Road Trip to Rome

Well I write this in the car back from our Assembly in Rome. We rented an 8 seater Fiat van and traveled to Rome through the beautiful Italian countryside.

The road to Rome

Pacer and Talia left a day earlier because they wanted to stay overnight at an interesting little village close by which we would like to visit later called Matera. It was a beautiful day for a road trip, the sun was shining all be it cold as we had to make an early start to get to Rome by 2:30pm. The trip by car takes about 7 hours or so depending on the number of stops you have.

Most of Italy is quite hilly and we went straight up the middle passing quaint hilltop towns as we cruised through the country side. I wish I could have shown you more photo’s of some of them but as soon as I got my phone into position to be able to take a photo, either something came in to view to block the shot or I was too late and we had passed it. The speed limit on the Autostrada is 130km an hour so you didn’t get much time to be able to compose a photo. Managed to snap this photo of one of the snow capped peaks we passed.

Dave, me and Di at the Coliseum.

Just before we arrived in Rome we met up with Pacer and Talia at an Autogrille and continued on in tandem. It probably wasn’t a good idea for them because we promptly got lost on the way. All I can say is that Google Maps lies sometimes. Anyway we got there eventually.

We arrived at our accomodation for the next two nights a three bedroom apartment not far from the assembly hall, dropped off our gear and met our new addition to the group, Dave. He hails from Bowie Marylands in the good ‘ol US of A and will be helping out with the group for 17 days. 

Di & Dave at the Coliseum.

Everybody accept for Dave, Di and me had to leave straight away to attend the Pioneer Meeting at the Assembly hall so since Dave had never been to Rome before we decided to take a quick tram ride to the Coliseum. It was surprisingly easy to find our way there. Little travel tip, we used an app called Moovit. Anyway by the time we got there we could only walk around the outside because it had closed for the day. But it was good for Dave who had never been to Rome before to be able to have a look at some of the ancient history of the place and this time there was no scaffolding anywhere to be seen.

I also wanted to see the Arch of Titus relief showing the spoils of Jerusalem being brought into Rome after it was destroyed in 70CE which was nearby. I didn’t realise that the Coliseum was financed by everything taken from the temple in Jerusalem.

Arch of Titus

The assembly hall itself is quite interesting. It has two floors and the bottom one has a bit of a museum attached to it which has a number of reproductions of famous archaeological finds related to the bible like portions of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

We are finally able to catch up with Andrew Clarkson who was very surprised to see us. Tom Muller gave one of the talks and did an excellent job. 

Accomodation Update

We are staying at the apartment we had while Pacer and Talia were still with us. They made an unbelievable offer, previously the apartment was 1,800 Euros per month but they offered it to us for 450 Euros per month including electricity, gas and unlimited internet (fibre) so you know I couldn’t resist that so we are staying here.