Med Cruise Day 8: Rome and Home

St Peter's Basilica

We awoke early to find ourselves docked in Civittavechia. Our cases had been taken the evening before, so at our 8am anointed time we just had to collect our last bits and pieces in hand luggage and make our way off the ship. It was a very organised disembarkation. We collected our cases, and found our transfer driver Franesco waiting.

As our original flight home had been cancelled a couple of months ago, and a re-arranged one booked for 6.40pm, we'd decided to arrange a private tour of Rome to make the most of our final day, even though we'd "done" Rome a week earlier.

We'd booked (or rather our friends had) Marco's Private Tours for both the transfer from Civittavechia to Rome, the tour of Rome highlights and transfer to the airport afterwards. Franseco was our driver for the day and we were to meet Marco in Rome. Francesco made the trip to Rome in short order, and before we knew it he was dropping us off virtually on the steps of St Peter's Basilica! Even at about 9.15am the queue to get in were getting serious on what was already a very warm morning, with temperatures forecast to get to 34 degrees plus, but a little sneaky dive in to the line saw us only having to wait about 20 minutes to get in (sorry to anyone we annoyed but we were on a tight schedule!).

Anne and I came here in 2013, but it's. palace you can't get enough of. It's absolutely cavernous inside. You just cannot get the scale of the place from the outside. Crowds are a given, so you have to be a little assertive to get to the front of the chapels, paintings and so on inside. One of the highlights has to be Michaelangelo's la Pieta or The Pity depicting Jesus on Mary's lap after hiss crucifixion.

Michalangelo's la Pieta/The Pity

Inside St Peter's

St Peter's

Swiss Guard at the Vatican entrance

We emerged from St Peter's and took the obligatory photo of the Swiss Guard standing on guard outside the entrance to the Vatican. Whilst the uniform looks a bit comical, I wouldn't want to meddle with these fellas. That spike on a pole looks like it could do some damage, and I'm sure there were probably some more modern armaments tucked away somewhere.

We met up with Francesco and Marco who wore remarkable red Doc Martens (or they looked like anyway). He's a licensed tour guide Roman by birth, multi-lingual with perfect English (albeit with an American accent). We re-agreed the remaining itinerary for the day, but he was flexible to do anything we wanted to do. First stop was the Trevi Fountain - again, you can't get too much of this!. Francesco navigated the narrow  cobbles streets expertly in our thankfully air-conditioned Mercedes whilst Marco gave us a running commentary on Rome, it's history and where we were going. We ended up driving to within 50 metres of the fountain!!!!! Not a sat nav in sight. Marco didn't hang around and we needed to be on our toes to keep up with him in the crowds. Whilst we'd done the Trevi Fountain several times, Marco pointed out various things we didn't know which made this further visit all the more worthwhile.

At the Trevi Fountain with Marco

After a short, unexpected, but welcome coffee stop we headed for the Colosseum. Marco had pre-booked "fast pass" tickets for us so we didn't have to queue to get in. Something was amiss though as at the first check they wouldn't let us in. Cue Marco getting his assertive side out and soon enough we were in. Marco wasn't with us for this bit, so we were with a party with a Colosseum guide. It's a fascinating place, but I won't go into it here - best to read from the link above, but one can only imaging what it must have been like at it's peak.

The Colosseum. Be nice when it's finished...

By now it was getting VERY hot, and we were glad to escape back to Marco and the coolness of the minibus. Next stop was a streetside restaurant, for a great pizza, salad and a cold beer after which we shot off to the Spanish Steps, Franceso again driving expertly to within feet of the place. How he does this through those narrow, cobbled, tourist filled streets without hitting anything or running anyone over is beyond me, but he did!

The Spanish Steps

After another great Marco history lesson on the Spanish Steps,  we dropped Marco off at St peter's before Francesco took us up on one of the hills overlooking the city for a panoramic view of Rome.

Ciao Rome! It's been a blast!

If you're ever in Rome or the surrounding area, I can heartily recommend Marco for a tour. His enthusiasm, passion and knowledge of the City (and I believe many other parts of the country) are second to none, and he's great fun too!

Then it was off to the airport, and although we had a bit of a wait to get checked in, all went well until we got back to Blighty.

When we landed at Heathrow we had to wait around 45 minutes on the plane before there was anyone available to manoeuvre the jetway exit to the plane to let us off. Once that frustration was out of the way  and we got to baggage reclaim, we experienced a long delay before bags started to appear. A few did, and then they stopped coming. About an hour and a half later, an announcement came over the tannoy that there was "a minimum two hour delay for baggage on all flights"!!!!!!!!! Luckily, we didn't have to wait too much longer after that, and when bags did start coming through ours, were some of the first off.

