Rome: Veni, vidi, vici

Our next stop on our Tourist trail took us to a lovely campsite – Camping Tiber Roma.  Great site with good facilities and a nice pool to cool down in after a busy day roaming Rome.

We pitched up  between two trees (a terrible idea seeing as we had a huge storm that night!) and explored our options for the next day’s adventure to Rome.

 

“Expensive” tastes!

The campsite runs a shuttle service to and from the local train station, so the next day we got up early and caught the train into Rome.  We just about made the train – I got wedged in the closing doors and had to be pulled through them by Guy.  Slightly embarrassing!

The twenty minute journey took us to our first stop of the day – Vatican City.  We joined the long queue to enter St. Peter’s Basilica – not the worst place in the world to queue and take in the majestic surroundings.

Queue views

Finally reaching the end of the queue, we went through airport style security and a check to ensure we were dressed modestly enough, luckily I knew this in advanced and made sure I had my legs and shoulders/arms covered.

Walking into St.Basilica you are immediately hit by the scale of the place, you really do feel the importance of building to the Catholic faith and if you were ever unsure you were somewhere special, you are instantly reminded by the elbows and shoulders of people barging you out the way to get their perfect shot.  We spent a while just strolling around the basilica, taking in all it’s intricate detail and marvellous decoration.

When we’d finally had enough of being elbowed by photographers, we made our way over to the Pantheon.  It is hard to believe that it is almost 2000 years old!  The engineering of the dome is incredible – again, hard to believe given it’s age.

Next, we accidentally stumbled upon the Trevi Fountain.  Hidden at the junction of two small streets, we wondered what the crowd of people were watching.  It wasn’t until we rounded the corner of the building that we realised where we were.

Crowds around the Trevi

The fountain is exquisitely beautiful and predictably busy.  We had to wait patiently to squeeze our way to the waters edge to look at some of the estimated 3000 euros that are thrown into the fountain daily.  Of course, we contributed our own 2 Euro donation over our left shoulder for luck.

The Trevi Fountain

The colosseum loomed next on our agenda and by a happy coincidence a cultural celebration that week meant we entered for free.

Colosseum

Walking around the colosseum, the icon of the Roman empire, you could almost be in ancient Rome.

Arches everywhere

Details

Again, this structure is almost 2000 years old and so impressive.  The scale of everything is so great that even by today’s standards, this is an incredible piece of architecture.

Standing at the arena floor

Uncovered chambers beneath the arena

From the colosseum you can walk to the ancient Palatine Hill – the most central area of what was ancient Rome.

Icons of Rome

Walking amongst the ruins, you get a real feel for the ancient streets and buildings that made up the ancient city.

Looking down on the Roman Forum

Looking down at the ancient centre from the higher view points, you can take in some of the more complete buildings and piece together the ruins to imagine a bustling ancient city.

Ancient Rome

We spent the rest of our day wondering around the city, stumbling upon landmarks and picture postcard streets.

Spanish Steps

We spent some time walking around a peaceful park area where people were filling up water bottles from a water pump – when in Rome, do as the Roman’s do!  This proved to be a mistake as we spent the rest of our trip being pretty sick! We came, we saw and Rome conquered!

Postcard

Rome is a beautiful city, full of life and bursting with history, it is definitely one to add to your bucket list!  Next on our list; Venice!

Live, Learn, Love

Laura

Under the Tuscan Sun

After a beautiful but tiring few days in Verona, we packed up the tent and headed off to San Vincenzo for a very lazy few days.  We stayed at a huge site called Park Albatros –  5 pools, a supermarket, restaurants – everything you could possibly need really.  We made the most of the next few days, spending most our time either splashing around like kids in the pools or at the gorgeous beach across the road.  I felt like I was 8 years old again; as a child we spend many summers at sites like this across France and Spain, as I had a fear or flying so my poor family were subjected to many driving holidays!

 

The beach at San Vincenzo

A few days later we packed up again and headed on to San Gimignano, making a stop at Pisa to see the tower. 

The drive into town was interesting, very industrial and quite run down in places really.   The area surrounding the famous tower and Duomo is very beautiful, full of of tourists taking the obligatory leaning on the tower photos and also people trying to sell you watches out of their coats – some came with a “five year guarantee” – hmmmm….

Obligatory Leaning Tower Photograph

After leaving Pisa we made the journey through the beautiful Tuscan countryside to the town of San Gimignano where wewere staying for a week.  The landscape of Tuscany is truly beautiful; vineyards scattered everywhere, vibrant colours, cypress trees, simply stunning.

On arriving at the campsite we had the second car drama of our trip; this time due to some very suspect air conditioning wiring.  Luckily Guy is quite handy and was able to solve it.

We spent a few days relaxing at the pools on the site and trying to plan where and what we would do in the coming weeks – namely Rome and Venice.  The campsite was ideally located for exploring Tuscany and we made many trips from our base.

The nearest town was San Gimignano, a lovely hill top town with typically Tuscan architecture.

Pretty San Gimignano

Here we ate some amazing gelato in a lovely little shop called Gelateria Dondoli – yogurt flavoured gelato, amazing!!

A must! Worth the big queues.

The views from the hilltop were magnificent.  This photo probably illustrates my point more than anything I could possibly write.

