Holiday – Day 2: Rome

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We both slept deeply – the double-glazing helped and also because there were no cats jumping on-an-off the bed!

A quick peek through the curtains revealed that it’s very grey out there, so I think umbrellas will be the fashion accessory of choice together with warm coats.

And so, to breakfast. Trip Advisor reviews had been mixed, so we were eager to experience it for real. What was it like? ‘Varied’, ‘Inspired’, ‘Piping hot’ are some of the phrases that you definitely wouldn’t use to describe our first visit. The machine-fed orange juice tasted nothing like oranges; you could have stood a spade up in the coffee; the omelette (I think it was omelette) had been incinerated to death and the frankfurters had been freshly tipped out of a tin. Suffice to say, the tastiest thing at breakfast (apart from Ann) was the sachet of ketchup!! – a truly horrible experience, but at least the whole thing was over quickly. I’ll experiment with the croissants and preserves tomorrow – surely they can’t get that wrong*.

*Famous last words!

Today, we welcome guest editor, Ann to the blogosphere!!

After beating a retreat from the breakfast room (I use the term ‘breakfast’ in its broadest sense), it was back to the room to plan our day. It was a lot brighter out there now, so that gave us some more options. We plan to buy a ‘Rome Pass’ and get a grip of the Metro system as it’ll be a cost-effective way to get around – and cheaper than taking cabs. The Pass will give us unlimited travel on the Metro plus three museums for three days.

With the day now planned, our first stop was just five-minutes way, to one of the top museums in Rome, the Museo Nationale Romano. We must have been through the doors just after opening, so no hoards of riff-raff in the way of the impressive statues, mosaics or frescoes. A real treasure chest of a museum, and hardly anyone there. Perfetto! We then decided to try out the Metro underground system (London it ain’t, with only two tidly lines), getting off at Colosseo stop with the rest of mankind. I’m not sure what the Italian for sardine is, but we were all behaving like them as we took the crammed journey to the famous tourist spot.
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The Colosseum is still as impressive as ever, even without Russell Crow sulking in his sandals. We wandered down to one of the must-see churches in Rome, the San Clemente. It looks nothing from the outside, but the painted frescos and mosaics around the altar were stunning.

Lunchtime: ‘When in Rome’, as the saying goes…and we a attempted to find a restaurant that was a) open and b) not full of people. No such luck., so we settled for a curry, courtesy of Mother India – one of two Indian restaurants we saw during our walk-about. It wasn’t particularly busy, but it was full of Indians speaking with cut-glass english accents, but thankfully no flock wallpaper! The food was pretty good and so was the service.

All spiced-up, we now continued on our museum-quest, heading off to see the old roman market and forum at Mercati Traianei, which had great views over the ruins laid out below. We’d not been here before on our previous trips to Rome, and it had had some sort of facelift to enhance the well-preserved former shopping area (no sign of Marcus & Spencus!).
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We then decided to walk uphill to the famous Piazza Campidoglio, designed by Michelangelo.

Young Mikey did a pretty good job, and it is perfectly proportioned in its design. We trotted around the Palazzo museum there, with lots of roman statues, mostly with chopped off willies genitalia (note to self: have a word with the new blogger, Ann and her choice of nouns) or noses. The rooftop cafe was a welcome pitstop, with great views over the Forum. When we finally had had too much culture, it was umbrella time as the heavens had opened when we left and walked back down the hill.
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18.10: After the short Metro journey back, we’re at the hotel, soaking wet and tired in equal measure!!!! The weather deteriorated and turned to thunder and lightning, so it’s a good job we got back when we did. We could hear the sounds of dozens of car alarms going off as the thunder continued

19.30: Time to sample the variety that is Italian TV. Just four channels – one didn’t work, one was in Japanese, one was a news channel and the other was CNN! Smile

We’re still stuffed from our Indian-experience, so we skipped the evening meal. Tomorrow, The Vatican.

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