Napoli to Roma

Ahh *swoon*. Yeap, that is my future husband, he is tops :)

The flower had wilted pretty hard towards the end of the day so we pressed it in a tissue between the pages of our guidebook, and went to one of the many souvenir shops around the bus stop area. Picked out a mood ring with pretty purple swirls on it that were similar to the flower, paid the 3 euros it cost and then I had a brand new engagement ring. It is still on my finger but appears to be giving me that awesome greyish green stain that comes with cheap rings; having said that it's still the second best ring ever (the first being the flower)...

Anyways! If you would like to hear me go on and on about being engaged feel free to email me but this is about travelling :)

Day after that we were heading to Rome, but had til about lunch time before we had to catch a train. We checked out of the hostel and left our luggage in their locker, and then went to the Archaeology Museum, which was totally rad. It's full of artifacts from Pompeii and Herculaneum and they're all really well preserved – volcanic ash apparently protects stuff really well. It also has some Egyptian stuff (we skipped it as it was full of school kids) and has this neat room of incredibly inappropriate art. Like, paintings of popular sexual positions, a statue of a lady with oodles of boobs, sculptures of penii with wings and decorations, and a most decidedly bizarre sculpture of a half goat man (satyr? Pan? Faun?) coaxing a goat into intercourse. VERY graphic and odd. But very amusing, I took photos and will put them up eventually :)

Had lunch at that Trianon Pizzaria (it was on the way and reasonably cheap for a margherita) and then headed for a train to Rome. It's only a 2 hour ride and had pretty nice scenery. Got to Termini, Rome's Central station, and began to follow the directions to the hostel we got in the booking email. We were somewhat dreading this after the debacle that Naples had provided.

How glad we were when the directions were entirely accurate and easy to follow! We took Metro Line B, and then the no. 444 bus, and then walked up a street and there was the Peter Pan Hostel. I have no idea why it is called that but it had a hilariously bad painting of Peter Pan on the wall outside the bathroom, sadly I think I forgot to photograph it but really that's a good thing, it was an eyesore. And it kept surprising me when I can out of the shower! Bit of excitement when getting settled in the room, Joe decided to try to fix the wall socket in order to allow us to charge the phone and camera and laptop, but in doing so managed to make it spark and killed all the lights in the whole hostel... Mum I think I've found someone who can give Dad a run for his money...

We were hungry for dinner after checking in and getting the power situation sorted (Joe spoke to the guy at reception who fixed things up), so wandered down the street and found a wee trattoria. The staff spoke very little English but we had read enough menus to know what we were ordering. Had some mozzarella and pasta (not the best but not the most expensive either) and then headed back.

Day one in Rome! We hit the old centre of town. Like, way old... Caught the metro back to town and then walked down to the Roman Forum and the Colosseum. It was insane! In the middle of roundabouts and traffic, here is this super old, super rad collection of buildings and columns and paved paths and staircases and old temples, and you can see where people would have walked and talked and lived and worked.

Colosseum is reasonably cool, but pretty quick. We got a single audio guide and shared it, listening to one speech each and summarising it for the other (there were only 6 and they spoke waaaay slow) and took some pics. After browsing there, we went through the Forum properly (before we'd just walked around it and had some lunch, which we got from a bakery) and admired the insane coolness of it all.

As we came out of the Forum, we stumbled upon the remnants of the G20 protests which was pretty awesome - lots of people yelling and chanting and marching in a reasonably orderly fashion. We had to look it up when we got home though because we couldn't understand the signs, nor were we aware of the G20 summit taking place so had no idea why marches were taking place! The more interesting part was seeing police in full riot gear standing around casually, outside important buildings along the way, just standing by. Took some photos and they didn't seem to mind :)

Went to a place called est est est for dinner, which was pretty good. Good house wine, but odd pizza, not as good as Napoli's!

On the next day we didn't really have any big plans, and we ended up walking the long way from Termini to the Pantheon. On the way we stopped by lovely parks, interesting statues and also happened upon something official happening in a big important looking building that we think had something to do with the Ministry of Defence, lots of men and one or two women in traditional military garb getting out of buses and then marching inside. Neato!

The Pantheon was pretty cool, if crowded and surrounded by odd blue hatted gladiators trying to get our money for photos. All Roman outside, all Catholic inside. And a great big hole in the roof which if we'd been there a few hours later we would have seen with rain pouring through :)

Next we headed up to the Fontana de Trevi, a great big fountain with sculptures and such all over it and tourists all around it. It certainly was beautiful but it was dampened slightly by a) the extreme downpour that was taking place and b) the damned street vendors trying to sell us toys and lights. We actually did end up buying an umbrella which was mucho useful, but we haggled them down :D

After this we wandered around town further, ending up having an early dinner (I can't even remember where now) and then an early night back at the hostel.

Day 3, we hit Vatican City, primarily visiting the Sistine Chapel and the Raphael Rooms, both of which were wonderful even with the hordes of people. In the Sistine Chapel you aren't allowed to speak or take photos; apparently ninety percent of the visitors were not aware of this however, but this led to amusing moments of dudes in suits hissing loudly and saying NO PHOTOS! Due to the number of school kids visiting this was not as successful as it could have been. But it meant we managed to snap a few pics before carrying on without feeling too guilty.

I can never really understand how they can justify the amount of money that goes into creating a lavish palace like the Museum area we saw - there was just so much gold everywhere, and I can only hope that they spend at least 10 times that much worth on actual real life work. It was pretty heartbreaking to go past beggars on the street outside the Vatican, espcially seeing how much money was sitting just over the city wall.

Anyway! After checking out the museums we went round to St Peters and just sat in the courtyard for a while, checking out the pigeons and some nuns (I caught a bunch eating ice cream on camera) and enjoying the warm weather. I gave Jennie a call which was exciting (So what you doing? Oh just chilling at the Vatican. It's cool) and Joe and I relaxed for a while longer.

Walking around all day is pretty tiring so yet again we had an early night. For dinner we asked the hostel staff if they could recommend a place - they sent us about 15 minutes down the road to a place called something D'India, which was not an indian restaurant but was in fact a lovely brightly lit place ontop of a wee hill by the road. The food was good, and the staff were great, encouraging us when we tried out our limited Italian and smiling broadly when we got it right :)

Slept tight, then got on the train to Geneva, with a brief stop in Milan (so brief all we had time for was to get off, go get a sandwich, then get on the next train). Bit sad that we have no stamps in our passports for Switzerland on account of arriving by train, but maybe we can ask for something later :)

Edit - Joe has added more that I forgot, and also reminded me of something else...

On our last day in Rome we went to a church called Santa Maria della Concezione which is famous for housing oodles and oodles of bones from Capuchin monks and poor romans. It's sooo creepy but awesome. We paid a small donation to the church and then wandered through a series of rooms that are both chapels and graves.

Oh by the way, the bones are not just interred there, they are full on works of art! So there are things like angels made out of leg bones and shoulder blades, lovely patterns around the edges made of vertebrae and jaw bones, skulls piled up as a back wall arrangement.. And in some places full skeletons of monks either resting on beds of femurs or standing in a praying stance with robes on. We bought a postcard with information about the rooms so that was useful. In the last room there was this plaque which read 'What you are now, we once were; what we are now, you will become'. Cheers, dead guys.