Better late than never...

Late last year, Claire found out that one of her groups was scheduled to have one of their workshops in Rome. Accordingly, we thought this would be a great opportunity to go see Rome without having to worry about the cost of one of the flights. So that's what we did, Claire booked my flights at the same time as she booked her work flights, so that my return flight would co-incide, and then in early January, booked the hotel.

Claire flew out on Friday and did her work stuff on Friday and Saturday morning, and I flew out nice and early Saturday morning. I arrived at Rome Fiumicino Airport just after lunch and caught the "Da Vinci Express" train into town. This was quite plain and simple, just one thing though - the "Da Vinci Express" isn't very expressy; it may not stop at any of the stops along the way, but it doesn't go very fast either.

I stumbled around the station for a while, went through a bit of a dodgy looking area and then finally gave in and called Claire for directions to the hotel. The directions I'd remembered from the web, were nothing like what I was seeing in front of me. Eventually I found the hotel, the International Palace Hotel and went upstairs and dumped my stuff.

We didn't do much more that afternoon as it was quite late when I arrived and we were both knackered. That evening we ventured out and about for some traditional Italian cuisine - pizza. We were actually looking for a restuarant called Est Est Est on a "traffic free piazza", but couldn't find it, so resorted to another restaurant we passed. Not a bad choice I must say, the pizza was fantastic, and inexpensive too.

The next morning we got up and headed out to see the Colosseum, the Palatino,Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps. That night we actually found Est Est Est, but it was heaving and we fancied the other Italian speciality - pasta. It also wasn't exactly in a piazza either, it was in a cul-de-sac. Anyway we found another quaint little restaurant within short walking distance and dined on some very nice pasta.

Monday was then spent trekking to the Vatican, climbing 302 steps up to the top of the dome and then back down again, along the river, back via Trevi Fountain again, a drink in the Galleria Colonna shopping centre (this shopping centre is used in several adverts). That night we had dinner and then went back to see Trevi Fountain again - it looks really cool at night.

We didn't do much on Tuesday - we woke up, had breakfast in a cafe across the road from the hotel and headed to the airport.

I know this isn't much detail, but I can't remember all the details right now. The good news, is I took loads of pictures and did the comments the day after we got back, so the pictures tell a good story.

Check out the pics - warning, there are 104 of them.