Rome – Day 40

Gotta mention this first up. We saw the most disgusting thing we have ever seen today. We are all sitting on top of an open top bus and we are stopped in traffic. Mia starts yelling "look at that, look at that". We all look over to where she is pointing and there is this big, slobby, disgusting homeless woman situated on a large traffic island in the middle of a very busy intersection in a very busy part of the city near the main train station and she has backed herself up to the edge of the curb, bent over with her dress up and is urinating onto the road, traffic is passing and people are walking close by......no joke! She is bent over with her "urinater" pointing out into the street squirting like crazy. She then, while still bent over, starts to wipe her "urinater" with a serviette. She then looks at it, walks forward and throws it out on to the other side of the road and walks back to her trolley full of homeless person crap and sits down. Now, this initially took a few seconds for us to realize what in the hell we we're looking at, was it a man, was it a woman, was it an animal and what it gods name was it they were doing. The amount of urine coming out of this woman it could have been a horse!! As soon as we realised what was going on we were gob smacked and we all felt like we needed to go home and have a good scrub.....with acid maybe. Anyway, back it up a bit and the morning started late as we all had a bit of a sleep in and a rest before getting moving. We thought we would head down and jump on the hop on hop off bus to get us around town. We pay the man, Rahman, the €40 for the 2 day ticket and jump on board. It was only minutes later we experienced the urinator doing her thing. We eventually jumped off at the Bocca Della Verita (the mouth of truth) to get a few snaps before deciding to take a walk over the river and take a look through Trastevere. We didn't get to see much of Trastevere last time so we want to have a wander to find a good restaurant we can come back to and have dinner at. While we are walking we stumble on a cake/biscuit shop selling some eye popping stuff that we just have to stop and try. No matter what you buy it all costs the same, €2.20 per 100g. We spend €10 and walk out ready to devour. They look as though they have all been homemade and is all fresh today and they were sensational. We continue walking and eventually find ourselves up in the Vatican area and see heaps of people over at the Castel Sant Angelo. We haven't seen this castle before so decide to check it out. It was a good couple of hours spent and we then decide to get back on the bus. There is a bus stop over near the Vatican so we take the short walk. When we get there, there are signs for every other bus company but ours. We ask an opposition bus company guy where our stop is and he tells us it's a couple of streets away. We find our way there and it’s a ghost town and we then see a sign (A4 sheet of paper stuck to a pole) saying if the main road to the Vatican is closed we need to go to Piazza Pia. We have no idea where this is and in the meantime we see about 4 buses pass by on another street. So we run and were yelling at the driver to stop and this ignorant turd just keeps driving. We walk around for a while before stumbling on Piazza Pia and we wait. We see another bus coming towards us so we start waving and this equally ignorant turd ignores us. So I chase after him and he gets to the lights so I start yelling at him to let us on. He motions that the stop is around the corner so we head around there. He turns the corner and keeps going. I'm chasing him again and we have a group of yanks running with us now as well because they have tickets too but this w**ker won't stop. I'm starting to get a little bit cranky at this point because clearly the Vatican stop is a moving object. We stop for a while hoping another bus will come along but it doesn't so we decide to walk the route to the next stop, Trevi Fountain, which is miles away and about 100m from our apartment. While we are walking we see a bus coming down the road but he turns off down a side road. We start running down the other street hoping to cut him off. We get to the intersection before him and when he gets along side us we start yelling for him to let us on. We're screaming at him that we have been chasing these buses for an hour and Kris is even banging on the doors of the bus screaming at the driver. He's not having a bar of it and keeps driving. We are nudging furious by now but unfortunately this is pretty much what seems to happen in Italy, or at least the Italy we have experienced. Customer service is largely nonexistent and they care very little for the money tourists bring to their country. We keep walking and eventually make it back to the Trevi Fountain stop. Rahman, the Indian chap who sold us the tickets gets an earful from me and I am demanding a refund. He doesn't give a toss and tells me to take it up with the bus driver and his assistant in the bus that's just rocked up. I direct my anger at them yelling and carrying on but we are still getting no joy. I give up and Kris takes over and the bus can't go because Kris is blocking the doorway and the doors can’t shut. She's giving them both barrels but eventually has to move aside so the bus can continue on. She then turns on Rahman and starts calling him a thief. Not sure Rahman was enjoying being called a thief but Kris didn't care. In the end we didn't get our money back so we went back to the apartment and slagged them off on tripadvisor. That definitely made us feel better. After a few "calm me down" drinks we headed back out for a wander and to see if we could find somewhere to eat. We have read great reviews about a restaurant just down the road called That's Amore so we stop to have a look. We make a reservation for 7:30 and also notice they do a 3 hour cooking class. We enquire and end up signing up for all 4 of us to do it on Friday arvo at 5pm. We wander around for another hour or so, up to the Spanish Steps and around the local Gucci and Prada roads before heading back to the restaurant. We walk in and finally get some fantastic service and I had a meal that was probably the best I have had on this holiday so far. After that it was a quick stop in to see Valentino for some Gelato, a visit to Trevi fountain and a little bit of shopping before making our way back to the apartment. Tomorrow we hope to make our way to Tivoli to see Villa d'Este.

Photos to follow. I'm tired and I'm going to bed.