Addio Roma

Packing up and trying to work out what to do with our gear is never that fun, however, our kind Air BnB host had allowed us to leave our bags in the apartment till we left at 4pm. This meant we could still tick off a couple of destinations without carrying 10kg or so on our backs. 

Today's destinations were the Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps. The bus ride was easy and the walk through the little Italian streets made it quite delightful. You can always tell you are getting close though by the increase in tourists. And then we were there. 

The large fountain towering over us with ...

no water. 

What? 

Isn't it a fountain. 

Turns out the thing is being cleaned, so instead we got to see men giving it a bit of a water blast. Fun. 

We did some googling and found out that it is the end of an aqueduct, the only one left functioning after the Barbarians destroyed the rest. (Barbarians!) It used to be in a slightly different place in the plaza but someone moved it. Feel free to do some googling yourself if you want to find out more.

Here we are looking though.

Ah well, onto the Spanish Steps (called this because the Spanish Embassy is near it). Surely the steps will be 'working'.

And yes they were. 

(And looking at these pictures I've realised Dan and I were matchy matchy and Hannah is a bit too. 

Grey t-shirts, clearly the choice of the day.)

No, we didn't walk all the way to the top. It was hot and there were lots of steps. 

I hate steps.

We were pretty done by this stage. 3.5 weeks of 'touristing' is hard work. 

Heading back to find some lunch we came across a Lego store and went in to play. It was pretty fun. Asher was excited because he got to write REECE (a youth group joke) in Lego. Hannah and I did some creating too.

Dan finally got a coffee and it was good.

On our way to find the bus, we came across another 'destination' - Alexandar's tomb - but we just played in the water outside.

Another old church.

Some more ruins that house a special Cat Sanctuary. 

Apparently, the cats are considered holy and so they look after them. The sanctuary is right next to the ruins of an old temple and you can go visit the cats. Hannah was keen too so she headed down. Very quickly she was patting a few sleepy cats and we went down too. 

It was a pretty special smell. 

Many cats in one place. Lots of litter. You get the picture. 

After deciding to not 'sponsor a cat' (yes, you could sponsor a cat, like sponsoring a World Vision child, guess litter and food costs ... ) we headed to the airport.

Side note: The drive in the taxi was scary. He drove fast and didn't really chose a lane, whilst complaining to Dan about the "Crazy driver who weaves in and out of traffic!". Yeah, 'cause he wasn't doing that. at. all.

We had a few hours to kill so we found a comfy spot near food and charging stations and utilised the free wifi and sunshine coming in the roof. It was the most modern building we had seen in all of Italy and it was really sunny and light.

There was a bit of delay on take off, something to do with the French. The pilot was about to let us go check out the cockpit to keep us all entertained for a possible hour delay when we were given the green light. Whew, it would have been 2am by the time we got back to Matt and Vicki's place if that had happened. 

Thanks, British Airways. 

Addio Rome.