Going underground in Rome

Our last turbopass excursion was on Saturday, Sept. 6th – a visit to the Catacombs of St. Callistus. We took the bus into the downtown and met up with our tour group. We had a fun tourist bus ride to the Catacombs with an Italian bus driver who gave us a little guided tour. He really loved his job as he excitedly shared various details about Rome.

The Catacombs were in a lovely estate area with a long tree-lined driveway and large grass pastures. We visited the first 2 levels of the 4 level catacombs which in total held over 500,000 people centuries ago. We descended about 15 m into the cool catacombs that were well lit. All together there were 20 km of pathways and all the tombs were empty. Our tour guide was very interesting although his English was hard to understand (he had a strong ascent that wasn’t entirely Italian). We didn’t do 20km – that would have been crazy, but we did see enough to get a good idea of how creepy catacombs can be 😁.

At the end of our catacombs visit, our bus driver returned us to the city centre a little after 12 pm, just in time for lunch. We decided to head to Trastevere – a neighbourhood in Rome known for its authentic cuisine. We went to a restaurant recommended by our bus driver and had a yummy meal.

After lunch we hopped back on the big bus tour and went to the Spanish Steps. Wow this was a very busy area – of course being a Saturday afternoon didn’t help! We walked around and went to the bottom of the steps to explore the rich shopping area. All the fancy Italy stores were there – Prada, Gucci, Giorgio Armani to name a few. Needless to say we didn’t do any shopping!!

The afternoon was hot and crowded so we gave up on the city centre and took the subway back to our little neighbourhood where we enjoyed some gelato and water before returning to our quiet, relatively cool apartment!!

Sunday, Sept. 7th was our last full day in Rome and we decided to give ourselves a break from being tourists! The 4 turbopass days were fantastic and we saw lots of the popular Rome destinations. This ticket service was very well organized and easy which made our touring days even more successful. But 4 days in a row of walking more than 10km each day really wore us out!! All we did on Sunday was watch the canonization mass of the first millennial saint and another Italian man from St. Peter’s Basilica on TV and then went out for food! A nice quiet, relaxing day!! In the morning (Monday, Sept 8), Mark and I will pick up the rental car and we’ll be driving to Assisi for the second week of our Italy adventure.