On Wednesday, 16th September I took a 0550 flight from a cold Manchester Airport to the Italian capital city, Rome.
It had been just over 5 weeks since my last extreme day trip to Dublin on 8th August. In June and July, it felt like I was off somewhere every other week so it was nice to have a little gap. As much as I’m addicted to travel, Extreme Day Trips can be very tiring.
The day before the trip, I managed to wound my foot slightly, wearing trainers that are a little worn out whilst on a walk. It was quite sore on the Tuesday night but I found a nice big plaster, doubled up my socks for extra protection and switched to a spare identical pair of trainers I’d already worn before.
I considered breaking with tradition and getting the bus to the airport instead of the 3 mile walk, but in the end, my foot felt fine so I left the house around 0220 and actually made it to the airport in just over an hour, despite missing a turn and taking a detour through an unlit park in pitch black.
The airport was really quiet when I got there, there was no queue at all for security. My bag did get selected for a quick check, I think because I was carrying an empty flask ready to fill up in the airport, but the process was really quick.
I headed to the Sporting Chance bar where I met up with Linda from our Manchester EDTs whats app group. I had met her previously on the Cologne trip. Sometimes it’s nice to go on these trips with other people. It’s a good way to make friends and meet people.
For some reason, they decided to put two flights departing at the same time on gates right next to each other, with the queues for Katowice and Rome Ciampino getting mangled up a little. Anyway, we soon boarded the correct plane and actually departed slightly early, landing just after 09:00.
Passport control at Rome went extremely quickly too. Ciampino is quite a small airport so it was easy to find out way to the bus station where we got the 520 bus to Cinecitta. It was contactless payment on the bus and costs a bargain €1.50 for our journey, including the bus and the metro. The 520 runs around every 20 minutes but we hardly had to wait at all. It took about 20 minutes, and the bus stop is right next to the Metro station, which again was contactless payment at the barrier but you aren’t charged again if you swipe the same card and your journey is within the 100 minute period.
Our plan was to start with the Spanish Steps, so we got the Metro Line A towards Battistina and got off at Spagna (17 stops, 24 minutes). I do sometimes find metro stations confusing but the Roma ones were quite easy to navigate. When we got off, we took the Piazza di Spagna exit, which is close to the bottom of the Spanish Steps.
Last time Linda and I met, our first activity was climbing up Cologne Cathedral, by comparison the Spanish steps were much more straight forward. We took a few photos at a fountain at the bottom. All the fountains have gorgeous blue water and there are a lot of fountains in Rome. At the top of the steps were a few stalls where you could buy little souvenirs, plus you got some nice views of the city.
We walked back down then headed to our second destination, the Trevi fountain. When I first put a poster together for Rome and advertised it, some people said that it took them a couple of hours to get anywhere near it but that wasn’t our experience.
They have started charging if you want to get close to the bottom of the fountain. It’s only €2 each, there was a long queue but it was well marshalled and moved quickly but I bought the tickets online instead from Viva Ticket so we pretty much just went straight through. There were lots of people there, all taking turns to take selfies. It is a beautiful fountain from the baroque period. I think we spent about half an hour there.
We then did a little bit more tourist shopping, I picked up a model of the Colosseum and we found somewhere to sit down and eat. The first place we went to had a sign for pizza plus 2 aqua for €6 but when we looked at the menu, there was no €6 pizza. Also the menu was a little small and didn’t have anything we both could eat.
Linda doesn’t eat meat or cheese and I avoid carbs and need small portions. Conscious of time, we found another place next door with a wider menu and we both got pizza. To be honest, I would have been better off with the smaller street food style pizzas you can get from many small eateries but I wanted somewhere where we could sit down as rushing food isn’t good for my stomach. I got a nice pizza with Parma ham and rocket but it was far to big for me, so I had 3 small slices before I was full. They packaged the left over pizza for take away.
Next was the walk towards the Colosseum. The Colosseum was the main attraction for me, I build the rest of the day around it. It was about a 30 minute walk and when you first catch site of it, it feels very similar to approaching a modern football stadium. You could imagine what it would have been like in Roman times, with huge crowds walking towards it and how impressive it would have been.
We booked a guided tour. You can just book an entry ticket for just €18 each but I like going with a tour guide that can give you more of the story behind the attraction, plus the queues to go through security to gain entrance to the Colosseum are quite long but if you go with a tour group, you still have to go through security but it’s a much shorter queue.
We were all given a single ear piece radio so we could hear our tour guide. Our tour guide was quite tall which really helped as once inside the Colosseum, it was easy to get lost with the sea of people. The ear piece was a bit flimsy but it did the trick and worked quite well.
One thing to note about the tours, there are three levels of access for the Colosseum. If you want access to the Arena tour, make sure you get a ticket that covers it. You have to book those tickets a month in advanced as they sell out quickly. Then there’s the general admission tickets and finally there are tickets that also cover the Hypogeum, where the gladiators themselves would have been underneath the original floor. Those tickets are much harder to gain access to. My tour included the Arena floor, Palatine Hill and the Roman Forum. It took around 2 and a half hours.
