Today we again woke to a chilly morning and after packing our bags we warmed up with a coffee and croissant, this is quickly becoming our routine to start each day. Rugged up and packs on we headed off to the train station, the walk taking about 45mins as opposed to the 30mins it would take without carrying packs. We've come to love the train stations, watching the departures board in anticipation of your trains platform being assigned. This may be as late as 1...

We woke this morning with the horrifying realization that at some point we would have to get out of our sleeping bags! The air in the tent was cold, no doubt the air outside would be colder still and the showers required a short walk. Warm and clean we headed to the onsite cafe/bar to grab some breaky and for less than €10 we put away 2 coffees and 2 croissants each, the croissants being filled with delicious jam, chocolate or cream. We were now ready to offic...

There was a train from Rome to Florence leaving Termini Station every 30mins so we had no real reason to hurry this morning, we set ourselves for a mid-morning departure so we could arrive in Florence at check-in time. Leaving Rome on a Sunday created a small transport issue, the buses run only every 40-50mins and with a couple of school groups staying at the camp ground in meant there was much more than a bus load of people waiting at the stop. We had seen a lad...

Today we planned to visit the Ancient Sites of Rome but ran into a very unexpected problem. Massive street protests were planned in protest of "corporate greed" and "government cut backs" and were considered to pose a big enough threat that the Colosseum, Roman Forum and other big sites were closed for "security reasons". Police in all forms dominated the streets as they attempted to confine the protest to a small area. After speaki...

We took a well earned sleep-in today (8:30) followed by a leisurely scrambled egg breakfast cooked in our "chalet" while we plotted out the day ahead of us. Two buses run from the bus stop out the front, the 247 which terminates at the Vatican or the 246 which takes you to the metro stop. The starting point for our day was simply going to come down to whichever bus came first, it turned out to be the 247 to the Vatican and so our starting point was set!...