On Saturday 19th May we
moved on to Prima Porta, just north of Rome. On the way a mega Griswald moment
occurred. Somehow we managed to get onto a toll road and as we approached the
toll I threw the coins into the receptacle but the barrier didn’t open. The
help button didn’t help at all and then the machine went off. We had to reverse
out of the lane, of course there were cars behind us, and go to a lane with
what I thought was a human being but when we got to the window I was sadly
mistaken, it was an Italian. We tried to explain what had happened but he just
started shouting at us in Italian, I don’t know why he thought we knew what he
was saying so we started talking loudly, as you do, thinking that he would
understand us. He then shut the wee window got out of his box and took down our
number got back in the box, printed out and gave us this huge bit of paper and
shouted something about the police. He eventually opened the barrier and off we
went really confused and peed off. Anyway turns out when we went online to pay
the ticket we only had to pay 1.10 after all that, what a carry on.
The site at Prima Porta provides
a free bus service to the local station where you get the train to Rome, about
20mins away.
Sunday we stayed within the site and of course
we watched the Moto GP.
Sunday night was a terrible night
of rain and we had set the alarm for 7am but when we woke up it was still
raining so we went back to sleep. When we got up later it had cleared up so we
decided to go to Rome just for a look around and get our bearings. We ended up
going to the Vatican and had about 4 hours going round the museums, through the
Sistine Chapel and round St Peters Basilica. There is so much to look at and
not enough time. All the sculptures, tapestries and paintings are amazing. The
Sistine Chapel is smaller than I thought it would be but still awesome. St Peters
Basilica has so many things to see and everything is on a huge scale, again
amazing. When we came out of the Basilica we chased
after a man in white in a little van to get an ice cream but he wouldn’t stop
for us.
On Tuesday the rain was on again but
we decided to still go into Rome to the Colosseum. What a mistake to make, I have never seen so
much heavy rain at one time, we were soaked through. First of all we got the
metro to the Trevi Fountain and then back onto the metro to the Colosseum. We paid
for a tour which included the Colosseum, Roman Forum and Palatine Hill which
was all very interesting and informative.
On Wednesday the weather was
great so we went back into Rome and did a bit of a walk around. We went to the
Piazza Flaminio, Piazza del Popolo, the Spanish Steps, Piazza di Spanga and
finally the Pantheon. The Spanish Steps area is where all the designer shops
and expensive jewellers are. The Pantheon is over 2000 years old and one of
ancient Rome’s best preserved monuments. Apparently the structure of the dome
is so sophisticated that if this building had been built with modern methods
and concrete it would have collapsed long ago.
There is a circle at the top of the dome, 9 meters across, which is open
and when it rains the water which gets into the church runs to the edges of the
walls as the floor is convex, this is in order to let the water drain to the
drain holes round the edge of the building.
Three days isn’t enough in Rome
but we must move on again. Next stop Pompeii.
TTFN
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