How to do Rome in 36 hours! (Rome)

Member Name: machar

Product:	Rome
Date:	01/06/01 (49 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: you can see a lot in a short space of time, all the tourist bits are close together

Disadvantages: Far too much to see in a couple of days, too many museums!

Well, near enough a day and a half give or take a couple of hours! Obviously this is not the best way to see Rome but as we were on a whistle stop tour of Italy it couldn't be helped. I left without thinking that there was something that I had really missed out on.

I'll write this out along with dates and times so you get some idea of how much we did! I'm not going to write about the sites in detail here as they deserve more attention than I can give them in this op. Therefore please look on this as a flying tour guide!
(I should say that we were staying at a campsite outside Rome (op has been written!) so we had to travel in every day).

DAY ONE
4pm - Straight to the Piazza del Popolo with its magnificent fountains, sculptures and twin churches. This is an amazing example of Italian architecture.

Down the main shopping street with lots of window shopping to the Spanish steps. These were absolutely heaving with tourists, in fact you can hardly see the steps for the tourists! You really don't want to hang about here too long as it's so busy!

Round the corner to the Trevi fountain which was just as bad as the Spanish steps - absolutely heaving with tourists. Try and take a photo but expect to be sharing it with at least 10 other people!

Down the road to the Parthenon, which was absolutely incredible. It's hard to believe that it's been there for almost 2000 years! A wander round some of the small streets looking at the architecture and more window shopping (and do have an ice cream esp. a chocolate one!). Back out of Rome by 7.30pm. See? It's amazing how much you can do in 3 and a half hours!

DAY TWO
9am - Straight to the Vatican with another lot of window shopping on the way there! St. Peters Square is absolutely awesome. Nothing can prepare you for the sheer scale of it. Into St. Peters church and climb to the top of the dome. Scary but a magnificent
view into the inner reaches of the Vatican City and over Rome itself.

Noon - the charge to the Sistine chapel. I found this quite amusing in some strange way. Just follow the crowd of people out of St. Peters Square and round the corner of the Vatican. The museum looked like the Guggenheim, all very modern and lots of glass. Pay your money and join the huge queue of people shuffling through the long walk to the Sistine chapel. Get to the Sistine chapel and get a sore neck staring at the ceiling!

3pm - Very late lunch and refreshment stop! Lots of shopping and buying up all the designer bargains.

6pm - Off to the Colosseum passing the monstrosity of the Altar of the Nation on the way. Join the rugby scrum for tickets at the Colosseum and then appreciate the space inside! The good thing about going late is that it's quite quiet and there aren't hoards of tourists going about.

7pm - a look over the fence at the remains of the forum. The ruins probably made more sense when you looked at them from above rather than walking in amongst them!

8.30pm - back to the campsite.

I'm sure that people will point out lots of things that I missed or didn't see but I do plan to go back for longer. I would like to go back and visit more of the museums and wander round the smaller back streets a bit more. However, I can't think of something that I really really wanted to see but missed out on. At least when I go back next time I'll know where I'm going!

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