Haha, ahhh… When in Rome. “Yes, please, do go on…”

‘Rome was not built in a day’. The Perks family thrives on that quote, adding to it ‘… but we saw it in a day’, an achievement we are proud of when we came to Europe six years ago. With this in my mind and Eddie more than well aware of the efficiency of getting things done to move onto the next, we came to an appropriate agreement to take it easy and chill in Rome and take a bit of a time out. This of course only became possible because Eddie’s grandparents, Robyn and Graham, put us up for three nights at the Hotel Columbus which is located a stone throw away from the Vatican itself if you had the arm of a professional baseball player. We are seriously so close, it’s ridiculous!
We got the train from Napoli which took about three hours of which uncomfortable chair sleep was once again welcomed. We got the metro to the stop nearest the hotel and walked towards the Columbus Hotel. Checked in and then headed out for a feed as we hadn’t eaten all day, followed by stopping by a fruit market and supermarket to get more food.
On the way back to the hotel, we approached a quiet street with three guys, one with a video camera at his feet and one in his hands. From what we could tell, they looked pretty expensive so we stopped to watch the other two guys try to kick a soccer ball from one side of the street to the other, attempting to get the ball into a half open garbage dumpster. They kept missing and as we were walking away they asked if either of us wanted a go. Always longing to be on any sort of camera, I immediately said yes. One of the guys interviewed me asking my name, where I was from and what I thought of Rome so far. I then attempted to kick the ball into the dumpster. My first two kicks were rubbish and I missed by miles, however on my third attempt, I slotted it in and we were all cheering. They did a little post interview after loads of hi-fives and then told me some information about what they were doing with the footage which I couldn’t and still can’t get the grin off my face. They explained that they were shooting a commercial in regards to the UK football season being underway in two weeks and it was a commerical for UK Gillette. They asked for my permission to be on it and of course accepted. Now I’m going to be on either UK telle or on the internet on one of those youtube commercials or something. Stokage level is at its technical optimum!
After all that excitement, the next morning we woke up early to beat the lines to see St Peter’s Square close up and go inside the Vatican. Another site we’ve seen that is indescribable. That place is huge! The ceilings were several tens of metres high with sculptures, mosaics and paintings covering the roof, walls and floor. Eddie commented particularly how cool it was seeing nuns walk around even though it was a weird thing to say. I couldn’t agree more though. It was so different to what we were used to and both loved it. The Sistine Chapel was also amazing, however had some weird looks when we kept referring to it as the fifteenth, sixteenth or seventeenth chapel. Not sure why. We thought it was clever.
We got the metro to the Trevi Fountain, better known to the Backpacking Battlers as the Trevor Fountain and threw a coin with our right hand over our left shoulder into the fountain because everyone else was. Whoever came up with that idea to make a quid is a bloody genius.
Moved onto what we thought were the Spanish Steps but found out we read the map wrong and walked to some closed down book shop they highlighted on the map. We found the real Spanish Steps and just sat down on them for a while, embracing the culture because that’s what everyone else was doing. Walked tonthe Old Town and got a feed.

We didnt really do much the next day. I woke up early and went for a run around Vatican City walls which is a pretty good achievement. Not sure how many people i know that can say they’ve run around an entire nation state in seventeen minutes. It may sound kind of a silly thing to notice but running past nuns walking to Vatican City was probably one of the more surreal things i have done so far. After breaky, eddie ran to a book shop which ended up being shut down whilst i didnthe equivalent to a Badlan’s ‘circle of death’ session in the room trying to lose the gut i’ve developed from eating so much food. Both of us slept for a lot of the day to catch up on some much needed rest.

We’ve been doing a fair bit of reading over here, eddie smashing through his Game of Thrones books, continuously on the hunt for the next one. I finished Marching Powder and have now moved onto The Virgin Suicides and A Thousand Splendid Suns.

We both really enjoyed Rome and thankyou so much again Robyn and Graham for giving us the opportunity to see such a beautiful and happening city in style.