A quick trot to valet parking to pick up our car, and then it was a two hour or so drive home, getting there at about 1am in the morning.

A long day but what a holiday we've had.

Thanks for following this if you've stuck with it. I hope I've been able to share a bit of our adventures with you.

If you're really a glutton for punishment, you can find the best curated photos of out trip here on my Flickr feed.

Twitter: @Statto1927 

Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/people/simon_hiscocks/ 

Instagram: simon_hiscocks

Med Cruise Day 7: Naples and Sorrento

Arriving in Naples

Our last day full day dawned as we arrived into the port of Naples. Much maligned compared to Rome and neighbouring Sorrento and the Amalfi coast it nevertheless oozes history, and looked fabulous in the early morning light as we docked.

Docked in Naples, with Vesuvius looming

Our day started as we left the ship for a trip to Sorrento. Anne and I had a holiday in Sorrento in 2018, and our friends had been a couple of times, but we fancied going again as it'a s lovely town. It's a fair slog from Naples though, especially in a tour bus once you get to the Sorrento peninsula where there only narrow windy road through to the Amalfi coast can be quite challenging for any driver, let alone someone driving a large bus. In fact, this stretch of road epitomises the Italian way of driving, whether in a car, lorry, bus or throngs of mopeds and scooters, known locally as "mosquitos". Basically, they're all mad, and its a wonder there isn't an accident every 30 yards.

Anyway, we made it in a couple of hours which included a short "technical stop" (toilets) at a Limoncello factory (that was handy!) where we were able to try various limoncellos including a grappa version - fire water! The journey passed quickly though due to the excellent tour guide we had assigned who gave us non stop commentary the whole way. Once in Sorrento, the time was ours for a couple of hours. We wandered the narrow streets, the ladies bought handbags, we too photos of the bay of Naples with Vesuvius looming in centre shot. We stopped at cafe for a cold beer. We watched tourists.

When in Italy!

Sorrento of course is known for its lemons, and they are everywhere. Real ones, fake ones, decorative ones, lemon this, lemon that and of course limoncello. Some of the lemons we say on sale were incredible. The ones in the photo below were almost football sized!

Selfie with the By a of Naples and Vesuvius

Sorrento and Vesuvius

Boarding the bus our next stop was the Sorrentino vineyard on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, where we tasted their particularly pleasant Lachryma Christi wines and enjoyed some Italian salami, bread and cheese. Lachryma Christi is basically the "tears of Christ" and the wine is so called because of the unusual grass which are shaped like tear drops as can be seen in the photo below. 

Tear shaped grapes

Just as we left the vineyard, the weather started closing in, and by the time we were back on board the rain had started with a massive thunderstorm obscuring Vesuvius and generating some massive lightning strikes. Glad we avoided that.

And so onto our final dinner on the Celebrity but not of course before pre dinner cocktails!

Pre dinner cocktails

Dinner as always was fabulous. I didn't take many food photos (sorry), but this was my steak from our last dinner (I asked for it this rare), and it was melt in the mouth!

Our head waiter for most of the week was Jules, a Phillipino, who had looked after us superbly. The staff on the ship are to a person so polite, professional and genuinely dedicated to ensuring guests have a wonderful time. He made our dinner times extra special, and we're eternally grateful to him for that. His assistant waiter Charles, our sommelier Bonny and stateroom attendant Baso are also worthy of special mentions.

Jules, our Head Waiter

Jules sans mask

And that, brought us to our last sleep of the cruise. When we wake up tomorrow morning we'll be docked back in Civittavechia, and booked for an 8am disembarkation. 

But we still have a tour of Rome up our sleeve before getting to the airport....

Twitter: @Statto1927 

Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/people/simon_hiscocks/ 

Instagram: simon_hiscocks

Med Cruise Day 6: Wine, volleyball and volcanoes

Today was a sea day as we sailed away from the Greek islands towards Sicily, the toe of Italy and the Messina Strait en route to Naples.

If you've never been on a cruise, let me assure you, there's never a shortage of things to do. If you want to sit and chill and relax, you can do so in a coffee bar, in a long area, by pool on the sundeck, in the solarium etc etc. If you want to get a drink the bars are open all day. So are some of the restaurants. There are live bands, shops, a casino, a theatre with shows. Or the quietness of your stateroom. You get the picture.

