December 27, 2013 – Rome

Sarah said that we shouldn’t make this trip longer than three weeks. Here on our three weeks +1 day we are starting to break down. John and I are aching and Sarah may have broken a toe this morning. But the sightseeing must go on!

We bid farewell to our apartments on Via Spada and catch the train for Rome. Sarah is very keen on seeing Rome and we are less so.

Only one of our rooms is ready when we arrive at our hotel near the train station. We stow our luggage in Sarah’s room and have lunch in the hotel restaurant. Then we are off! We buy an all day ticket to the Metro. First stop, Colliseo. There are a lot of people on the train. They are mostly Italian. What? Are they going to visit their historic sites? We have run into almost no visitors everywhere we’ve gone. I guess because they all decided to visit Rome.

The Coliseum is packed and the line is very long. The last time we were here, we could walk around the historic sites. Now it is all fenced off and there is a ticket into everything. We decide to walk around the outside of the Coliseum and then up the Palantine Hill. There are vendors pushing souvenir drek in our faces.


Our next visit is to the church of St. Peter in a Chains. There is a sculpture of Moses by Michelangelo here, a group of interesting frescoes and St. Peter’s actual chains.

We are pretty tired now and Sarah is limping because of her toe. We head back to the hotel. Since we are taking the Metro there is a lot of walking and stair climbing. We are all pretty sore by the time we arrive back at the hotel.

The hotel has a happy hour and we could use some happy. We have drinks, snacks and a light meal in the lounge and retire early.

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