Day 40 - Tue 7 Oct 25: Rome

October 07, 2025

Tue 7 Oct 25: Rome

Not how we planned to spend Noeleene's birthday and our last full day in Rome, but little we can do about - some things just happen and can't be controlled. Noel is making slow progress, but still not well enough to do the guided tour I had booked for this morning. Instead she spent most of the day resting in our luxurious room. My ailments worsened overnight and I had very little sleep from coughing, but, as much as I wanted to stay in bed, I decided to go ahead with the tour regardless. I probably would have pulled the pin too if I hadn't paid so much for it, and sadly can't get a refund. I don't plan on coming back to Rome again, so I really wanted to see what I could while I'm here. I had a quick bite to eat at breakfast after getting myself together, then caught a taxi a very short distance to the Colosseum tour meeting point. At 9:00am we set of for the short walk to the Colosseum. Its an imposing site, which you can't appreciate the size of until your standing in it. Built in 69-79AD, it's the largest ancient amphitheatre ever built, and the largest still standing anywhere in the world. It is magnificent. The guide shared lots of interesting facts and stories about the Colosseum, like how it was built, how all the hole marks appeared many, many years ago when thieves tried stealing the lead pins that hold the large blocks together, about the gladiators and the tournaments held in the Colosseum. Interestingly, it use to be free for the public to enter (in Roman Days), but definitely not now. After walking the Arena and 2nd level floors, we walked to the nearby Palatine Hill mainly a large open-air museum once considered the first centre of the Roman Empire, then we continued to the Roma Forum, a sprawling ruins of important ancient architectural bits and pieces of the Roman Kingdoms earliest buildings. It was a good experience being in the Colosseum, but I thoroughly enjoyed wandering through the ruins of the Roman Forum. The tour took 3 hours, by which time I had seen enough, and walked back to the hotel to meet Noel, then we headed out for a light 'birthday' lunch. After a bite to eat, we went back to the room for a rest, then I got itchy feet, and walked to Trevi Fountain to see what all the excitement is about. Well now I've seen it, along with about 10,000 other people at the same time, I decided it is nice, but not nice enough to line up and wait an hour just to take a selfie. I took a couple of photos zoomed in between the heads of people squeezing past and lining up instead, then made my way back to Noel. On the way, I stopped at the chemist to get some medication. Neither of us were hungry tonight, but we decided to go out for a light bite anyway, opting for the closeness the Chinese restaurant that we ate at across the street last night, and something not pasta or pizza. Tomorrow, our European vacation ends, as we depart for Singapore for 3 nights, crossing fingers and toes that we are well enough to get out of the room and enjoy the stopover before returning home.