Rome, Italy. All roads lead to...
After the palava that was Verona, I was anxious about arriving in Rome and it all going to pot. Happily I manage to navigate to my accommodation (a camping ground) and upgrade to an air conditioned bungalow quite easily. I dropped my bag and went for a swim in the pool which was so very welcome. After a load of washing and generally getting myself sorted, I headed back in to Rome and spent the afternoon and evening walking around the main part of the city seeing the sites like the Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, Pantheon and ended up in Campo Di Fiori for dinner with Jo and Neal. They'd been in town for a couple of days and recommended a few things including seeing the ruins lit up by night. So after dinner, I walked a bit further and checked out the Roman Forum and Colosseum and surrounding ruins all lit up, which was quite brilliant really. I ended up back at my room after midnight.
The next day I spent the morning trying to sort out the bloody phone and made my way to a large mall where the sister store was located. Turns out all the stores in Italy, except for Turin and Verona have closed down, so I'm currently stuck with a phone I can't use as it takes micro sim not regular sim. So I gave up and went to the Coloseum. I ended up taking a tour to skip the queue and also saw the Roman Forum late in the day. It's great to have context when seeing those kinds of sights so I quite enjoyed that. I had an early night heading back to go and sit in the pool for an hour before grabbing some Lasagne for dinner at the camp restaurant.
Friday I ended up going on two tours booked through the people who did the Coloseum. I went to the largest catacombs in Rome as well as a few other sites in the morning, and the afternoon was the Vatican City museums and St Peter's Basillica, which I climbed the 500+ steps to the top of the dome for fab views of the city. Afterwards I did walk back to Campo di Fiori to have one last dinner with Neal and Jo and we finished off our night with a walk to Trevi Fountain to see it lit up at night.
Another late night and the next morning I found myself on the Busabout bus for the start of my trek West .