Sooo,

Finally, made it to Pompeii and it was a bit more special than I thought it would be.   For those who might of heard of Pompeii and don’t know what it is.  Pompeii is a coastal town in Italy (about 2 hours south of Rome), and in 79 AD Mt Vesuvius erupted, burying the town in 30 ft of ash, volcanic mud and debris.  It was left for around 1700 years until it was excavated, leaving what was left of it really well perserved.

I must admit I severely underestimated the size of this place, it’s seriously big!  I only got a couple of photos, below is the Forum.

If you look closely you can see Vesuvius in the background, and if you really use your imagination the cloud above it kinda looks like a big cloud of smoke or steam…

Above is the forum again, don’t you just love ancient sites that let you touch and walk on the ruins?

Walking around is amazing, it was quite the sophisticated society, with bars and bakeries (although i wasn’t sold on the open toilets that are located right on the side of the streets).  The Amphitheater is pretty cool, but I just love walking down the cobbled streets, kind of eerie really.  The most surreal thing was seeing the casts of the victims, you could clearly see their expressions and most were of complete and utter horror, not the way I want to go, that’s for sure!!

But the best bit?  It was raining a little, and while I was wondering around I met a very nice security guard, who actually let me go behind the scenes, into places that were roped off and behind gates.  It was pretty cool, I did get photos, but didn’t get any with me in them.   We saw some amazing tile work and detailed wall paintings, it was pretty awesome, I must say.

Next we decided to go up and see Mt Vesuvius, we drove as far as we could, the last 200m is done by walking.  We weren’t sure whether we should, but once we got there we were pretty excited, this chicken certainly has never been up close and personal with the mouth of a volcano before, especially one that manage to bury it’s surroundings!!  We were told there was a little wait, but it was cool, we were more than happy to.

We waited until after a couple of hours, we realised  we weren’t going to get to see it, part of the track had been ruined in the rain, and we were told it could take days to fix.  It’s always the way, you always want to do something heaps more when you are told you can’t.   I had to let this go, we didn’t have days to wait, infact we planned to leave the next day.  So,that was that, 200m from seeing the top of the volcano…

Back on the road tomorrow.

Hmmm,

Well, this chicken got a little bit too excited about Pompeii and completely forgot about this little place called the Vatican City!!!!!

Big Oops!

Soooo,  we have a full day looking around (which, is not nearly enough time), so many great things all in the one spot (well, one very big spot!), first up was St Peter’s square, and it’s big, much bigger than I thought, it has a stage where the pope talks, I tried to get a photo with me talking on it, however, they wouldn’t let me (I was even thinking up a very inspirational speech to go with it).

We checked out St Peter’s, very impressive indeed, the strange thing is that this place is big, it’s impressive, great decorations, lots of things to see and just check out the only photos that I got inside……I think this chicken has a subconscious morbid side:

went for a little walk up some stairs to check out the dome:

Awe pretty!  Next we went onto the roof for an awesome view.  Actually the roof was pretty awesome in general, especially the statues:

Next we went to the museums and checked out the Sistine Chapel, that man can sure paint!  I especially loved the 3D effects.  I didn’t get any photos as you weren’t allowed to take them, plus it was soo busy in there that you could hardly move!  All in all a pretty good day I must say!

Ok, so I can say for certain that Pompeii is the very next stop!

Me again with some more Rome goodness!!

Did a huge amount of walking around Rome, deliberately getting lost to see what I could find (oh yea, and got not so deliberately lost too!!).

I went and saw the Pantheon, which is such an interesting shape, and I learned that when it was built you used to have to get to it by a set of stairs, however the ground level around it has risen so much that they are not needed anymore – how cool is that!  I wonder if future traveling chicken will need steps going down if the surrounding ground continues its rise?

Next, I checked out the Trevi fountain, I had no idea that it was in such an enclosed space, it was during the day so I didn’t get it to myself (and I was running out of mornings!). This was all my camera was able to capture (oh and it’s not straight because Yas was holding the camera up as high as she could, she’s not the tallest person in the world, and there were people infront – I am just glad that she actually got some of me in it – hehehe):

The next day I went on the archeological bus tour, too much to fit in a day, however, I did see the aqueducts, and while cool and important, they weren’t as impressive as I thought they would be (I am sure I had seen photos of better than where we went!), anyway it was a bit rushed and I forgot to take some photos…. the last photo I took in Rome was of a very important place, a place that once you have been too you will never forget……… Yay, the best Gelato place in the world!!!! (actually I took this photo because this was recommended to me, and wanted to make sure it was noted that I had been. There was a very long line, a billion different flavours, it was very hard to make important decision like that under pressure – but I did and it was goooooooooood!):

So that was my trip to Rome in a couple of posts….oh yes, last night we decided to have dinner in town (pizza, we were sticking with the Italian theme), followed by a movie, completely forgetting we relied on a train to get back.  As complete luck would have it, we got to the station just in time for the very last train (and when I said just in time, I mean running to the train).   That was a lucky one….

