Rome

Today we moved on from Rome and headed to Florence. Once again, we packed our bags and headed for the train station. This time, we caught the bus from just up the road from our apartment. While it felt like we could have walked in the same time, at least we were off our feet—which was a good thing after the past few days. We arrived at Roma Termini well ahead of when we needed to catch our train. Roma Termini has a fantastic food hall—Mercato Centrale. The place was clean and had heaps of very nice-looking food and drink options. It was actually surprisingly good and unlike what we remembered Roma Termini to be from our last visit. ...

Wow… we thought the last few days were big, but today the kids broke their all-time step count PBs—28k+ steps each! We didn’t plan for a big day—it just happened. We had a slowish morning as we looked into hop-on-hop-off buses, since the kids were keen to try one. After some research, we figured we would probably be best served just catching local buses as needed. Most of the stops on the hop-on-hop-off bus would take us to places we had already visited. ...

Today was a big (and hot 🥵) day in Rome. We had a busy schedule with tickets to the Colosseum at 11:45am and then the Vatican at 4pm. We had tried to get tickets as early as possible and had been looking for months. It seems they are both popular 🤷 So we took what we could get and had to roll with it—hoping the kids could battle on in the heat and the crowds. They did amazingly. ...

Today we packed our bags and left Monopoli – it’s been a great week. While we had intended our week in Monopoli to be spent chilling out and not doing much, we actually did a lot and were quite busy. We had an early start, leaving the apartment at about 7am so we could haul our ever-heavier packs to the station to catch the 7:45am express to Bari, where we would then connect with a fast train to Rome. ...

We made it to Rome after a pleasant few days in the Cinque Terre. Almost immediately we noticed that it was a little warmer here in Rome, away from the cooler comfort of the coast that Cinque Terre offered. We are staying in a simple B&B - its not quite what you would classify as a B&B in Australia, but I guess it meets the necessities, we get a bed, and we get breakfast. To be honest, its actually quite nice. The room is huge, and while there are no cooking facilities we do have access to a fridge. ...