It wasn’t built in a day and it shall not be blogged in a day, either.

Rome is the biggest city to which we’ve travelled, thus far. The closest campsite is big too. We were sharing the site with a few other campers and seventeen hundred blonde, German girls who were enjoying the most enormous organised all-girl school trip that I have ever seen. To give you an idea of the scale of their outing, they had brought with them three juggernauts containing their food — and their kitchens! Our chances of getting hot water in the campsite showers after 1,700 girls? Nil.

One could spend quite a few weeks in Rome just covering the main tourist bits, and a lot longer to see it all. For example, there are over five hundred churches in the city (or so we were told). As such, we limited ourselves to the biggies and allowed ourselves some mooching time, which we so enjoy.

The Colosseum is magnificent. Here’s a tip for you: Illegal touts outside the amphitheatre offer to guide and queue-jump you for €10 (on top of the €11 ticket price, so €21 total). However, once inside we paid an extra €3.50 (making €14.50 total, including ticket) for an official guided tour. We enjoyed the tour as it was a bit of a rarity for us; we generally walk in the opposite direction of large groups of tourii*. The same ticket allows you onto Palentine hill next door, which our brochure described as ‘a walk of indescribable beauty’.

* [daveb’s] plural of ‘tourist’.

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