Rome, Italy

2015-10-11  |  Reading time: 2 minutes  |  travel , retirement , wanderlust

I arrived in Rome early one afternoon, dropped my bag in my room and then absolutely crushed the city. In one afternoon, I walked more than 15 km and managed to see:

  • Giardini Plazza Vittorio, my first taste of Roman ruins
  • Domus Aurea
  • The Colosseum, which was enormous and majestic, and completely surrounded by the cacaphony of cars, scooters and public busses, given that it is ringed by busy streets
  • Colonna Triana
  • The Pantheon
  • Republica, home of a really spectacular hotel (where I was not staying, but where my brother would likely)
  • Piazza di Spagna, where a concert was just setting up, and hundreds of people were sitting, drinking and enjoying the evening sun

After all that, my feet were bleeding – almost – so I trundled back to the hostel, and crawled into bed. An hour later, some obnoxious Austrian students entered the room and then one of them punched me in the arm to wake me and told me I was in his bed. It was the only bed in the whole room without linen, so it seemed reasonable that I stay there, but he’d have none of it. I moved to another bed and fell to sleep as their talking dropped off.

When I awake, I had a quick breakfast at the hostel and made my way to the Vatican City, where I knew pictures would not do justice to the splendor of the facilities, so I took none. It’s impressive, but people should see it for themselves, or search Flickr, since it has lots of really great snaps, some of which should not have been taken since photography in the Sistine Chapel is forbidden (though many people seemed to disregard the prohibition).

After a couple of great days in Rome, I’m packing my things and heading to Venice for a late lunch tomorrow. Then, it’s off to sleep on the night train to Munich. Using my train pass has really encouraged a bit of a whirlwind tour of Europe, but I’ve enjoyed many things and figured out what I’d like to see more of some time later. Exciting, this part of the trip has been. Relaxing, it has not. I’ll have time for that later, though. In the parks of Munich, after my rail pass expires.