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| St Peter's Basilica |
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.
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| Michalangelo's la Pieta/The Pity |
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| Inside St Peter's |
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| St Peter's |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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!
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| 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.
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| 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.
Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/people/simon_hiscocks/
Instagram: simon_hiscocks
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