We started flying very early from Istanbul airport with a MALEV (Hungarian) airplain... although it was a two step flight over Budapest/Hungary that was the only flight which would take us to Italy as early as 10 o'clock in the morning... the weather was fair and it was a nice flight... it took us just two hours to leave the airport and arrive at our hotel were we had reserved a room from Istanbul... The hotel was very close to Stazione Termini at Piazza Republica...

As we had planned only two days for Rome We dropped our luggage at the hotel, took our cameras and maps, and we immediately started our excursion in Rome streets... the first place to visit was the Vatican City which we reached with the underground... nevertheless the Vatican Museums were closing at noon time on Saturdays so we couldn't make it... but we visited the magnificent St Peters Cathedral...

Following are pictures of St Peters Cathedral at Vatican city... remember that you can click on the images to see the pictures in larger scale...

After the Vtican city we started strolling through the streets according to our excursion plan we had prepared while reading the Lonely Planet Guide for Italy at home... we passed thru the castle of Sant Angelo and headed to Piazza Navona... I will not give any detailed explanations of the various monuments as this would lead to rather lenghty text... instead I will just mention the names of the places we visited and show you the photos...

After the wonderful Piazza Navona we reached the Piazza della Rotonda and visited the Pantheon building... and just at the right outside of the building was the Piazza della Minerva with Bellini's elephant statue and Chiesa di Santa Maria Sopra Minerva...

Then we walked to the beautiful Fontana di Trevi which was so crowded with tourists that it was not possible to find a place to rest... and this is a very small piazza after all... after the fountain we walked to the Spanish steps at Piazza di Spagna... there were plenty of street sellers... going down the steps we walked to the Piazza Del Poppolo where we sat down and rest...

From Piazza Del Poppolo we took the underground and switched to the next line so we arrived at the Colloseum station... as it was well in the afternoon we left visiting the Colosseum for the next day and we headed to the Roman Forum... in front of the Colloseum there stood the Arc of Constantine, and at the entrance of the Roman Forum was the Arc of Titus... we walked thru the Roman Forum (Foro Romano) going through all the ancient remainings and then we exited it from the other side and walked down towards the river side to visit La Bocca... well, there was a huge queue with tourists all waiting to put their hand into "the mouth"... so we just took a photo and walking through the Roman Statium we came back to Colloseum were we took one again the underground to go back to our hotel... we had a short rest and after that we went out again to eat something... but before that we had a short walk to the Palazzo del Quirinale on the Quirinale hill and then once again down to Fontana di Trevi... the tourists were still there !...