Monday 14 December

We were sad to have to pack and leave our apartment this morning. We finished off all the cereal we had brought with us, and Ross and Jarrod wandered down to the Yum Yum cafe for pastries and coffee while I finished folding laundry (yes our roles here are similar to home 😉).

The boys returned with our breakfast part 2, as well as an autographed poster. It turns out the waiter at the Yum Yum is a famous singer! He signed a poster to his “favourite big Australian family”, so we spent the next ten minutes googling him and his pop songs.

I had asked Federico to organise another car service for us this morning once I had researched the cost of taxis and where we were going. So at 9.45am we headed downstairs for the last time, and a driver took us across town to the hotel where we pick up the Trafalgar tour. While the tour didn’t begin until 5.30pm, we were able to check in and meet the travel director, who showed us where to get the public bus back into the centre of Rome to keep exploring areas we hadn’t yet been. 

We caught bus 881 and walked down Via Corso, lunched at Da Vinci cafe along the way (the majority of us chose delicious paninis but were then jealous of the Caesar salad Abi and Zac chose!), past Area Sacra and across Ponte Garibaldi to explore the island Tibertina in the middle of the Tiber River. We then wandered back up to the bus stop past Teatro Marcello (a theatre with a facade of ancient ruins – below) and through Piazza Venezia. 

  
On the way back we passed an installation of red and white umbrellas down a side street. I feel like I should know what this is for, but I can’t find any information about it! 

 
The traffic and drivers in this city are a little crazy. They park wherever they can, and try to respect other drivers and pedestrians, but I do feel like I am taking our lives in our hands to cross some roads! It reminds me of New York. I wish I could have waited around to see how the cars got out of these spots? The population of Rome is 3million (64 million in Italy).

  
Once we returned to the hotel, we enforced a rest time until the tour officially started. We all went on the coach for a tour of Rome by night, with a stop to climb Capitoline Hill and view the Roman Forum, and then returned for dinner at 7.30pm. The kids (and adults!) were exhausted and ready for bed by then.