Roman Forum ruins

Being an Aussie, getting to anywhere usually means a long flight, so it was no surprise that after 21 hours of flying, we were pretty tired when we arrived in Rome, the eternal city. There had been grand plans of spending the afternoon sightseeing but the reality was that we arrived at our hotel and fell asleep, waking in the wee hours, hungry and with breakfast hours away.

We chose to stay at the Kennedy Hotel, a three star establishment close to Rome’s Termini main station for buses and trains. It has small, clean, comfortable rooms over five storeys. Breakfast is continental, so if you need something more substantial, go out…we found it to be just fine. (See more on this hotel in my trip advisor review).

After a little research, we felt the best way to get an overview of the city was by hop on hop off bus. There are 5 different companies all offering similar routes. We chose City Sightseeing as they seemed to have the most frequent buses. The operators were friendly and helpful. We stayed on as far as the 4th stop at the remains of Circus Maximus, a huge field that is now empty. It doesn’t take much, however to imagine the arena full of chariots colour and spectacle. We walked across the field and along the side of Palantine Hill.

Looking across circus Maximus to Palentine hill

A little way way along is an entrance to the Palantine hill and Roman forum ruins. We spent a good couple of hours wandering here in the beautiful gardens. You can get quite close to many ruins and your imagination will be in full swing trying to reconstruct the glory days of Rome.

Ruins of a private amphitheater on Palentine hill

The Arch of Titus and the Colloseum inthe background

The ruins of the roman forum

We exited the Forum area at the far end near the Wedding Cake and walked around to join up with bus stop number 5.

Temple of Apollo

TIPS:

* allow time for the jetlag. Don’t plan too many activitites straight away if you are crossing a lot of time zones
* arrange your airport transport before you leave Australia, even if you know you will catch a taxi, look at airport diagrams and figure out where to go as you will be tired when you arrive.
*we used City Discovery (an international company) to organise our transport and chose a shuttle service. The representative was there to meet us, even though it took nearly an hour to get through customs. The downside of sharing,however, is that our fellow travelers were no shows…so we sat waiting for nearly another hour.private shuttle may be worth the money.
* Rome has a great train system, with regular services straight to the city

* I took only my Canon 6D DSLR camera with a 24-105mm lens and a 16-35mm lens