A stroll from one end of Rome to the other!

The goal of today was to walk across Roma from our hotel (near the Vatican) to our hostel (near Termini Train Station), which yesterday cost us ~40 euro in a taxi.

So we walked towards the river and crossed the “Ponte Vittorio Emanuele II” bridge, which has statues all over it, and two green angels at each end, one on either side.

With two large white statues on both sides across the length of the bridge.

We then continued down “Corso Vittorio Emanuele II” road and took a small detour to the “Piazza Navona”, a large square with a couple fountains, a church and a monolith covered in hieroglyph.

The true beauty began when you entered the church, seemingly small from the outside it takes your breath away the minute you walk through the door. Unfortunately pictures were not allowed so I don’t have proof. But believe me when I saw that the amount of detail in the statues, the colours of the paintings and the ceiling, everywhere you look there’s something and it’s too much to take in all at once, it’s absolutely jaw-dropping.

We continued down the side roads until we hit “Palazzo Madama” which was surrounded by guards in uniform, a couple with fully automatic guns, NBD. When you take the corner around this building you’re immediately face to face with the Pantheon. Out front there were three or four horse & buggy style rides to drive people around (for a pretty penny I’m sure).

There were signs posted about how it’s forbidden to enter such an establishment with your knees showing. Luckily they let us in anyway, the inside of this place was not how I imagined it, I’m not quite sure what I was imagining but I didn’t expect it to look so much like a church. I was picturing ruins I guess, maybe like the Colosseo; a museum. But this building was ancient looking on the outside but beautifully new on the inside with statues of Jesus on the cross, places to pray, candles for prayer, etc.

After a slight detour resulting in us getting lost, a woman drawing on our map and confusing me even more, we found a tiny square (which didn’t make for good pictures) with another church. They’re basically everywhere!

Working our way through the streets (asking numerous times where we were because they all blend together) we found the Trevi Fountain!!!

Apparently, with all the people there taking pictures, nobody knew how to use a camera. Mike and I asked 3 or 4 people to take our picture, a couple people tried but never got the picture at all, and the others were blurry or you couldn’t see the fountain. It turns out that a selfie of us is the best picture we got. We have videos of us throwing coins in and making wishes though, to ensure our return to Rome! (Warning: We look exhausted … because we are!)

After chilling with Neptune, Roman God of the sea, we walked uphill to the “Piazza del Quirinale” and the Quirinale Mansion, also surrounded by guards in uniform and took a small break. Walking with your backpacks can be tiring.

From there we were just a short walk away from “Palazzo delle Esposizioni”, I thought it was a museum from the outside but it must be a theatre as well because there were National Geographic signs posted around it.

Continuing down “Via Milano” and onto “Via di Santa Maria Maggiore” we climbed up the hill (past a vet clinic!! Closed L) to the “Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore”. We took another small break because my shoulders were giving out! Watched some stray dogs play, a woman either being a typical expressive Italian or telling someone off over the phone, and the birds eating leftovers.

After this it was a turn onto “Via Carlo Alberto” to “Via Cattaneo” and finally “Via Napoleone III”. I didn’t realize it at first but this street seems to be in the middle of Rome’s “Chinatown”! We found our Hostel, got settled, found our room, tossed our stuff in a locker and headed out again for some food.

This whole walking trip started at 9:30am and we got to the hostel around 1pm. My shoulders and Mike’s feet had suffered enough, but we can’t just sit around! We found a restaurant right outside the Maggiore Basilica and we ate pasta. The service was terrible though, we eventually gave up waiting for dessert told him not to bother and got the bill. Overpriced, but it was delicious!

We attempted the subway, because we have a tour scheduled for tomorrow morning of the Vatican, and we need to be there early so we wanted to be sure we knew how to use it, where to get off and where to go, etc. The Metro/Subway station is right behind our building so it wasn’t hard to find, but trying to figure out tickets was another story. We asked at a Tabacchi store, he said they were out and told us to try the machine down the street. We thought we were buying tickets at a machine on the street and we realized we had just given someone an hour of free parking. Whoops! You’re welcome.

Waltzing down into the Subway itself we found REAL ticket machines, bought our tickets (1.50 euro for one-way trip) and headed BACK towards the Vatican (where we had walked from that morning). What had taken us hours to walk took us 10 minutes by subway. Even with our sore muscles we didn’t care, we saw some pretty cool stuff walking through the city!

We found a meeting point for the morning (across from a burger king), of course this makes Mike hungry again so when we get back to our neighbourhood he stopped into a fried chicken place for a double hamburger (so obvious that’s what you order in a fried chicken place).

Now we are planning our tomorrow and getting things ready for our early morning. We are sharing the room with two other people. We’ve only met one, another Michael but from Germany, and he was quite helpful when we were trying to plan out the next day.

We decided we wanted to explore after dark, we walked to “Piazza delle Repubblica” with its fountain and watched for a little while. There was a bookshop nearby that we browsed through for an hour and then headed back for an early night.