Rome in a day?

 Today's port of call is Civitavecchia(meaning old city) which is our port for Rome, the excursion leaves at 8.15am, so it's an early get up, quick dash down to the self service restaurant, for breakfast,and we are off. The transfer takes about an hour and a half, so we arrived outside the courthouse on Piazza del Tribunali at 9.45, which would then be our pick up point at 4.15pm. we had decided that to visit every place that we wanted to see and to go inside them was unachievable, so we opted to visit them all but not  to go inside them, we will book a longer trip to Rome in the future and do that then.

We crossed over the river via Ponte Umberto 1 and headed for Piazza Navona which is huge, probably the largest Piazza, we have seen on our travels to date. Just over the bridge was a small kiosk, where Perdita found the memorabilia we needed for this leg of our trip(which according to our son who visited Rome a couple of months ago is rarer than rocking horse s##t, I think he must have been nursing a hangover every day he was here, or was just blind). Whilst at the Piazza Navona we stoped at a cafe and I treated myself to the most expensive beer of the trip so far(€14), but it was a full litre.

From there we headed across towards the Pantheon and then up towards the Spanish steps in Piazza di Spagna, which was a must for Perdita, with her interest in the Dan Brown books.

Next we were of to the Fontana di Trevi(Trevi Fountain), which was absolutely beautiful, and for me probably the highlight of Rome, where, we later found out and young couple of the boat had got engaged( oh well!! nobody should be happy all their lives). These three attractions were all a short walk from each other probably about 10 minutes between each of them.

The next five were all right next to each other,  although they did cover a large area so took a while to get around, they were the Forum, the Colosium, the Arco di Constantine, the Palatine and the Circo Massimo( this area could have quite easily taken up a full day on their own, if we had gone inside them).

From there we opted to take a leisurely stroll up the the river Tevere to Ponte Palatine, we walked on the right hand side of the river for one bridge and then crossed over the Ponte Fabricio onto the island and then over Ponte Cestio, to the river's left bank, from there we headed upstream five bridges, which was great, it was in the shade, and had temporary market stalls, bars and restaurants set up for most of the way. There wasn't that much to see when we were walking up, but I bet the place comes to life in the evenings( something else to check out when we come back).

From the fifth bridge, the Ponte Principe, we cut across to  The Vatican , St Peter's Square wasn't as busy as I expected, although it was Friday and the Pope gets Fridays off apparently, only blessing visitors on Wednesday and Sundays (I don't know who blessed us sinners the rest of the week). The queue to go through security, before you once again queue to hand over you ticket tho go inside The Cistine Chapel was pretty long, thank the lord we  weren't in that queue, I think we would have been bbqed on both sides. Perdita suddenly became very excited, she wanted "to get some photos of a men in strange pants", I didn't think my shorts looked that bad, until she explained she meant the Swiss Guard. There was a large police presence in the Square, which was only to be expected , but when two of them manhandled a topless chap out of the square after he had picked up some coins that had dropped out of a cup , he had obviously been collecting. Not sure if he was thrown out for being topless or for begging, but it seemed very unchristian in such a famous Christian setting.

From there we headed over to the Castle Sant' Angelo, which is right next door to were we being picked by the coach there was also a little market there for a tootle around to pass a few minutes until the coach arrived and more importantly  a little bar to top up on our liquid intake, and I even treated Perdita to a couple of Pasticcolas (small pastries)

Just to confirm that we are here together, and not separately.

Pongo and Perdita signing off .