I am going to stick my neck out and say I will be back to Rome, while we saw as much as we could in the week we were here, we didn’t get many relaxing days and there still was a tonne of things to see.  I am still deciding about my favourite ‘really big’ cities – the big ones at the moment being Paris, Rome, Moscow and Vienna (which scrapes in).   I think I felt the most attached to Vienna, something about it I just loved…but for sightseeing Rome and Paris are neck and neck….. we will be going back to Paris to drop off the car, so I will think about that some more.

Tomorrow we head further south to Pompeii, which is somewhere I have been really looking forward to, so am excited about that.

Well it certainly isn’t tomorrow as I promised however, I will try make up for it in photos! (apologies all round for my lateness).

We traveled down to Rome on the toll roads, which I realised was a big mistake. First because they arn’t the cheapest, and secondly we were in a country known for it’s scenery and we took the biggest road we could find. I guess the good news is that we will be coming back up so we have a chance to fix it.

We arrived in Rome pretty much in peak hour.  And managed to get very lost, I think we must have drove around for an hour looking for where we were staying, and when we found it, we couldn’t get to it as it was on the other side. During this time I managed to come up with a few observations about drving in Rome:

1.  During peak hour single lane roads can somehow fit 2 cars

2.  Vesper riders have a serious death wish (they would dart infront of us without notice – and seemed to love it when there was barely enough room)

3.  Parking is seriously done as if on a cartoon….if the space isn’t big enough, you just nudge the car a little infront and behind to fit in (we were told there was a waiting list of up to a year to get your car body repaired), we saw 3 cars do this just on our way to dinner!

4. When approaching a T-intersection to a main road DO NOT STOP and wait for an entrance, you will be met with a lot of angry people behind you.  You just slow down,  drive into the traffic, and somehow people just make room for you.  If you are worried, just do what I did, close your eyes and it will be over in no time – although probably don’t do that if you are driving (hehe)

5.  When you are tired from driving in circles, just do an illegal left turn into where you are staying (oops!)

6.  Finally I can say, when in Rome, do as the Romans do!

The strange thing is, all of the above seemed to work well, so I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad system (although the parking is a little rough), however, it didn’t stop us from unanimously agreeing that the car would stay put until we needed to leave!  Luck had it there was a train station about 15 mins walk from where we were staying. Not to mention a lovely street filled with some food places down the road.  What more could we want?

Ok, so back to the sight-seeing part.

The next day we got up, and caught the train into the city, and of course our first stop was the Colosseum!  We hired a guide to take us around and give us some history. I would give you a snippet of the good stuff, however, he told us so much and I was too busy looking around to notice (hehehe – when the site lists it as a wonder I will link to it – how’s that for laziness?!).  Anyway, it was very big and would have been awesome to goto in it’s glory days and see a show or something. I am not sure about the killing and fighting stuff, but maybe a performance of the chicken dance or something would be cool (or, maybe not! lol)

We enjoyed it so much that after we finished we had a lovely drink across the road so we could relax and enjoy the view.  Ok, I will now be quiet and show the pics:

Pity I couldn’t put the photos next to each other, they would nearly line up and you would get double chicken!!  Coooool.

Next stop was Palatine Hill, and according to mythology,  it’s here where the story of Romulus and Remus begins. I always love a good mythological story, don’t you?

In the below picture, can see the white building with the statue?  Well, that just happens to be one of my favourite places in Rome, the Piazza Venezia, I didn’t get any photos with me in it, I am not sure what it was about it that I like so much, because it happened to be one of the busiest places traffic wise.  I think I visited it a billion times (yes, I might be prone to a little exaggeration!!), however something about it drew me to it.

While we were walking around we found this beautifully manicured pathway that was kind of like a huge maze for this little chicken….so I thought I would have a bit of a play before continuing with our sight seeing:

In the following days we saw the Spanish steps filled with huge crowds, so I vowed to get there first thing to see if things got any better, and I am so glad I did, check it out:

Well, I have some more photos to show, but I will leave it for next time.

Arividerchi!