Today myself and our friends husband James had booked a wine and cheese tasting in one of the restaurants, This was a paid "event" (ie not included in the "basic" cruise price, but we both fancied this.

We turned up at the allotted time for an introduction by the ship's Cellar Master before being handed over to one of the many Sommeliers on board who took us through the wines (and the cheese). I'd never though about particular win/cheese pairings before, just that wine and cheese go together, but this was an eye opener, how particular cheeses complemented and changed the tastes of particular wines. Cheese like a Brie with champagne anyone? Blue cheese with a nice Amerone? Spot on.

We also learnt that the finder the bubbles in Champagne, the better the quality (generally). The bubbles in our Taittinger were almost needle like. And Chardonnay is complemented by a nice harder waxy cheese like Comte. 

Our cheese and wine glasses - Chardonnay poured

This was nice....

Suitably refreshed we found the ladies and who were around the pool on the main sundeck watching the guests vs crew Volleyball match. It would be fair to say that the match was competitive, especially shown by our ships master Captain Tanos (he of the orange shorts). Needless to say the crew and the whole match was watched by a raucous crowd. 

Crowds watch the crew v guests volleyball

The crew - Capt. Tanos in the orange shorts

As awakes as afternoon turned to evening, we donned our smart gear and headed first to the martini bar for a sharpener, before another lovely dinner. And whilst eating dinner we watched a stunning sunset just north of the Strait of Messina.

Tyrrhenian Sea sunset

After dinner we went for a stroll on the upper decks and watched on the port side as we passed Stromboli, an active volcano, which unimaginably is an inhabited island.

Stromboli at dusk

A great day at seas then, finished off by passing an active volcano. Tomorrow sees us dock in our final port   Naples, before heading back to Civittavechia. And when we do, we'll get to see yet another volcano. The might Vesuvius.

If you're counting that means we'll have seen the following volcanoes on this seven night trip.

• Stromboli (twice)
• Mount Etna (twice)
• Santorini
• Mount Vesuvius

That's not a bad little collection.

On to Napoli!

Twitter: @Statto1927 

Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/people/simon_hiscocks/ 

Instagram: simon_hiscocks

Med Cruise Day 5: Mykonos

As I woke up on (I think it was Wednesday - all the days were fading into one), we were arriving in the Cycladean island of Mykonos. A popular holiday destination to to it's quaint whitewashed houses and iconic windmills near the port, it's become very trendy (and expensive) and a go to place for the beautiful people of late. Today though was a beach day for us. A short tender off the ship and a thirty minute or so bus journey brought us to Elia Beach which is know for being a popular spot for LGBT travellers and nudists, although in fairness it seemed as though nudists were at the far end of the beach (we didn't see any)!

The Edge seen from our bus

The trip came with sunbeams and a "snack" from the local restaurant. The snack actually turned out to be a beer (a 500ml bottle of Mythos - nice!), a 1.5l bottle of water and an enormous triple decker toasted egg salad club sandwich with chips. Not bad for a snack - I was expecting a packet of crisps! It made the €56 pp cost of the trip seem much more palatable, and fairly decent value -  especially as there seemed to be one couple in from of us charged €70 just for the sunbeds (although I think they must have had the same deal as us, but not subsidised by Celebrity). Anyway...

3 full hours on the beach was just what the doctor orders, and yes, we did venture into the crystal clear waters, although it was pretty fresh!

The iconic Mykonos windmills

Anne at Elia beach

Me at Elia beach

Following our trip out, it was back to the ship for the usual rest and relax before the inevitable hearty meal, preceded by pre-dinner drinks. Well, we paid for the drinks package, so I was darn well going to try and get full value from it!!!

After three ports in three days it felt like we needed to relax a bit, so we were looking forward to our penultimate day on board on Thursday with a sea day as we transited the Aegean and Ionian seas headed for the Strait of Messina to continue our journey back up the western coast of Italy towards Naples. But that was over a day away yet.

Twitter: @Statto1927 Flickr: 

https://www.flickr.com/people/simon_hiscocks/ 

Instagram: simon_hiscocks

Med Cruise Day 4: Rhodes

Rhodes windmills

An overnight passage from Santorini saw us docked in Rhodes the following morning when I pulled back the curtains in our stateroom - or rather they pulled themselves back as they were automatically controllable via my Celebrity app on my iPhone!

