Day 13

We went to a little cafe, round the corner from our apartment, called Nero Caffè, for Breakfast.  We both bought, what we thought was a chicken panini, but was more like a schnitzel panini.  It was still nice.  Mum also got a cappuccino, only her second coffee since we arrived in Europe.  When we went to pay, the lady gave us a free donut, which was yummy.

After breakfast we went to the Termini to catch a train to the Vatican, as we had booked a skip-the-line guided tour of the Vatican, Sistine Chapel and St Peter's Basilica.  There are so many artworks and sculptures everywhere that you can't really appreciate it.  If you stopped to look at every piece of art, or sculpture, you would be there for years. Then outside, in the courtyard, you have some random sculptures like the pinecone and the 'sphere within a sphere'.  The only place you weren't allowed to take photos was in the Sistine Chapel.  A lot of stuff was stolen from the Egyptians and Greeks.  They already have a sculpture of the new Pope, Leo XIV.  The buildings were massive and the architecture was very impressive.  On leaving the Vatican we saw the changing of the Swiss Guards at the bottom of the stairs.

After lunch we caught the bus to take us to the Colosseum, but on the way we saw some ruins, which we found out later was the Circus Maximus.  We decided to get off the bus to take some photos, then we walked towards the Colosseum.  As we had time to kill before our Colosseum tour, and it was hot, we decided to get some refreshments.

We got to the Colosseum a couple of hours early, so I took a number of photos while waiting for our tour to start.  A couple of guys, dressed up as ancient Romans, tried to get us to have a photo with them, for money, of course.  We didn't, but many others did.  The Colosseum is amazing from the outside .  Because we were doing a night tour we got to see it lit up at night too, which was also amazing.  Our night tour started in the arena area and then we went underground.  The guide was very interesting and we learnt a lot. The photo of the white squares are the only remaining original, marble seats.  The Colosseum could seat up to 80,000 spectators and only took 8 years to build!

By the time we came out of the Colosseum, it was about 10:00pm.  We heard music playing across the street, above the Metro Station, so went across to investigate.  We then caught the bus back to the Termini.  By this time we were getting hungry, so decided to have dinner before going back to our apartment.  Guess what?  There happened to be a McDonalds there!  After we finished dinner we walked back to the apartment to pack our bags as we were flying out the next morning.