Hi out there,

Recently my wife and I went to Rome for 6 really enjoyable days . We made all the usual sights (Fontana di Trevi, Spagna, Vatican City including St. Peter, Castell di Angelo, Colosseo, Foro Romano) – picture will follow soon on the pictures page. To follow here are some tipps:

• January is a good month for Rome if you don’t some rain (or even hail) showers and thunderstorms. However, on the whole, the weather was nice and flights as well as good hotels are quite unexpensive.
• Do as the Romans do – if you wait for a traffic light to be green for pedestrians, you are sometimes waiting very long just for 2 seconds of a green phase 🙂 – just cross, if no cars are coming.
• Note that it is hard to find toilets in the park ‘Villa Borghese’. Just pop to the loo before entering (except you have tickets for the Galleria Borghese, in this case you are allowed to use their toilet – using the coffee shop alone is not enough).
• It is easy to come near Vatican City from Leonardo da Vinci airport in Fiumincino using public transport – you do not have to go to the main station with the Leonardo Express, go to Trastevere station from Fiumincino, there are a lot of connections there already.
• Always double check the money you are giving away, it sometimes happens that a fifty euro-note suddenly converts to a ten euro-note as soon as it leaves your hands 🙂 – but of course, that was one exception.
• On the platform of St. Peter there is a coffee shop where you can get a really good Cappuccino for just 1 EUR (at least in January 2014)
• Buses usually don’t keep to fixed time tables (maybe that’s why there are hardly any timetables to find) – do not depend on them
• There are a lot of American students and travellers there – they even outnumber the usual Japanish visitors
• Dan Brown’s ‘Illuminati’ still seems to go strong – a lot of people in the church ‘St. Maria della Populo’ (especially in one chapel)

I hope this helps some people to be less surprised!