Another hot day beckoned. We'd previously decided that we wouldn't do any excursions today, but just go for a wander around old Rhodes, inside the old city walls. We've been to Rhodes, so knew roughly what to expect, and we only had a 10 minute walk into the old city. We'd left the ship early (ish) at boy 9.15am to avoid the worst of the heat and the crowds that would inevitably build through the day.

The old city is. fascinating mix of cultures - Rhodes is part of Greece, but lies within spitting distance of Turkey.  The small narrow streets are lined with ships selling everything from fake armour and swords to leather goods and even furs!!! 

One of the must sees is the Street of the Knights of Rhodes, an old cobbled street that still has a distinctly medieval feel to it.

Street of the Knights of Rhodes

The windmills on the harbour wall are another iconic symbol of this old city, and the thick city walls themselves, still surround the city pretty much intact.

The heat was building, and a cold drink was called for so we found a quiet friendly cafe/bar just off one of the side streets for an iced coffee which hit the spot nicely.

After this, we wandered for a while longer taking int he sights and sounds as the crowds grew as more tourists arrived from elsewhere on Rhodes or from the four cruise ships that were docked in the port. That was enough for us though, and we made our way back to the ship for some lunch, air conditions and a chilling afternoon by the pool.

That evening the ship put on a Pride Party on the sun deck, and whilst we didn't stay long (it was VERY loud), it looked like people were having a lot of fun and the deck was lit up in Pride colours.

Another great day all in all, topped off by another fabulous meal and a few drinks!

Pride on the sundeck

Pride on the sun deck

Pride on the sundeck

Tomorrow, Mykonos calls!

Twitter: @Statto1927

Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/people/simon_hiscocks/ 

Instagram: simon_hiscocks

Med Cruise Day 3: Santorini

Arriving at Santorini, with Oia in the background

After a day at sea, day three saw us arriving in late morning into the Cycladean island of Santorini. Much loved by many, it's famous for the fabulous sunsets, and the donkey track from the dock to the capital Thira (aka Thera and Fira). The ship cannot dock so we anchored in the main caldera this volcanic island.

These days there's an alternate dock and we tendered to that before boarding a bus for our supposed three hour self guided excursion to Oia with is blue church domes and clifftop views. 

The roughly hour long bus trip saw us pass through Thira and take a circuitous rout to Oia on this parches island. It has no drinkable water of it's own, so all water has to be brought in.

Arriving at Oia was chaos. The bus park is small, there are loads of buses, cars, moped, quad bikes and millions of people. Our guide then announced we'd get one hour and twenty minutes before the bus departed, so way short of the time we'd expected. Eventally we found our way into the town with it's narrow streets and white painted houses. The throngs of people made it quite uncomfortable at times, and it's clearly a place for the Instagrammers. Selfie sticks and people brushing their hair and putting make up on for that 'gram phot were in abundance. It was also very hot. We wandered around for forty minutes or so before making our way back to the bus. It was a fabulous place to see, and tick the box, but I'd hate to go on holiday there. It's far too crowded and by all accounts, very expensive.

The caldera from Oia. Our ship is front centre

Oia (with crowds cropped out!)

We made our way back to Thira, where the bus dropped us off. Thira was quite than Oia, but in my opinion almost as lovely, with plenty of shops, hotels a, bars and restaurants. By now we just wanted to get back on board.

There were three options :

1. Get a donkey
2. Walk down the 600 or so steps of the donkey track, avoiding the donkey poo
3. Catch a 3 minute cable car

Although one of our party is terrified of heights generally and cable cars in particular, she braved the cable car option as we had a free ticket. It was a smooth ride and we caught our tender at the bottom back to the ship.

View of the donkey path from the cable car, about half way down

Once back we chilled out on the pool deck before the now standard sumptuous evening dinner in our favourite restaurant supplemented by a few glasses of wine/cocktails followed by more cocktails. 

Our itinerary had been changed a few months earlier to allow a later departure from Santorini to "amplify the guest experience". I think they meant so that we could see the sunset. To be fair, it was spectacular.

Santorini Sunset

So that was day three done, and we were now headed for an overnight sailing to Rhodes.

Twitter: @Statto1927 

Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/people/simon_hiscocks/ 

Instagram: simon_hiscocks

Med Cruise Day 2: Embarkation and a sea day

Anne checking out our stateroom

An early rise (well 8am) for breakfast in the hotel after which we dialled in to our respective video calls to do our "supervised" LFT. The instructions say you could have to wait for up to an hour to get called in from the virtual waiting room, but we were in with a minute or. Basically a bloke (in this case) who looked like he was in his kitchen takes you though an identity check and then talks you through the test. After this you wait 15 mins for the test to do it's magic, upload a photo and wait for a pass/fail email. Thankfully all four of us had negative results with the result coming through in lead than 10 minutes.

