So we're here now what ?

Will combine a couple of days here, both to catch up on myself and help u miss out on the basics of getting acquainted with our accommodation at the same time as we struggled with jetlag kicking in. Must say though I am pleaded how I think I've acclimatised to time, well at least compared to Alison. She' getting there but taking a longer route.

Well once we got to the apartment, dropped bags and went out to check our local area. It's great, 3 restaurants within sight and just down the road a small thing called The Colosseum...magnificent. But greater priorities were at hand and while history was at our doorstep there was beer and Italian Pizza to be had ;-) Fabulous lunch and with the heat the larger wasn't wasted.

After that the rest of the day was fairly boring. Covering the necessities of life, finding washing liquid etc. We checked out the Colosseum and the queue, deciding that getting there nice and early for opening the next day would be a good idea. In short the queue was insane.

That night was an early tea (early in Italian terms) around 6:30pm. We were shot, jetlag was kicking in big time so a bite and off to bed desperately trying to get time synched. It defiantly helped.

So we awoke to our first full day in Rome..awesome. We shout out about 8 am (later than expected, so sleep had been good) for breakfast at one of the close restaurants, coffee (hell they even had options like decaffeinated cappuccino - WTF, at least Alison would be happy) and croissant. From there, after the normal morning ablutions which I won't bore you with, we headed of to the Colosseum. Though we were running later than we wanted (target was 8am) we got there at 9:15am. The queue wasn't to long. We were however a bit worried that it was the right queue as the day before we had seen a sign saying that 8:30 am was when things got underway. The end result was that we entered at 10:30 am. We're still not sure if that wad normal entry time or if the planned general strike on the following day was causing a problem .

The queue experience was interesting. It was massive be the time we entered. We were lucky as all around us people weren't sure what was going on and there was no information about (that was put up only when things opened). We got speaking to a German woman who's Italian husband went and found out the problem , apparently the general strike that was going to occur in Italy the next day (which we didn't notice, apparently only really affected buses) was starting today at the Colosseum....sigh.

Well once entered we had full access to the Colosseum, the Forum and the Palatino. Overall it took us about 5 hours to get around it all. Even then we could have spent longer if it wasn't so hot and someone would wheel us about or at least provide some fresh new feet.

In short it was excellent. The only negative was the number of people. It would be nice to be in the Colosseum alone with it's history and to feel it's presence. Yeah I know, ideal world stuff where tourists and historical sites don't mix.

We'll put up some photos later, but especially in the Colosseum and the Forum it's amazing the architecture and beauty of what these place must have looked like. Despite some of the roles they played in the regular killing of people, to time, well at least compared to Alison.

We were buggered by the end of that, as we were to learn, it was hot (nice dry heat) and good walking shoes were needed ! So nothing but to shoot back to the cafe's and get a cold beer !. Man, it tasted good.