my bags. so i searched through my bag and sure enough there were mouse poos all through my snorkel mask. gross- first ants and now a mouse. we got rid of any food from our room that time. it was funny because we had both heard this weird noise in the middle of the night and not said anything to each other. but because we were in a tent i just thought it was something on the roof. Well now we know. we got to the Vatican museum and saw a line and thought that’s not too bad, we walked to the corner and realized that it went around that corner and around the next corner and the next until it ended at the entrance to st peters square.. it was lucky that there was some cloud cover that day - as we were expecting to be a good few hours in line. However the line moved really fast and we were in the museum within 30 mins- amazing. It was free being the 1st sun of the month- bonus. The museum was beautifully decorated- all the roofs are decorated differently as you walk between each room. We headed to the Sistine chapel, as well as everyone else. the Sistine chapel was amazing inside- especially when you know it was created by one person. we had to be quiet inside- but the security kept shushing people and yelling out quiet which kind of ruined the silence of it all. After the Vatican museum we went to st peters square. Again another big line awaited us- but this also moved very fast. st peters basilica is enormous and beautiful inside- i actually had my mouth open in awe as i took in every part of it. i found the bodies of the old popes a little disturbing to look at as i wasn’t expecting to see these. the church was amazing but didn’t feel very spiritual with all the tourists around taking photos everywhere. the guards to the Vatican city are dressed like jesters- pretty funny costumes. After the long day at the Vatican we went back to the camp site and us girls planned to go for dinner somewhere in Rome. we sat at the bus stop for an hour and a local told us where to go and forgot to mention that the metro finishes at 9pm as it was Sunday, until the bus was arriving. the time was 8.50pm we decided to skip going for dinner as we wouldn’t be able to get home. so we went to the supermarket, had 5mins before closing and bought some crackers, ham, cheese and dips and had a picnic at the tables near the pool. was a nice evening- but would have been great to go out for dinner in Rome. oh well- we had a nice evening anyway. the next morning we got the bus to Florence. I would love to go back to Rome and stay closer to the city so that we could walk to the attractions and to dinner and not be constrained by the dreadful transport system.
