I ate my little packed lunch and said goodbye to our lovely tour guide who we were going to meet tomorrow at the Vatican. We had closer look at everything again and started a competition that would consume the rest of the holiday. The most artistic picture of the day competition! Here’s mine, it’s beautiful!



We left the Forum and managed to get to the top of another one of the 7 hills of Rome, The Capitoline Hill. It’s home to the Senatorial Palace and a piazza designed by Michelangelo. Very Angels and Demons! Our aimless wanderings continued until we were completely blinded by the brilliantly white structure that is the National Monument of Victor Emmanuel II. It was a sunny day, like all the days we‘d been there, and climbing up the huge white staircase was like Robert Scott coping with snow blindness (a doomed South Pole expedition from the 1900s simile, how cerebral). It was so reflective! Stupidly so in my opinion! Inside was a huge museum. Interesting fact I learnt about the statues of chariots (I think it’s interesting anyway), is that they generally have four horses pulling them representing the four corners of the Roman Empire.




Wandering through so many beautiful piazzas, visiting so many fantastic buildings there’s no way I can remember them all. That’s why Rome is so fantastic! You just stumble upon amazing places.

We were heading towards the Pantheon and, to be honest, I had no idea what the Pantheon was. It’s another amazing building which is famous for having a big hole in its roof. It’s on purpose though! It’s an ancient concrete dome with an oculus at the apex. Everything in Rome is huge and this building is definitely no exception with the dome weighing 4,535 metric tons! Wikipedia tells me that ‘…the Pantheon's dome is still the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome.’ It was built to be a temple to all of the Roman Gods but was adopted by the Roman Catholic Church. Another impressive building. DAN BROWN ALERT!!! Yes, this is a location in Angels and Demons. Another place used in the book was the Trevi Fountain.




It just springs up from nowhere! It’s another huge structure that’s completely breath taking. I thought it would be in a huge piazza but actually it felt pretty cramped. So many people there throw coins in for good luck. If you throw a coin in you’ll return to Rome in the future, so fingers crossed that’s true.


A pretty hectic and exhausting day! We retired to the hostel and had a few glasses of wine. We got into a random conversation with a drunk American (they really can’t hold their wine). Today was a milestone for me because it was the first day I washed all of my clothes. We booked our next hostel in Pisa and in Venice. It was nice to do it all on a computer and not on an iphone for a change (I dread to think of the phone bill).

It was truly an amazing day with places that I’d remember for the rest of my life. Tomorrow was going to be even busier! I was going to meet the Pope…well, just go to the Vatican!