Rome in a Day

Trip Start May 15, 2006

Trip End Jul 07, 2006

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Flag of Italy Rome, Italy
Saturday, June 3, 2006

Hi everyone - well, it's been a long day so far in Rome. We're staying at a campground about 20 minutes away from the Vatican by bus...when we were looking at hostels last week in Munich, the only places we could find were this campground (10 Euro/night), or hotels starting around 100 Euros. Since we'd already survived a $6/night hostel in Cairo, we thought we'd roll the dice on the campground. It's actually pretty cool, they have a pool, a sand volleyball court, and clean bathrooms. We're staying in a 2 person tent on cots...slumming it a bit...the only other drawback is that it's on the side of the Italian version of the 405. The cars honking in the morning saves the campground on wakeup calls, I suppose. We hit up the campground bar last night, which was cool, then jammed out this morning to try and see the Vatican. The trouble with that was 500,000 other people also had the same idea. The line to get in the Vatican Museum streched around about 4 corners and must have been 1/2 mile long

Crazy crowds at the Vatican

. Absolutely ridiculous.

We skipped the line and walked around St. Peter's Square, where they were setting up for either a Metallica concert or a speech from the Pope. They set up a ton of speakers, chairs and video boards down the street from the Square so everyone could check it out. The crowds were ridiculous, so we opted to walk down to St. Angelo's Castle, the Piazza di Montecitorio, and finally down to the Pantheon. The Pantheon was by far the most impressive. It's the last great building left from ancient Rome, built in 27 B.C. There's a huge dome inside, with an opening to the sky 27 feet in diameter...my travel book said that they used to sacrifice and burn animals inside, with the smoke filtering out of the opening.

We're heading back to our sweet campground in a minute to change and then see what Rome's nightlife has to offer tonight. Looks like we're heading further south tomorrow to Naples to check out Pompeii and the Isle of Capri. We checked into the ferry to Tunisia, but it's 24 hours ONE WAY....too bad, 'cause it was covered in the price of our Eurail pass. We're probably going to spend a couple nights there and then take an overnight train back up to Nice.

Ciao
Kenny

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Gasoline anyone?	Inside the Pantheon	Me & some building in Roma	Me & the Vatican
Pre-partying in our tent in Rome	river in Roma...	St. Peter's Square in the Vatican	The Pantheon
The pool at our campground.....sweet!