Days 31 & 32. To Rome an’ Ruins

Wednesday 17th August was promising to be another hot day as we left Cassino early and headed for the coast where we stopped at Sperlonga for the usual. I have to hand it to these people they know how to hang buildings off cliffs and do sun umbrellas and deck chairs on beaches – kilometers of them all colour co-ordinated.

And so on to Rome sweltering in it’s summer heat, blasting horns and tourists like blowflies on a carcass. The ride in was uneventful albeit attitude challenging as these little cars travel in which ever lane they like whenever they like, which is OK except I swear Italian cars don’t have indicators only horns and hand waving drivers. Mamma Mia.

We’d taken a room 200m from the Colosseum which was another stair climbing exercise but the air-con worked fine 🙂

Cleaned and rested we entered the throng of tourists, touts, varying hustlers and a very strong security presence. We organised a guided walking tour of the Colosseum and surrounding areas for the morrow and played ‘which restaurant for dinner’.

Thursday, yesterday now, was another scorcher. We picked up our tour at 10:45 and were glad we had taken a tour as we jumped the 200mt queues and even had our own entrance. Dennis, our guide, had spent 4 months in Melbourne and I’m sure it’s all the English he had – a sort of Italian with an English accent, quite hard to understand. Never the less he knew his stuff and 10 of us traipsed around the Colosseum and surrounding places of historical interest with the tour ending 3 hours later at the very place where the famous phrase of “Et tu Brute” was uttered.

The follow are a number of pics taken during the walk which became something of an ordeal for some in the heat. It was a good day for a sun tan.