Never again!!!!!! What a bad day!!!!!
We got to Rome at about 11am, and got the metro to the Colosseum. When we got off, there were people selling the red bus tickets which we wanted to get. We went up to them and told them we had the interrail pass so we could get a discount. They basically said no it doesn't count here, but on the interrail app Rome is included. They told us just to buy the ticket when we got on the bus. When we asked where the bus stop was, they pointed vaguely and wandered off.
We walked the whole way around the Roman forum, and we were going uphill as well. It was about 2 miles we walked, and Paul was getting fed up with the rucksack so I had to carry it, I still felt ill but I carried it to make a point. This was turning out to be the day that we finally killed each other. We still hadn't seen or found a red bus stop!
We came across an important looking square with a massive statue of Julius Caesar in the centre. We sat here to cool down and catch our breath. We walked down some steps and spent about an hour trying to find a red bus. Eventually we found one, got on it and the man had to ring his office to check the interrail was okay. The bus was full and there were two seats right at the back downstairs so we sat there. The English setting didn't work on the bus, so I was listening in French and Paul couldn't listen at all. We paid €40 and got off at the next stop for the Trevi Fountain. We didn't get back on again! What a waste!
We got to the fountain to find that it was closed. Closed!!!! You couldn't see anything behind the scaffolding! I hope none of the American, Australian and Chinese people had come to Rome especially for the fountain, otherwise it's a very long trip for nothing. We had lunch, Paul had a tuna salad and I had a Caesar salad with no dressing or chicken (boring!). We then went to the pantheon and that was alright but at this point we were not really feeling it. Then we walked to the Spanish steps and it was underwhelming. Paul climbed to the top and I stayed at the bottom and waited for him. We sat on a step for a while and people watched. At 4pm we decided to start walking back to the station. It was 1.5 miles and the train was at 5:20 so we had plenty of time.
We decided to get a drink from McDonald's for the walk, as it was 39 degrees. In Europe they have an 'Easy Order' system where you can order at a big screen and then go and collect it. We got one drink each, a total of €2. We queued up to get them for half an hour. By the time we left McDonald's it was 4:30, so we decided to get the metro to the station. We bought two tickets and went down. I have never seen anything like it. The trains were full, people were squeezing themselves onto the trains and the doors couldn't close around them. The whole idea of it was giving me major anxiety and I couldn't get on. So, we decided to walk to the station. It was about 4:45 at this point, so we had half an hour to go 1.5 miles. The route required us to go up the Spanish steps. We ran up this stupidly long flight of stairs, and I actually thought I was going to have a heart attack. When we got to the top, we Walked briskly for about .4 of a mile, and then saw a very large steep hill right in front of us. I could not have done it at all, my heart was still beating from the stairs and it was far too hot for me. There was another metro station at this point so we went down it, and waited for the train. It was 5:05 at this point so we weren't hopeful that we would make it. The trains were even worse at this point, and we waited here for about 20 minutes trying to get on. We knew we had missed the train we'd paid a reservation fee to get. We gave up and went back up to the ground and got a taxi instead. We got a train half an hour later and had to pay another reservation fee - about €20. We thought we would have to pay for a full ticket but we didn't.
It was easily the most stressful day we've had so far, and we didn't enjoy Rome because of it.
The only saving grace was that we stopped to watch someone doing street art, and there was a boy about 11 years old standing in the way filming it, so we couldn't see. We were about to give up when he dropped the phone and it smashed to pieces. HA.