Typically Tuscan

San Gimignano is a UNESCO World Heritage Site thanks to the preservation of its many tower homes,
which make for a very interesting skyline.  Supposedly during medieval times, the families of the town built their tower homes to represent their wealth; the higher your tower, the greater your wealth.  It would seem that the residents of the towers must have been relatively wealthy as the remaining towers still cast tall shadows over the squares and piazzas below.

Trying to get some perspective of the height

 

On leaving San Gimignano we drove through Volterra (yes, I confess this was down to Twilight) and then on to Montepulciano – the setting for Volterra in Twilight New Moon.  It was interesting to see the locations used in the film and how the local shops had tried to make the most of the link with the franchise.

The following day we got up early to travel to Florence.  After following the sat nav for a while to car parks that clearly didn’t exist, we found ourselves parking near the Ponte Vecchio.

The famous bridge into Florence is lined with numerous jewellery shops and plenty of tourists.  It was quite impressive that one small bridge could hold so many jewellery shops.

This doesn’t look like it should still be standing!

A quiet spot to read

We had hoped to get to the Gallerie Academia to see Michaelangelo’s David but the queue was so big and we didn’t want to spend our day waiting in line so we abandoned our plans, settling for the copy at the Piazza della Signoria.

The Piazza is the old Government square of the city and is a wonderful blend of historic buildings and tourists snapping away.  The town hall (Palazzo Vecchio) dominates the square, we had a little snoop inside and can definitely say it is ever so slightly more impressive than our local town hall!

The replica of Michaelangelo’s David (which dutifully guards the entrance to the Palazzo Vecchio) is only out shone by the beautiful Fontana di Nettieno, which is so life like you half expect it to turn its head to look at you.  There really is something quite eerie about the huge sculpture.

 

Next walked through the Uffizi – again a huge queue so we just soaked in the atmosphere and Guy haggled with a seller over a tripod; he was very pleased with the deal he got!

Next stop was the Duomo. The Cathedral di Santa Maria del Fiore stands proudly at the historic centre of Florence.  Building began in 1296 and wasn’t structurally complete until 1436 – this is evident in the incredible details of the marble facade which is beautifully carved in green, white and pink.

Detail in the marble

The interior of the cathedral is equally impressive.  The huge octagonal dome immediately draws you to the back of the building and you could quite easily spend your time marvelling at the frescos.

Fabulous Frescos

Immediately in front of the Cathedral is the octagonal Baptistery.  Constructed between 1059 and 1128 and clearly the inspiration for the Cathedral’s design.  For some reason my photograph of the building itself seems to have disappeared 😦 .  I did however manage to find the photos we took of the “Gates of Paradise”.  Artist Lorenzo Ghiberti created the gilded bronze doors with twenty scenes, each illustrating the life of Christ.

Gates of Paradise

At the end of the day we drove out of Florence via the Piazzale Michelangelo – the view from here is truly breath taking, even the worst photographer would struggle to get abad photograph from here.

The Duomo

Florence is a beautiful city and is certainly worth a visit if you are visiting Italy.  It looks and feels like the stereotypical Italian images you see in magazines and film.  It really is a wonderful, lively city.

We spent our last day at the campsite relaxing by the pools and sorting out our plans for the next day.  We had such a lovely, relaxed time at this campsite.  We met a lovely older couple staying on the plot next to ours who we still send Christmas cards to now :).

Next stop – Rome.

Live, Learn, Love
Laura

 

xX.

First Stop in Italy – Milan

Next stop on our Grand Tour was the fashion capital of Milan.

The drive from Nice to Milan was beautiful – the road hugging the coast to begin with, passing beautiful, typically Italian villages clinging to the cliff sides.

We arrived at Camping Milano, pitched our home for the next few nights and tried to work out how to best get into town the next day – bus.

The next few nights on site involved drying our clothing inside the tent and playing cards under the awning thanks to a storm that decided to follow us from the Côte D’Azur.

 

How to dry your clothes in a storm

Friendly resident Cat

The journey into Milan was interesting, travelling by bus allowed us to see areas of the city we probably wouldn’t have ventured through otherwise. I was quite surprised to see a lot of the outer areas of Milan to be built up mostly of 1970s tower blocks.  Much graffiti covered the walls and the streets seemed to be busy with people.

We then got off the bus and onto the underground system which took us to our stop – Duomo. On leaving the station, up the steps, quite an impressive sight greeted us – the imposing Duomo di Milano towering over the square, every bit as impressive as I’d imagined.

Duomo

We stood for a while taking in the unusual design, surrounded by pigeons and young men trying to sell bird feed to tourists.

The interior of the cathedral is beautifully intricate. The walls are covered with carvings and the stained glass windows are worth a visit in themselves. It is very dark inside which creates a wonderful atmosphere and the feeling that you are somewhere quite special.

Internal details at the Duomo

Next stop was the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II.   Full of shops to make you realise your travellers budget probably wouldn’t stretch far; we settled instead for some lunch at a lovely little restaurant. We had our first Italian pizzas and as you can imagine, it was good! We sat eating our pizzas admiring the beautiful domed roof of the shopping centre and pondered where to visit next.

The next day we travelled from our site near Milan to a site with a wonderful view in Verona. Verona, by far was my favourite destination on our trip, so much so that I think it deserves its own dedicated post, so until next time….
Live, Love, Learn
Laura

xX.