Wednesday 8th August 2012 - Rome

We got up and had a quick bite to eat before heading into Rome. After our experience in Venice we decided not to risk public transport, but simply find somewhere to park close to the sights and pay whatever needed to be paid.
Coming into Rome you cross an amazingly grand bridge with statues of Romulus and Remus with their she wolf.
It seems in Rome there are palaces and ruins round every corer - not even on the tourist maps, just hugely grand  for no apparent reason.  We were making our way to the Colosseum when we spotted an immense building down a side street, checked the map and it turned out to be St Peters Square, that'll be the entrance to the Vatican city then?!
We found a parking spot (only 1 euro an hour!), so spent an hour looking around St Peters square, the queues to go inside the Vatican were ridiculous, with no shade so there was no chance of us even considering that, not with kids.

We looked at the fountains and admired the architecture before heading on.  Again passing fantastic places, we past Piazza Venezia and round to the Colosseum.
It was amazing, even here the parking was only 1.50 an hour, all pretty full but eventually we found a spot and parked up for 3 hours.




We walked down and looked around, tried to find the place on Palatine Hill to buy the tickets but failed miserably and tempted by the 20 euro tickets to avoid the queues, but finally Rich offered to stand in line for the 12.50 tickets instead.  It didn't look that long and at least it was in the shade.

Meanwhile I took the kids to look for food, the subway station sold the most enormous toasted ham and cheese sandwiches and paninis for 4.50, they were plenty big enough for 2 to share, but we splashed out on one each :0)
Back to the queue to eat it.
We were smugly getting to the doorway into the Colosseum , watching all the "tours" queueing up, thanking the decision to get cheaper ticket, only to discover, once in the queue carried on for over half an hour! - gutted.
If we did it again we'd definitely hunt out the box office Palatine hill and buy our tickets there or failing that 20 euros to avoid that queue - bargain!
We only had about 40 mins in the Colosseum but it was brilliant, amazing to think that it could possibly have been built such a long time ago and held more spectators than Anfield (that was Rich's thought anyway!!).
The museum was fascinating, told how, hen the gladiatorial games were outlawed, the Colosseum was pillaged for building materials!  Basically a ruin because the Romans nicked all the bricks!
Rome was great and it had water fountains all over the place to refill water bottles, and have a quick cooling wash!
Once out of the Colosseum and we were off to see the Spanish steps, we parked a little way off and walked through Popolo square, a huge column surrounded by 4 fountains in yet another grandiose square.  We put our feet in the fountains to cools off before walking up to the Spanish steps, by now it was scorching again (We really should do this stuff in the winter!).  Edward and I stayed at the bottom by another fountain, while Amelie and Rich climbed to the top where they saw a couple getting married!
We saw a jobs worth police woman moving on a lady and her kids who were sitting too close to the fountain, she decided the best way to get their attention as they were all but 3 feet away was to blow her whistle as loud as she could and demand they move away completely! I think its what's called "making an example!"
Another stroll back and an ice cream by the fountains in Popolo square before heading back to the van.
When we got there we found the door handle had been removed! - great.

I called the insurance company who said we had to get a police incident number if we were possibly going to claim on insurance.  AS it was the door lock and they had scratched the paint work there was every possibility that it could turn out quite a pricey repair, so we headed for the local gardi.  I walked in and in my best Italian asked "Parla Inglese?" simple reply "no" - fab.
An hour and a half later we'd found someone who could speak a bit of English and had managed to communicate that it was not me who ripped the handle off and that we did still have the van just a broken door handle, it was not how I'd envisioned the afternoon!

Finally sorted with 4 copies of the report we decided to scrap the plan of driving to Pisa and returned to Lago Bracciani for a swim in the lake in a lovely camp site with a pizzeria next door (dreaming of pizza again!) The kids were having so much fun swimming, we stayed till the sun went down, by which time everyone (except me!) was too tried for a meal out so we had more sandwiches (yum!)