Rome Itinerary/Tips and Tricks
9:00 Breakfast
10:00 Castel Sant'Angelo
12:00 Lunch
4:00 Catacombs
7:00 Trevi Fountain
7:30 Pantheon
8:00 Dinner
10:00 Exploring the Area
Day two of my trip to Rome we had an even more packed day. Because it was a Sunday, all of the buses were free, or they weren't free and no one was paying?. No need to pull out that Roma card. I was determine to have a better day today and try to avoid the crowds as much as possible. My plan of attack was to avoid guided tours all together but that didn't quite happen.
Castel Sant'Angelo
Castel Sant'Angelo was the second free museum I would attend to finish up my Roma pass.
The castle is actually pretty close to the Vatican so if you are wanting to see both it would probably make sense to do them in the same day if your Vatican tour wasn't late like mine. The castle is in a touristy area, but most of the heat was taken away by the Vatican so it wasn't quite as bad in this area. The line to get in wasn't long at all and I also spent some time getting some pictures of the surrounding area and beautiful bridges that reminded of me of
The Charles Bridge in Prague.
The huge circular castle was originally built to be a mausoleum and later became a secret hideout for the pope, where he could access underground tunnels with its proximity to the Vatican. Now its a museum.
One cool thing about this castle is you get to go to the dungeon and crawl through some pretty dicey spaces to see the abysmal cells where prisoners were held! Seeing the castle was nice, but not a must-see if you are short on time. Plus, since I had missed seeing the Catacombs in
Paris, I wanted to see the Catacombs in Rome!
The San Callisto Catacombs
I was pretty excited about seeing the catacombs. The closest thing I've come to it was seeing The Bone Church in the Czech Republic and that was pretty high on my list of cool things I've seen. To get to The San Callisto or St. Callixtus Catacombs you have to take a bus or car. These are the most popular catacombs as there are several other ones to choose from. They are about 30 minutes outside of the city. I took the 218 bus from near Via Merulana. The trip to the Catacombs was a nightmare. It was hot and sweaty and like the Vatican, the bus was packed. People kept pouring in and we were shoulder to shoulder. At one point it was so hot in there and the bus was just parked that people were screaming and panicking. It was a little scary.
Once we made it to the catacombs it was in a beautiful area. I just wanted to sit in the shade for a bit and hide. Once I was ready, my friend and I paid for our tickets. They were 8 euro each and you had to join a tour to see the Catacombs, which is understandable...wouldn't want to get lost down there. The tour wasn't long though. It was nice and cool down there and also pretty eerie. You don't get to see any bones in this one, most of them are either sealed in, stolen, or turned to dust. The view in the catacombs was row after row of hollowed out tombs stacked into the wall. I'm not gonna lie, it was pretty depressing, but interesting nonetheless.
Even though I was ready to leave the catacombs, they weren't ready for me to leave. The one bus that you could take out of there (the 218) took over an hour...or never came. I don't really know because I ended up taking a taxi back to our room.
The Trevi Fountain
The next few things we decided to see at night because we heard it was the place to be. I was really excited to see The Trevi Fountain, but I heard it was under construction...bummer. I had no idea just how under construction it was. You couldn't see anything. Just take a look at the image below. But I've heard from the locals that one cool thing about it was that while under construction, there is a walkway above the fountain that tourists can walk through. This is the closest most people will ever get to the fountain.
The Pantheon
Only a few blocks away from The Trevi Fountain is the Pantheon. Though I didn't get to go inside, it was really pretty to see at night. There is a lot of activity in this area and we decided to sit down at a nearby cafe to have dinner while enjoying this view.
More Dinner in Rome
I didn't lie when I said I came to Rome for the food. I miss seafood living in Germany and the pasta, pizza, and red wine can't be beat. Near The Pantheon is where I had the best gnocchi pesto I've ever had!
That's it for my two and a half day trip to Rome. Being a city filled with art, history, and culture, this wasn't a vacation for me, I had to see as much as possible and I think I did. There are so many more things to do in Rome that I couldn't possibly fit them into a short trip like this, but that's okay because I was ready to head back home.
I felt like I had run all over this town. The crowds, the cars, the sense of go, go, go! As I had come to find out in Naples, the driving in Italy is terrible. No one seems to follow any rules and though Naples was worse, Rome wasn't so different. My friend told me that she heard that the key to crossing the roads here were to not look both ways and just go. Not look both ways? This goes against everything I'd learned growing up?!?! Eventually we started crossing the street like big kids and she was right, don't look both ways! I guess the idea is more so, don't look like a tourist, but essentially if you are just crossing with purpose then cars are going to slow down for you and they did. But that's probably really bad advice ;)
Have you been to Rome? What were you favorite sights?
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