Sally liked to say this was the day she got to sleep in. And we did, until 7:00am. We did move slowly this morning. By the time we got all packed up, ate breakfast and was ready to go see a bit more of Rome it was 9:45am. Our hosts said we could leave the pack in the kitchen area for the day after we had checked out and that is what we did.
We walked to Termini station and took the subway a couple stops to the Colosseum station. Here we walked around the base of this colossus and read Rick Steves history and description while seated on a bench. It had rained last night, we heard it on the roof of our top floor apartment, making it hard to find a dry place to sit, but someone before us had soaked up all the water off this bench, leaving it dry for us.
We didn’t really need nor want to pay to get into either the Colosseum or the Forum, we were happy to just stroll around the outside and take in what we could. The rain had filled in all the spaces between the large round rocks that the pavement here was made of making it a challenge to hop from rock to rock without getting wet feet by stepping in-between.
We wandered up Via Die Fori Imperiali past the Forum to the Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele II, that massive marble monument to the unification of Italy back in 1861. We had walked past it many times in the past, but never climbed its marble steps. We entered past the man guarding the gate and climbed to the top level. We enjoyed the view and stopped at the cafe for a coke before heading back down.
We decided to walk back to our apartment, the walking distance to it only slightly longer than back to the subway and from Termini home. Strangely, we found ourselves walking the same route we had the past two days, up the Via Quattro Novembre. Is this the only road in Rome that leads to our apartment? We detoured off onto the Via Nationale instead of the Via Panisperna as in the last two walks. This route had more people and shops, a better alternative.
Back at the apartment we asked the cleaning lady if we could use the restroom, then I grabbed my pack and the other bag and we walked back to Termini to catch the bus to the airport. As we were walking along the side of Termini station toward the line of buses that ferry people to and from the airport we saw a Donar Kebab shop across the street. We darted across and ordered to Panini Kebab’s to go, one for dinner tonight and one to eat between flights tomorrow in Munich.
On the way to the airport it started to rain hard. We grabbed the pack out of the storage under the bus and hustled into Terminal 3 where we texted our hotel. They drove up in their car and gave us a ride to the hotel, just 10 minutes away. I had mapped the route a month ago and saw that we could walk the 3.5 miles in less than two hours, but was super thankful we had hired the car now that the rain was thundering down.
We had to get up at 3:00am for our 7:00am flight to Munich. We ate our Donar Kebab dinner. This is the first night in a month that we aren’t planning the day after tomorrow’s lodging or bus rides or hiking route or where to get food. The only thing we have to do tomorrow is get up, ride to the airport in the hotel provided car, get on a couple planes, get in the Caldwell’s car and ride home. With the spare mental time Sally Christmas shopped on the web. I watched the first episode of Stanger Things Season 5 and a little bit of the Godfather. We crawled into bed about 7:00pm and were both quickly asleep. A mellow last day to our trip.
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