Rome, Italy, part 1

Cruised into Civitavecchia early this morning with a bump and a bang. Early start... 7.30am we had a shuttle to catch to the coach parking, then it was off to Rome for the day.

Another stinking hot day and a city full of high season travellers. We had a great driver and only 12 of us in a minivan. Arrived about 9am at Vatican City for a quick 45 minute look around.  We bought tickets for a full tour starting at 12.45pm and hop on hop off bus tickets. Then it was to the Colloseum for a 45 minute look. Didn't go in as not enough time today. The outside was pretty awesome though and still with great views of the coloseum. Then into the city centre and dropped off in the city centre and being picked at 3pm outside the Vatican museum. It's an amazing city with, like the other places we've been to so far, incredible architecture.

First stop for us, breakfast! Second stop for us, finding a Vodafone shop to get more data - very important. By now it was 11.00am so we figured we should hop on the bus to the Vatican as we had to do half a loop to get there. Well, we couldn't find the bus stop. Robin used a real (going back to the dark ages 😅) map as the new sim card was an hour away from being activated. So we headed in the direction Robin said and still couldn't find the stop. I popped into a tailors and asked the shopkeeper where to get to the bus. Turns out we were going in the wrong direction and were half way to the Vatican, so we just kept walking. Got close to Vatican, stopped for a beer - geez it was hot! Got the sim card working. Discovered we were still 20 minutes from the Vatican and it was 12.30! We ran. Got there in time, joined the group, phew. Read more