Our time in Rome is split into two sections - two nights and one day to start with before heading on a tour of Southern Italy, and another three nights/two days following that. Instead of making a beeline for the Colosseum, the majority of our first day in Rome was spent touring a cemetery. Kinda weird right? But it's not just any cemetery, it's a weaving tunnel of VERY old graves 30 feet below the city: the catacombes.

Our tour was at 1pm, so we did have a chance for a wander in the morning.  We are staying at campgrounds so it's a bit of a trek in, and the public transport in Rome...well, it's no Paris. People are crammed like sardines into trains and buses that run to 'Italian time' aka we'll get there when we get there. A couple of times we've been left to wait for the next train/bus because it's death by squish, only to have the next train arrive 15 minutes late and equally packed. 

Other than the public transport system, to me Rome has a great sense of ease and livability about it considering it is such a big city. The streets are wide and fairly uncrowded, it seems affordable and of course there is so much interesting (albeit gory) history here. 

The Busabout guide had warned us to expect a high saturation of tourists, but on the first day we actually noticed more the high saturation of police. They were everywhere! Around every corner they stood in large groups around several huge vans, all dressed in riot gear, and a police chopper hovered over the city all day. It actually made us pretty nervous, given the situation with the euro crisis and upcoming Greek elections. After seeing more police and TV cameras around parliament house, and then the tent cities gathered near the Pantheon protesting the austerity measures, we wondered whether we should have checked the news that morning! Luckily nothing came of it and our catacombes guide later advised that the police presence was pretty normal - just not something we are used to in Australia!

We checked out the 'tomb of the unknown soldier' - a massive white-washed building housing a war museum -  and then reached the Pantheon. The Pantheon is one of my favourite sights so far. It's not only beautiful and in excellent condition, it's also a bit of an architectural wonder - to this day no one is sure exactly how the Romans managed to build the massive domed ceiling without it collapsing; I'm told that it basically is defying laws of physics. It was first built by pagans to worship their many gods, and then later claimed as a church by the Catholics. In 609 B.C., when the Roman Pantheon was given to the Catholic Church, Pope Boniface IV brought in 18 cart loads of bones of Christian martyrs and had them placed under the main altar.  There is large opening in the middle of the domed ceiling called an occulus, which the sun shines through to tell the time. When the rain falls through, the Catholics proclaimed it to be holy water to consecrate the bones of the matryrs. 

And - it's free to enter! Woohoo!

After battling with the metro again we made it to our catacombes tour just in time. We did this tour with "Rome-ing Tours", and our guide Ian was absolutely incredible. He is an English archaeologist living in Rome and has studied theology pretty extensively - so much knowledge in that head, and a wonderful storyteller. We caught a bus out to the catacombes entrance and then the whole group sat enthralled for half an hour as Ian gave us a lesson in the history and mythology of Rome, early Christianity and the catacombes.

Really wish I could remember it all to tell you, but Ben, Gem and Mark have dubbed me 'Goldy' (i.e. 3 second goldfish memory) with good reason. But the VERY general gist is that the catacombes were used mostly as a burial place for Christians (plus a small section used earlier by pagans), who have been persecuted off and on throughout ancient Roman history for various reasons. One example of this that Ian offered, was when Emperor Nero had asked the Senate for a new palace. Problem being that his blueprints showed a palace miles long, covering much of the already existing city buildings. The senate said no, a mysterious fire followed which burnt down half of Rome, those weird Christians with their one God were used as a scapegoat and Nero now conveniently had room to build his palace. Occasionally in these periods of persecution the underground Christian church and catacombes were used as a hiding place, however the Romans were well aware of the tunnels' existence so this could only have been used as a temporary escape, or a permanent resting place.

The catacombes are outside of the city walls, and the closer to the walls you were buried, the more important you were. Over the years the tombs have been looted of all treasures and even the bones were eventually looted and sold as souveniers (ew, really?), however there are still a few bones in the open graves (which are all dug into the sides of the walls) and a few occupied graves that are still enclosed by brick or marble. Please please do this tour if you are in Rome - it runs only on a Thursday, limited to 15 people per tour and make sure you ask for Ian! It sounds morbid, but it is absolutely fascinating!

We stopped by the Colosseum for a look afterwards, but it was too late to go inside so we will do this one after the Southern Italy tour. We returned to the campsite at dinner time, then bought some beer (hmm this is becoming a common theme). The camp is really social and we ended up having a big night. There is a German school trip here at the moment - they are still in school at 19, sheesh. I know this because I had one German boy plant himself next to me to spend about 30 minutes intently explaining their school system. He was on about his third repetition before his much more charismatic friend Flemming bounded over and squeezed in between us, earning me a much more interesting conversation, and earning Flemming death stares all night. A little bit funny, and lovely kids. Had a good time chatting to them and others before we were chased off to bed by security a little before 2am...we managed to grab about 4 hours sleep before our tour the following morning.

So far so good, Rome! 

We can't believe how the time is flying, at the same time we have so much more to come. It's starting to sink in just how big this adventure of ours is..no homesickness yet, although I got emails from the parentals today and that was really loooovely :-)

Anyway that's all from me for now. As I write this, we are back in Rome having finished our Southern Italy tour, and I probably won't have a chance to upload for a while either. Have a bit of blogging to catch up on! In the Italian way, I'll get to it when I get to it ;-)

Liss xox