So we'd made it to Rome with no flight issues, and made it past the LFT test. Tick, Tick.

Once that way out of the way we made our way into the glorious sunshine - mid to high 20's and a cloudless sky. Our plan was a slow amble to the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps, the Pantheon and wandering into a few churches (there's over 450 in Rome, and trust me 95% of them have more gold, artwork and stunning interiors than virtually every church I've ever seen in the UK). A stop for lunch somewhere and see how the rest of the day goes.

The Trevi Fountain was as always massively crowded, and unfortunately the fountain was not flowing as they were collecting the coins that had been thrown in. Apparently over €3 million is collected every year from the fountain, although the story about throwing a coin in to come back to Rome, two to meet someone and three to marry them, is a complete myth generated by the 1954 film "Three Coins in the Fountain". 

We then wandered over to the Spanish Steps and climbed up them to have a peek into the church at the top, the Trinità dei Monti, which despite looking superb from the outside, by Rome standards is pretty ordinary inside.

The Spanish Steps

After that we headed towards the Pantheon stopping along the way at the Church of S. Luigi dei Francesi where Caravaggio's St Matthew cycle is on display. It's not every church you can wander into to see a Caravaggio, but there's two or three in Rome!

Caravaggio's Matthews Cycle

We'd wanted to go into the Pantheon with it's massive dome, but there was a huge queue to get in, and frankly we couldn't be bothered. Instead we headed to impressive Piazza Navona where we found a restaurant and had a massive pizza and a cold beer for lunch.

The Pantheon

Piazza Navona

Sated by lunch we wandered towards the river Tiber and found ourselves on the Ponte Sant'Angelo opposite the impressive Castel Sant'Angelo (you've gathered everything's impressive in Rome by now). Usually lined with hawkers, they were scattering as there must have been police about.  Wwe caught a glimpse of St Peter's Basilica down the road, but left that for another day as we knew we'd be back the following Saturday 

Ponte and Castel Sant'Angelo

By now, hot and sweaty we head back to the hotel and that evening went for a pre-booked dinner at the Taverna dei Fori Imperiali, about a ten minute walk from the hotel. It's a small family run restaurant, and very popular so booking is highly recommended. Again, prices weren't cheap, but the wine was less expensive than the hotel, although just as nice.  And that rounded off our second evening in Rome.

The following day we had a booked private transfer to Civittavechia, about an hour from Rome. We arrived at the port to see the massive Celebrity Edge, docked along with about three other cruise ships. Embarkation was easy as we'd booked as suite guests, and so had a more personalised service for boarding. Quickly aboard, we checked out or lovely cabin before heading for lunch in the Luminae restaurant used by the suite passengers. Blimey! What an introduction to the fabulous food (and wine) and superb service from all the Celebrity team that we were to experience over the next week. We did the mandatory safety briefing (although this can now be done on an app rather than a face to face briefing). We also met our stateroom (cabin - stateroom sounds very posh!) attendant Baso and Stateroom Steward, Singh who were and continued to be exemplary and highly professional in every way whenever we had any interaction with them.

Settled in we had a quick explore and then watched from the sundeck as we sailed out of port at 5pm, destination Santorini. However, that was over a day away and after another sumptuous evening meal we slept well in our cabin, waking the following morning to a sea day. The day was spent largely checking out our new surroundings, relaxing on the pool deck and eating and drinking and attending the evening show.

So day one at sea was very much a settling in day. Already eating and drinking too much, having fun in the sun and looking forward to our first port of call, Santorini in the morning.

Twitter: @Statto1927 

Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/people/simon_hiscocks/ 

Instagram: simon_hiscocks

Med Cruise Day 1: Getting to Rome

This series of blog posts reflects on our recent visit to Rome followed by a 7 night cruise around the Greek  islands and Italy. There's far too much to tell you about in one go, so this will take a few posts - bear with me.

We booked this cruise way back in Feb '21 with everything crossed that the pandemic would have eased by June '22 having already had two previous cruises cancelled (an Asia one in Feb '20 and a Mediterranean one, similar to this in September '21). Luckily for us things had eased sufficiently for this one to go ahead.

