Walking around in Rome

I can't imagine how busy it will be here in the tourist season! It is already really busy and crowded and it is only February!

Today, we had lovely weather for walking around. We did a couple of loads of laundry early and hung everything up on the balcony. We washed everything we were not wearing. We'll wash what we are wearing now tomorrow. I want to leave here with a backpack of clean clothes since we've been on the road for more than 3 weeks now.

After breakfast and chores, we walked down to the piazza or large plaza by our apartment. It is called
Piazza de Popolo. We bought 72-hour passes to ride buses, subways, streetcar, etc, and then after faffing around for 30 minutes, I figured out which bus going which way would take us to the Coloseum.

Phil managed to figure out how to validate the tickets using the machine. A short while later, we watched some other tourists who were baffled by the process.

We got off the bus at Circus Maximus, which is the archeological chariot racing stadium. We walked over to the Coloseum and took photos, and then took a bus up to the Pantheon. There are just Roman ruins everywhere here. We did not buy tickets to go into anything today, but we enjoyed photographing things from the outside.

On our walk back, we stopped for tonight's groceries. Tonight, we'll have chicken and salad and maybe pasta.

I bought tickets for entry to the Vatican at 9:30 am on Tuesday. Tickets for Monday morning were already sold out. Since we have the transit pass, it will be easy to map our route there and back.

The Pope is in the hospital, so I doubt there is any chance of seeing him this week. It is supposed to rain Monday and Tuesday. Thankfully, there are umbrellas here in the apartment for our use.

If it is raining tomorrow we'll go to some museums. The Leonardo di Vince museum is just steps away from our apartment.Read more