Rome & Switzerland

Hey there faithful readers... sorry it's been a while, we never really got around to posting in Rome, despite having an internet connection in the hostel we were staying at. We did, however, upload lots of photos, taking us into day 7 of the holiday. However, from the current terminal I am on I cannot access the photos; I don't know if it is the same for you but it may be the router at our home is playing up (which it often does) - if this is so then we won't be able to share our photos with you anymore, but there will be plenty to see once we get back and put lots of the photos onto the website/reboot the router.

When we last updated the blog, we were coming near to the end of our time in Venice. We had an... interesting journey down to Rome, on what was probably the worst train of our travels so far. For example, you could look down the toilet and see the track flying by underneath! Anyhow, we arrived in Rome and it was... hot, about 28-29 degrees in the middle of the day. Rebecca and I can't cope with such heat, so we tended to spend 11am-3pm sitting down somewhere in the shade (preferably air-conditioned), we still got plenty done though.

One of the highlights was the Colosseum, which we went to on the day we arrived - it wasn't utterly teeming with tourists as the day was getting in somewhat (indeed, we only left 10 minutes before it closed). Very impressive, especially when you consider the thing is almost 2,000 years old. There were some good exhibits on the history of the place and of the rules of the time too.

Another highlight was going to Gelotti's ice cream place, which had been recommended to me. I had the champagne ice-cream and it was crazy; as well as tasting the alcohol I could also taste the bubbles! Rebecca had blackberry and white chocolate which she rather enjoyed.

We took rather a lot of photos of Rome - it is just so photogenic with history around every corner. Random fountains, big churches, the impressive Pantheon... the list goes on. However I should also point out a few negatives about Rome (besides the oppressive heat).

The metro system, whilst functional, is not a fun experience - the air is very muggy and very smelly and we would find ourselves happy to get out into the 28 degrees sun just to escape the conditions on the metro! The traffic is mental and all sorts of crazy maneuvers happen.... you do feel somewhat at risk every time you cross the road. Rome has a lot of smokers - which as an asthmatic is not a pleasant thing, especially since some of them routinely flout no-smoking rules too (eg train stations, toilets) - this and the traffic madness (and the lack of respect for queuing) does give the impression that the average modern-day Roman is a selfish person.

Finally on the list of negatives is out time at the Vatican. There are two queues at the Vatican - one is to get into St. Peter's Basilica, and the other is to get into the Vatican museums (which include the Sistine Chapel). We turned up at about 9:40am to find the queue for the basilica large, but moving at a fair pace. After about 20 minutes we had gone through about 80% of the queue, when the queue stopped moving. No-one else was going in, and for no apparent reason. After another 80 minutes, the queue had still not moved, so we left as we were melting in the 11:20am sun and had no idea when the queue would start moving again. You have to realise they have huge screens and speakers in the square that could've been used to inform the people but instead they carried on showing Vatican rituals.... so we were not best impressed. By this time, the queue for the museums was about 2 hours long - and mostly in the sun - which did not appeal to us at all, so we never really saw much of the Vatican at all.

Overall though, Rome was fun and we did enjoy it, though we will also remember some of the downsides. After 10 nights in Vienna then Venice then Rome, we were getting quite worn out of being in relentlessly touristy places, as well as the heat in the latter two, so were quite happy that next up (after a brief overnight stop in Milan) was some time in the hills of Switzerland.

Yesterday was mostly spent arriving at our hotel - leaving Milan at 10:20 and arriving at our hotel at about 6pm. First up was a dingy Italian train - the deficiencies of the train were more than made up by the wonderful views of Lake Como and the Italian Alp foothills. After a break for lunch it was time for the Swiss tourist train the Berninia express (I recommend googling it for pics) - a lovely train with huge windows and commentary to enjoy the spectacular scenery and the mad route that it took.

Finally we took the mountain furnicular up to our hotel - the muottas murgal mountain-top hotel. The views are just absolutely stunning. Of course we took lots of photos but again you can google it to see what it is like. We had a lovely meal but I had not such a great night's sleep. It seems a combination of low blood pressure, asthma and being at over 2,400 meters can do seriously strange things to your body and I felt really, really unwell at points during the night, but I felt a bit more human at 4:30am and got some sleep once I could breathe properly and stopped feeling like my head was going to explode or that I wouldn't be able to breathe.... hopefully tonight will be better?!

Today was a nice quite day relaxing in the surroundings of the rather expensive town of St. Moritz, which is very nice after all the business and city air we've been in recently. It's a bit colder too at about 13 degrees!

We are looking forwards to tomorrow - about 24 hours on trains, first on the very scenic Glacier Express train, and then an overnight train To Barcelona (our first sleeper train) which should be fun!