After breakfast we walked past the Bornas’ apartment, picked them up and walked to The Forum. The walk, which in reality was only 2-3 kms away, took a couple of hours after we had stopped at a myriad of shops. The shops here are fantastic – beautiful boutiques selling really lovely things that are unique and different to Australia. Eventually we came to the Forum and had a look at it from the outside before heading back into the city for lunch.

So far the food in Rome had been a bit disappointing – while perfectly fine it seemed no different and certainly no better than anything that we could have bought in Lygon St. On this occasion however, John got a recommendation from a local retailer and we found ourselves in a very crowded and ordinary looking little bar that ended up selling the most delicious food we have had so far in Italy (and it was very cheap).

After lunch we walked back to the colosseum, and following the. recommendation of someone we had met the day before, purchased our tickets at The Forum, thus avoiding the long queues. The tour around the Colosseum was very interesting and we learnt a lot. The area around the Colosseum used to be a massive palace built by Nero and the site of the Colosseum was his own private lake. In his palace he had built a 35 metre gold statue of himself. After he died, his successor, Hadrian, built the Colosseum and placed the statue outside where it nearly towered over the building. It was the statue, Collosus, that gave the colosseum it’s name.

We walked back and ended up having dinner right outside the Pantheon. By this time, everyone as really tired so we all had an early night.

The following morning, we met John and Joanne at the Campo de Fiore where I bought some fruit, bread, meat and cheese and had a delicious coffee. We came back to our apartment for sandwiches and then headed up the street to hire some bicycles. Cycling around Rome seemed a romantic idea – I had pictured cycling along the bike path next to the river, perhaps to the top of the hill near Villa Boughese to admire the view. It didn’t quite work out like that. It turns out that Rome doesn’t really go in for bike paths – instead we found ourselves cycling down busy roads, screaming through intersections before being hit by cars, the handbars rattling so hard on the cobblestones that my watch came off. At one stage I got far behind the others and I found myself negotiating a heavy inspection on my own, getting a bike wheel caught in a tram track and then having to stop on a busy road when my drink bottle fell off. At times we cycled through very crowded pedestrian streets and that was almost as hair raising. Towards the end we were cycling along the road next to the river in peak hour traffic, millimetres away from buses and fighting with motorbikes for space. As hair raising as it was, we did note with surprise that Roman traffic is surprisingly forgiving of tourists on cycles. Nick loved it, but Chris (who had Michael on a passenger seat on the back) and I had had enough! We called it a day and with great relief, and no broken bones, returned the bikes to the shops on shaking legs.

I needed a stiff drink after that, so we retired to a cafe and sat outside watching the crowds and had a couple of aperos. From there we got a some dinner at a nearby restaurant, enjoyed a few laughs and floated home.