Illuminated Rome Night Tour - Night 3

We started out for the Tour company wishing, hoping and praying for a well air conditioned coach, such are the simple things by which we measure success at present. A delicious breeze and sometimes a linger in the doorway of a store we can't afford to shop in (and would likely never let us in based on our dishevelled look!!!) make us ridiculously happy.

The tour offices are around the corner from what we are realising is a very well located hotel. The Metro is at the end of the street along with the amazing Piazza Della Repubblica, the bus stops right outside the door and the Termini (massive train station) is about 5 minutes walk away but 10 with luggage!!

Anyway - back to the tour. The coach takes you to the monuments of Rome and they do look incredible at night. We visited the Trevi Fountain again and what a change from yesterday morning, we couldn't hear the roar of the water today as there were simply too many people. Whilst it is beautiful lit up, we're close enough to walk and decided that if we came very late at night it might have the same feeling as it did for us the first time we saw it. I hope people on the tour didn't just make this one visit as they wouldn't have caught the very different spirit of the place when it's quiet and restful.

Next the Vatican or more precisely St Peters Square, because we only had 20 in our tour group, they made a special stop so that we could take photos. This one was well worth it, we're here tomorrow to do the Vatican tour and it gave us a good idea of the scale of the place.

We stopped at Piazza Navona which is an incredible buzz of people, artists, performers and street vendors. It has become one of our favourite things to watch the street hawkers take off at a run if something looking like a policeman moves towards them, sometimes they're a bit jumpy and we've seen one take off full tilt because a taxi stopped, suffice to say that all his friends laughed and while we couldn't understand what they were saying about him - it wasn't complimentary!!

One of our final stops and perhaps one of the best was the Colloseum. Spectacular during the day - at night with each section lit up it was one of my favourite sights so far. I think we were especially blessed to have a full moon which added to the magic.