#29

A free day in Rome...

The downside to being sick is the lack of desire to go out and party on account it only makes you worse the next day. I wasn't the only one at this point that was sick. Some didn't even make it into town for our free day of doing what ever we wanted. I can tell you now the day was great, amazing, confusing and just plainly WTF!

Breakfast was horrible for one thing, it tasted stale! 4 star hotel my ass that's what I'll say. Rome only has two train lines which makes getting around so much easier than say Sydney!

First stop on the day to ourselves we headed to the bone Crypt. Unfortunately we were not allowed the take pictures but I will say IT WAS AMAZING!

'Il Conento Dei Cappuccini' was not easy to find in the beginning for us. But once we did we had to change into 'Church' attire' to be allowed in. The day was extremely hot already so we bought clothes instead of having to wear them all day. We got dressed in the street opposite the church.

Here are two pictures from a postcard I bought from the crypt. 

After de-dressing from church attire we walked to the Spanish steps. Which was not what we expected and I mean not. We all wondered if we were actually gathered at the right spot. We were, but they didn't hold any special significance to me. 

The Colosseum was the next stop on our list. The line was so long after we caught the metro there. Jess and Lauren went off  to get tickets as we were told it was a much shorter line while Alana and I waited in line due to how popular it was. 

The last tourist attraction on our list was the Pantheon. I have to say I was thinking something a little different in my head. Don't get me wrong though the way the sun shined through the roof is nothing but amazing. So worth seeing and the better thing was - it was free. 

The following photo's are of pig, where we ate lunch and a shot of the local art market.

We were tossing up on walking to the nearest taxi or to get the bus back or not. In the end the free rail pass won over. Getting to the station though not even the police were able to help us find the station! They were telling us to go in totally different directions!

When we did get to the station we ran into Kelly and Peter, Eliza, Marian, Morgan and Taylor. 

We were boarding the train at Valle Aurelia station when we were attacked by pick pocketers.

Marian was the only one unlucky enough to get something stolen. Thankfully she had no cash and was able to cancel her cards by calling home in Australia which worked out to be like 2am. It was a horrible experience but at least nothing of great value came from it and when she got back home was able to claim her lost goods and get money back for everything that was taken from her. 

We had to catch the bus back but the driver didn't know much about English as we did Italian and we ended up having to walk 10-15 minutes back to the hotel because we were told the stop was the one we needed to get off by the driver!!!

I was glad I didn't have pizza for lunch because that was what dinner was of. After we realised there was a small supermarket right across from the hotel we got what we thought were two boxes of 4 ice creams thought what we didn't realise was it was 4 of each flavour. 32 ice-creams between 7 people. I never felt so sick after eating them!

Off to Venice next :)