If you want a self guided tour, you can buy entry tickets one month before from here.
If you want to do the same tour I did, it was this one through Viator.
The tour started from the Metro station before entering the Colossium. You need to bring ID with you and you can’t bring anything glass or sharp. You have to put your bags etc through a metal detector and there are no trays, so put anything loose in your bag. Only small bags are permitted.
The tour guide had a book with him so he was able to show us pictures of how things would have looked. He recommended the best places for photos and was very knowledgeable and asked questions for us to guess too. It was amazing to see, a real feat of engineering. After the Arena itself we headed to Palatine Hill and the Roman Forum. It’s a lot of walking if you’re not used to it, I wouldn’t recommend it if you have bad knees or ankles. The floor is not even and some of the steps are steep but it is an amazing spectacle.
It got me thinking about what the future would hold for our civilisation. Will people in 200 years be going round doing tours looking at the buildings being built now? How many of them will stand the test of time like the Romans have? How long will our civilisations lasts and what will come after us?
The Romans thought they’d last forever, and the Roman influence can be seen everywhere in the way we do things now with their public infrastructure, roads, political systems etc.
On the tour, we were encouraged to use the fountains to refill water bottles. It was a warm day with temperatures in the early 30°Cs , apparently it was as hot as 43°C a few weeks earlier. There were lots of people selling fans, ice cold water and hats on the street but the water from the fountains was so clean and pure and cool. I’m not the biggest fan of water but that’s more to do with things added to our water. I brought a small concentrated squeezy cordial bottle with me to add a bit of flavour.
After the tour finished, we found somewhere to grab a Gelato (when in Rome and all…). I tried Tiramisu flavour and mint choc chip. It melted really quickly. The flavours were subtle but it was very welcome in the heat, washed down with a raspberry slushy.
Around 6pm it was time to head back to the airport for our 2055 flight. The original plan was to catch the metro then get the 720 bus but google maps came up with a faster route involving the metro, a regional train and airport shuttle.
We walked to the Colosseo metro station next to the colosseum to catch a metro to the Termini train station stop. It was rush hour, and the trains were packed. We missed a sign towards the platform to Jonio so it took us a little time to find the right platform on the B line, but we found it and it was only 2 stops away to the train station.
The train station was huge and caused us some confusion. We assumed we’d be able to tap our contactless cards on the barrier to get access to the trains as we did for the metro system and buses, but the barrier we found wouldn’t accept our cards so we found a barrier right next to the platform for our train. It was platform 23 right at the other end of the station. We tapped through the barrier but I noticed I’d been charged €14 when I wasn’t expecting to be charged at all, I just assumed the trains were part of the same system as the metro and buses.
It turned out we were charged as if we were getting the Airport express train to Fiumicino Airport, which is the main airport but a little further away than the smaller Ciampino airport. When I looked it up, the journey should have cost us €2.70 for the train ride but it was very unclear how to get that fare. Maybe we went through the wrong barrier, despite it being the one next to the platform. Maybe we needed to use an app. There were ticket machines but they were for longer distance trains, not regional ones.
The train was very busy and it was a double decker train. I’d never been on a double decker train before. I went up to the top deck and found a spare seat. It was only 1 stop and 11 minutes to Ciampino station. You then wait for an airport shuttle bus, which is another €1.20, so a journey that could have cost us €1.50 in total if we took the route we originally planned, ended up costing €16.70 and should actually have cost €5.40 but still, it was excellent value for money considering a taxi would have cost a flat rate of €40 each way.
Once again, we went through security really quickly but we couldn’t go through passport control until we knew our gate. Ciampino is a really small airport. There was one small duty free shop, a McDonalds, a pizza shop and a couple of other places. There wasn’t a bar and seating was limited too. It wasn’t rammed though so we did find somewhere to sit. Our plane was half an hour behind schedule and when we did get to the gate, it was a bus to a remote stand. They didn’t board any non-priority customers until all the priority customers had been boarded and there were a lot of priority customers. There was nobody sat in the middle seat on row 10, so I had a little extra room to stretch. It was a very uneventful flight with a smooth landing and we were through border control in Manchester within minutes.
Linda had parked at the Crowne Plaza hotel, which seems to have the best rates for airport parking and she kindly dropped me off home to save me the walk. I walked 26,765 steps in total, 12.37 miles in total that day.
In summary, it was a really good day. There’s so much to see and do in Rome that you could always do more. We didn’t try to fit too much in and it was just the right balance. It didn’t feel rushed but it was busy. I’ll have to go back some time to visit the Pantheon and Vatican City. I would also love to visit Naples, Pompeii, Mt Vesuvius and Herculaneum as a multi-day trip. The trip has brought back my childhood fascination with ancient history and what we can learn from it.
I would rate Rome level with Alicante as my favourite EDTs to date.
My next travel adventure is not an EDT, it’s a 2 night trip to Reykjavik, Iceland. From 30°C in Rome, to 3°C in Iceland. A very different type of trip but hopefully very enjoyable too.