We booked with two friends with Celebrity Cruises aboard their Edge class ship the Celebrity Edge leaving Rome (well Civittavechia) and calling at Santorini, Rhodes, Mykonos and Naples before returning to Civittavechia. Our friends are have done a good few cruises, this was just our second. We decided to fly out a couple of days before sail date to enable us to have a couple of nights in Rome - the Eternal City which we last visited in 2013, but you can never get enough of the place, trust me.

With covid restrictions easing, the only covid related thing we had to ensure was that we undertook a supervised LFT 24 hours before boarding (ie when we were in Rome). Supervised because it's an American ship and that's what they say we had to do (apparently we can't be trusted to stick a swab up our noses on our own). This would be done over a video call, so we duly ordered our tests before leaving the UK and they arrived a couple of days before we left.

Needing to be at Heathrow by 9am (ish) we left at 6.30am, and surprisingly, the journey was pretty straightforward, with traffic on the M4 very (relatively) light all the way. The only slight hiccough was having to briefly stop behind a traffic officers car just outside Reading whilst they hoisted a dead deer off the motorway.

Arriving at Heathrow T5 we dropped our cars at Valet parking (expensive, but SO worth it). The journey had been so good bag drop wasn't even open, so we opted for breakfast. Following that our bag drop and pass through security was straightforward  and we were fairly quickly in departures. The flight departed more or less on time  and was pretty quick at a smidge over two hours. Masks were being worn on the plane but it wasn't too bad. These days any food or drink has to be pre-ordered on basic BA flights. We hadn't done so, and therefore got the default mini bottle of water and a bag of ready salted crisps!

The descent into Rome's Fiumicino airport was a tad lumpy, as there were some serious thunderclouds around, but we landed safely enough. Security was rather painless, but now that we're not part of the EU we had to get our passports stamped! Baggage claim also wasn't too painless.

Fiumicino is a way out of Rome itself (about 30km), and although you can catch a train in, we'd opted for a private transfer. Cue our first problem of the trip. No driver to pick us up. We gave it a few minutes before calling, to find out than the driver had "gone to the toilet". Eventually, about 20 mins after we exited departures, he arrived and there ensued a fast, music trip into Rome and our hotel, the NH Collection Roma Fori Imperiali. 

This small, almost boutique hotel was one of the highlights of our entire holiday. It's slap bang in the middle of Rome, within easy walking distance of all the major attractions - the Trevi Fountain is 10 mins one way, the Colosseum 10 mins the other way. The Pantheon and Spanish Steps are about 20 mins and even the Vatican and St Peter's Basilica are within 20-30 minutes easy walking.

Check in was nice and and made easier by the complimentary Prosecco. Our room had no view, but the whole hotel was very nicely furnished and the staff were excellent. We'd booked two mights here including dinner (which we had to reserve a table for before arriving). We thought we'd be eating in the small breakfast area downstairs, but it was on the roof terrace. Luckily, the thunderclouds had disappeared, and it was a warm Roman evening.  And what a view for dinner - this was literally our view!

This vast memorial to the first king of Italy, Victor Emmanuel II is also knows as Altare della Patria (Alter of the Fatherland) and more colloquially as "The Wedding Cake" and is pretty much visible from every key vantage point in the city. It's HUGE! It also contains the tomb of the unknown soldier, and is guarded by armed soldiers.

Not a bad spot for an excellent dinner helped down by a couple of bottles of expensive wine. That's not a boast by the way, just the observation that the cheapest bottle of wine on the wine list was €50 !!!!! However, bear in mind that we were in one of the most beautiful and historic cities in the world, and slap bang in the centre of the main tourist area to boot with a view to die for. We didn't begrudge it, and to be fair, the wine (along with the food) was glorious. And we were on our first holiday abroad since summer 2019. So we had two bottles!

After all that, we needed to walk some of our dinner off, so it was on with the trainers (central Rome  is mainly cobbled streets and you need really comfy shoes to wear if you're walking anywhere) and a 10 minute walk to the Trevi Fountain. It is stunning, but if you haven't been to Rome before, please be prepared for the crowds. You ain't going to see this on your own. The throngs of people can be quite claustrophobic - as they are at all the main attractions in Rome, and if you have a bag, keep it close to you and you're wallet protected. Pickpockets abound, although there are more police around than before (and we later found out many undercover police) keeping their eyes out for pickpockets and the multitude of hawkers.

And with that, we were all pretty shattered, and so it was back to the hotel for our first night away.

The next post will tell you about our full day in Rome.

Twitter: @Statto1927 

Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/people/simon_hiscocks/ 

Instagram: simon_hiscocks