The Mackay Holiday Bolg has been moved to: http://lmmackay.blogspot.com/

 

Day 1:

After two long flights, we arrived into Rome Airport early on Friday morning.

After passing through a very slack customs and immigration checkpoint, we headed into the city on the train.

Despite feeling a little bit exhausted after the flights, we decided to start our exploring as soon as possible.

Our first stop was the Colleseum. We managed to skip the huge queue to get in because we has a Roma Pass.

After that, we had a look at the Palatino (The Old Roman Palace) and the Foro Romano (The Roman Forum Archealogical Area) which were both Amazing!

On our way back to our B&B, we stopped off at the Spanish Steps. We had a bit of a look around the small streets in that area, where the shops were very expensive.

Day 2:

On our second day in Rome, we had hoped to beat the crowds to the Sistine Chapel, but it seemed that everyone was up alot earlier than us. The Queue was extremely long, so we headed around the corner to St. Peter's Basilica.

We got in there pretty quickly and headed for the queue to go up to the top of the Cupola (Dome). After admiring the views from there, we headed down and had a look inside the church itself.

 

We then walked up the road to the Castel San Angelo. Our Roma Pass got us in there as well.

From the Castel, we walked through the heart of historic Rome past the Piazza Navona, The Pantheon, Vittorio Emanualle II Monument and The Trevi Fountain and ended up in the Villa Borghese Park.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is a map detailing our travel route within Europe. Train travel is indicated by the solid line (red- daylight, purple - night) and plane travel is indicated by the broken lines (green - domestic, orange - international). Cities are coloured blue if we are staying there and purple if we are just passing through.

The internet makes booking transport very easy! Here is a bit of information about our transport bookings so far.


On our trip we will be flying Singapore Airlines from Adelaide - Rome and London - Adelaide. Singapore airlines is a five star airline according to AirlineQuality.com. We are very much looking forward to our experience with this airline as we have heard very good things
about it. We were impressed by
the fact that when you book your
tickets over the internet, you can actually choose your seats on the plane. On all of our flights, we have managed to secure the two seat sections near the back of the plane, so we don't have to sit next to anyone else.

For our flight from Aberdeen to
London, we have chosen to fly BMI. We managed to secure a
ticket that cost us just AU$140 for both of us.

The Eurostar (The train that goes through the Channel Tunnel) is a very easy and inexpensive way to make the connection from continental Europe to England. We managed to secure a seat from Paris to London for AU$140 for the two of us.

I did not realise how hard it would be to find good, reasonably priced accommodation in Rome and Venice over the New Years period. 

The prices of one and two star hotels were the same as three or four star hotels elsewhere in Europe.

For several weeks, I combed the internet for information on good, cheap accommodation. A couple of times I found the websites of what I thought looked like nice little quaint hotels, but after reading reviews of these properties on TripAdvisor.com I found out that some of them were in dangerous neighborhoods or they had bed bugs or other things that could ruin a holiday.... Yuk!

Then, after much hair pulling, I discovered the joy of B&Bs! Through the accommodation site Venere.com, I found a lovely little B&B in the Vatican area of Rome called Il Tesoro ('The Treasure' in English). It is still reasonably expensive (110 Euros per night) but has fantastic reviews. This B&B is also situated right out the front of a Metro Station (Ottaviano) which makes it very convenient for sightseeing.

Also, through Venere.com, I found a cute little B&B in Venice called B&B Trinita for (100 Euros per night). It is situated close (5 mins walk) to Venezia S Lucia train station, so we don't have to lug our luggage far or catch the very expensive vaporettos (5 Euros per ride per person). This place also got reasonably good reviews, and there are no reports of bed bugs! (unlike many other B&Bs in the area).

I don't think these places are normally quite this expensive it's just that our travel dates coincide with New Year.

I encourage all of you travelers out there to do your research, read reviews and don't overlook B&Bs in your travel plans!

I enjoy planning a holiday almost as much as actually going. So this holidays, I am spending a lot of time organising and planning our Dec/Jan holiday.

 

Currently, our itinerary is as    follows:

Adelaide - Singapore - Rome -
Venice - Murren (Alps) -
Schweinfurt - Hamburg - Berlin -
Paris - London - Edinburgh -
Aberdeen - Singapore - Adelaide

 

Stay tuned for more information and reports on the progress of the holiday planning in further posts...