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Euro Adventures Pt 17 - When In Rome...

Waking up in Rome, such a surreal thing, travelling somewhere so different, I always find myself thinking, 'wow'. 16 days in, still sick, still a very sore tailbone (I do have fears it might be cracked or a severely bruised bone), but still trying to do my very best every day to have a great time. 

We had another early start today and most of us had chosen to do the Vatican City tour, we had a local guide take us through the Musee Vaticani and through some different galleries, into the Sistine Chapel and through to St Peters Basilica. There was little to no air conditioning throughout the entirety of the tour, so we all walked out dripping with sweat. But for me it was worth it, I love the history surrounding this place and all that comes with it - it was just as exciting for me now as it was 7 years ago. 


I don't think I will ever be able to express how beautiful St Peters Basilica is so ill just put some of the photos below. Amazing. Truly a place of God.




After the tour had ended we decided to track down a maccas as we were all hot, hungry and dying for a cold drink. We had quite a large group we were moving around the city with today and some had checked bags in at the Vatican so we went back to collect them, picking up some absolutely genius frozen bottles of water being sold out the front. It was expected to get up to 36 degrees today and it already felt hotter than that.

We jumped in some taxis to get to the Colosseum, we had pre booked the tickets while we were in Florence so we hopefully didn't have to queue up for hours. There was a queue, but it only took us about 20 minutes to get to the front and enter the Colosseum!! The last time I was in Rome I didn't go inside the Colosseum and I'm so glad I was able to do it this time around... It was absolutely magnificent. There were a lot of very high steep steps that I almost fell up, but the views were really worth it. I can't imagine what it would have looked like in action, with gladiators and lions and horses... Just woah.


A couple of the girls wanted to check out Tiffany & Co - as we hadn't had a chance to look in one while we had been in Europe. So we jumped in another taxi and went to Tiffany & Co. It was definitely VERY outside of my Europe budget (or any budget I could ever imagine having) but it was fun to look. After an ATM stop to stock up before Greece we found more taxis to take us back to the campsite - yes we did catch a lot of cabs today... But we also did a lot (A LOT) of walking too. 

We finally made it back and have to stop at the bar for a quick cider break - and to try and break some of our €50 notes (Niddy told us that Greece probably won't break large bills as they are fast running out of cash - all the ATM's are dry). Got changed and went for an AMAZING swim. Having swimming pools at the past few campsites has been a godsend, it has been so hot and so overwhelming, and we have been so busy, an arvo of swimming and napping in the shade was just what the doctor ordered.

The only things left for our last night in Rome was packing or daypacks for the Flotilla sailing (not allowed our suitcases on the boats), having dinner with our updated crew - we lost 13 people and gained one new guy, Brendan, and trying to get enough sleep for our massive travel day tomorrow. 6 hours on the bus, then 14-18 hours on a ferry to get to Greece. Man, this whole travel thing is a lot of work. 

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