Rome Day 2

Did a short, self-guided audio walking tour of the Trastevere neighbourhood in the morning. It was an interesting spot but think it would have more atmosphere in the evening. We went into an old church called Saint Cecilia which was nice, and then finished the tour at another church, Santa Maria.

Steve had his second serving of pizza in the morning on the way to Trastevere, so we had a light lunch of a couple of smoothies from the cafe right next door to our apartment. Then we headed to the Vatican. We started with the Vatican museums, then the Sistine Chapel and finally St Peter’s Basilica. Some of the sculptures and paintings in the museums were amazing, but our highlight was still the Sistine Chapel. But it’s not easy on the neck — we probably spent about half an hour in there, the whole time looking upwards. We then walked to St Peter’s Basilica and were amazed at how enormous it is, both inside and the surrounding areas. It’s true the Romans took inspiration from the Greeks and made it bigger.

By then it was about 6:30pm, and we power walked back out through St Peter’s square to make sure we arrived back at our local laundromat in time to pick up our washing before closing time. Then we went for dinner at the same place we had late night pasta on our first night in Rome, Saltimbocca. We both had pasta again, and it was once again delicious. We may have dinner there again :p

Before bed we decided to walk back to the Trevi Fountain, hoping that it wouldn’t be quite so busy at 10pm but it was still absolutely packed with tourists. We managed to get a slightly better view than we did during the day but we left fairly quickly — it’s definitely one of those places you need to go to at 6am or 1am to properly enjoy.Read more