Rome, Italy

Karrina’s Diary

Thick heads today (no idea why!), so breakfast was off the menu, lucazade and salt n vinegar crisps saved the day! We opted for showers before heading to Rome so we could go straight out when we made it to Rome. The glass shower doors were more obviously see-through when the showers were busy 😁

As we neared Rome the crazy Italian drivers became more crazy and the roads became more third world, clean undies were needed by all especially the Fiat Panda driver who cut us up on the motorway who nearly had 4 ton of campervan ramming him.

Our campsite was 3 miles from the center of Rome and as we approached we saw a few sights, I am sure we went past a mecca bingo and down St Mary’s Street. My favourite sight was a bearded lady who I tried to get a snap of but I was too scared to get my phone out.

The whole campsite heard us arrive as we scrapped up the entrance ramp, later we would discover a lot of damage as our waste water tank had been ripped off – more for Neil to tinker with to keep him busy.

Luckily we did not realise the extent of our damage at this point so we parked up and headed off to find The Pope in good spirits. Neil confidently purchased bus tickets from the reception and armed with German instructions we set off. First on the list, The Vatican.

The Roman public transport was an experience to say the least… We managed to travel by tram, underground, through an airport then finally on a bus. Tears of laughter when a man got his head stuck in the tram door were frowned upon by the other tram users, I can not believe they didn’t all join in.

St Peters Square was quite a sight, I was amazed by the number of nuns, vicars and monks. The first group of monks I actually mistook for a stag party apparently they were not in fancy dress this was just their work clothes. Neil made us chuckle when he said he thought the nuns in the very long queue for Sistine chapel should get a fast pass 😳 The queue looked like it went on for days so we decided to give that a miss.

From The Vatican we opted to walk to the Coliseum, we had been put off the public transport by the smells on the last tram and we didn’t want to miss any sights or ice cream stalls. Rome proved strange with brand new buildings right amongst old ruins, half the time I had no idea what people were taking photos of but i joined in and made myself look as touristy as possible. If i ever get asked if I want to buy a selfie stick by a lookie lookie man again it might get shoved somewhere he wouldn’t want it.

Somewhere between The Vatican and The Coliseum in an area just like Trafalgar Square we were blessed and actually met The Pope, €5 for a photo was a bargain. We also saw a floating man and a few statue men who scare the life out of Amy. Lots of market type stalls allowed us to buy good tat 👍

Rome may not have been built in a day but we certainly walked it in a day, after popping to The Hard Rock Cafe for our Hurricane keeper glass my feet were going to fall off so we literally stopped in the nearest cafe to eat then jumped on a random bus which we prayed would take us back to the van! Thankfully the bus did take us back but only after we were half scared the death by the boys in the hood gang who over took the bus making us the only tourists on board.