Leftfield Plans

Dear O'H dear and Lovely Tea Jenny,

St Peters Basilica is free to walk around so we decided to get up early and head along to see inside. Except today was ticket only (presumably as part of Easter) and we couldn’t get in. It ended up being a brilliant time to walk around because it’s so quiet that early in the morning. We went past the Palace of Justice (today’s picture) and then along the posh shop street (playing the game of ‘guess how much that is’) to the Spanish steps and then sat in the sun with coffee and croissants.

Turned out that not getting into St Peter’s Basilica wasn’t the only mix up of the day. The Prince decided that he quite fancied going on the hop on/hop off bus but The Princesses opted opted to go back to the apartment. We had a tour booked for the Colosseum at 3 pm so we told The Prince we’d get some bits and bobs for lunch and meet him back there.

Except I realised an hour before it started that the tour was actually at 2 pm and the time had been changed in my phone calendar when we arrived in Rome (which is an hour ahead of the UK)! I called The Prince to let him know and texted where to meet us - just as his phone ran out of charge!

There was a lot of running around the outside of the Colosseum but we couldn’t find him so we had to do the tour without him which I felt really bad about. Despite this, the Colosseum tour was brilliant. Our guide, Gabriele, was very funny, mainly without intending to be and also because he was being stalked by a man from Peru who asked A LOT of questions and took about 3000 selfies!

The Prince met us as we came out and was very chilled about it. He’d had a lovely bus trip, although his head was a tad burnt after sitting at the exit of the Colosseum for over an hour! But at least he got to do the second part of the tour which was the Roman Forum and Palatine hill. Gabriele told us the legend of Romulus and Remus and also pointed out a Judas tree, so named because that was the type of tree that “Judas suicided himself”!

At the end of the tour, stalker tourist was nowhere to be seen and Gabriele was in a bit of a panic as he still had a radio. We were trying not to cry with laughter when Gabriele started running around and all we could hear through our headphones was “I am looking for you Peruvian guy. Come to me.”

Thankfully Peruvian guy was found by another guide which made Gabriele very happy as apparently he gets charged 40 euros if some eejit tourist doesn’t hand back their radio.

We went out for the last dinner of our holiday. I had booked it as it has lots of good vegan options but we ended up in the wrong restaurant as there are 2 with the same name! Luckily they had a table for us and called their other restaurant to let them know. The Mini Princesses were tired after dinner and went back to the apartment but The Prince and I decided to stretch out the last night as long as possible and went for a few drinks.

We had a great last day. It was a day of mix ups, all of which ended up working out fine. I’m sure there’s a lesson in there if I chose to pay heed!

C