2 Nights in Rome!

So I'm kind of stepping out of chronological order here, but I can't seem to get ahead so I'm going to skip about 2 weeks and hopefully I can fill that blank in a little later on.

So I somehow managed to be roostered off for 5 days so I figured I should probably get out and see some of Italy. The obvious place to start with was Rome. So on Saturday I hopped on Train and headed south . I had a few issues with trains. Mainly missing one, one not running on Saturdays and not being able to figure out which other trains I could catch. So I had a bit of a break down at the train station and almost gave up on the idea of going to Rome, but managed to survive that and finally caught a train a little after 4pm and arrived in Rome about 6.30pm.

I had booked my hostel online and had managed to get one about 5 minutes from the train station so a nice short walk which made it so much better. Checked into the hostel and ended up in a room with these two Canadian guys, one of who just slept the first night and the other was talking about a pub crawl, so "when in Rome do as the Romans do" so me and the Canadian guy went on the pub crawl, and met a whole bunch of different people. Met 3 other kiwis on it as well which was cool.

We stayed out until about 3.30 dancing in different bars and having a good time. Then came the fun job of finding a way home. Buses in Rome run all night and the guide for the pub crawl told us which one to catch, so we just had to find our way there, well we thought it would be that simple. Me and an American guy managed to find the bus alright so we thought we'd be fine but the bus broke down outside the Colosseum, so we had to get out and walk. It was the first time I'd seen the Colosseum.

Not a great photo best I could do at 4am.

Somehow we managed to find our way back to the hostel, and we walked through the set of an Italian TV show which, I don't get why but they were filming at 4 in the morning, just seemed a little crazy to me.

Anyway we made it back and I crashed into bed and woke up about 10.30am and just hung around the hostel, in the nice air conditioned room. Temperatures have been up in the mid 30's so to have air conditioning was a life saver.

That afternoon I had organised to met up with Ben, one of the guides I'm working with this season, outside the Colosseum, so thanks to my walk the previous night a now knew how to get there. I met up with Ben a little after 2pm and we walked around the Colosseum and Palantine Hill,. We tried to go to the Roman Forum but it was closed by the time we got there so just wandered the streets looking at the performers and could see bits and pieces of the Forum from there.

We head back about 5.30 and went our separate ways. I was pretty tried from the night before so was keen to go to bed early so went out and had some dinner and got back to my room. My room mates were there so we thought we'd go for a few drinks at the hostel. Then went for a walk across town for them to find some dinner and eventually ended up back in the hostel bar about 10.30 and there were some people from the pub crawl there so we hung out with them and ended up going to to a couple of other bars about 30 minutes away that the barman recommended.

I ended up leaving a little after 4am because I had to catch the train about 11.30 the next morning, but the others stayed out until about 7am. I woke up in the morning and met up with Ben again and we caught the train to Assisi on another scorching hot day, got about to about 37C.

A little disappointed I didn't get to see more of the attractions in Rome but met some great people. I plan on going back and doing more of those touristy things.

*I'll add some photos from the Colosseum later, I left my camera up in my room and don't want to walk up and down the hill in 30 degree heat just to add a couple of photos

Buckingham Palace

Day 2 and 3

So the 25^th was a long day, lots of walking. Me and couple of guys from the hostel decided to walk to Buckingham palace, about 5 km away, for the changing of the guard, have never seen so many people in one place before. It was packed, it was a Saturday after all and a whole lot of Germans had come to London for the Champions league final.

After that, we headed back towards the River Thames, passing Big Ben, Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament along the way. Quite spectacular buildings, as are so many in London. Everything is so much older than back home in little old NZ, so you just have to stop and look at the buildings as you walk, even if they aren't a famous building, it’s just so different so I stopped lots along the way as well.

We then headed across the river and started walking towards the London Eye. We queued briefly for tickets but decided it was going to take most of the day to get on it so kept moving down the river. We stopped by a street performer, one of many along the river. Not the best busker I've ever seen but still entertaining.  Further along we came to Tate Modern and walked around in there for a while, and then we passed Shakespeare’s Globe Theater on the way to London Bridge.

 After stopping at London Bridge we headed back towards the hostel to complete our kind of triangle of the bottom half of London. We had a couple of beers at the pub by our hostel and watched the Champions League final. I was completely worn out after that so went to bed.

The 26^th started off a little slower, didn't leave the hostel until 10.40, and headed down to the tube stop near my hostel to meet up with Tony and Bry. We caught the tube to Convent Garden and had a wander around there and headed down to Trafalgar Square. We called into the National Gallery and had a look at some paintings. Came out and there was another street performer, they’re everywhere during the weekends from what I've seen, but it might just be the good weather we had yesterday and the today.

Anyway we moved on, walking down Paul Mall, once again the buildings are all incredible and completely different to back home. We found a pub along the way and called in for lunch.  Afterwards we worked our way to Hyde Park and walked along the outside for a bit then went down to one of the main roads and found our way to Harrods. We had a look around there, found some crazy things, like a watch for 275,000GBP.

Then we headed to the Natural History museum to look at dead animals. Was interesting but we were all getting pretty tired so went to a convenience store to buy a few beers and headed to Kensington Park to enjoy the sun and have a drink. It was quite strange being able to go into the equivalent of a dairy and buy singular bottles of beer and be able to drink them in the open, but at the same time it was really good. Got back to the hostel about 7.30, got some dinner then was in bed by 10. Long days out walking are making me sleep well though.