Guess where we are! <\/p>\n
Stayed at Gatwick last night – had dinner at home then headed out to Gatwick, but as the Gatwick Express was running late or even cancelling trains it took us a bit longer then we planned. But it was just to get to the hotel and sleep before flying out the following day, so.<\/p>\n
Up early, drop off keys, head to check in for the flight. For some reason we flew to Rome. Joe thinks it gives us more time. Which is good, but flying is pretty miserable. But we survived. Just. Actually, it wasn’t too bad – our seats were on different rows and different sides of the plane, so Joe asked at check-in if we could please sit together. Pretty please. And so he moved out seats. To the premier extra room seats. Whoa. And there was a fluffy nun – well, fleecy nun. She had a cope in fleece! So a nun’s habit in fleece! Lots of people watching.<\/p>\n
Flew over the Alps and argued about where we might be. But clear skies so lovely views over the mountains and along the Italian coast. Saw what we think was Corsica. Maybe. Landed a bit late, sorted train tickets while waiting for our bag, and then headed off for the train at a run so we didn’t miss it. Relaxing ride to the main station and short walk to the hotel (walked right to it) and got settled in before heading out again.<\/p>\n
By the way, in Rome hotel rooms have paintings on the ceiling. Well ours does. <\/p>\n
Once all settled we headed back out again, trying to get to the Pantheon before it closed. Joe claimed I stopped to gawk too much, but I think it was just the right level of gawking. Lots of lovely little streets, old buildings, courtyards, and Roman ruins. Had to stop and look at Foro de Augusto but missed Trajan’s Market so have to go back that way! Made it to the Pantheon with plenty of time to spare and spend a good bit of time inside admiring the building, then walking around the outside. Joe got some photos. It was crowded but not as bad as we feared. <\/p>\n
We also got some gelato then started walking back toward our hotel via the Trevi Fountain. Stopped for a look, but way too crowded! On the way back to the hotel stopped for dinner – really nice meal. Now sleepy – planning lots more walking tomorrow and lots of ancient Roman stuff on Saturday! <\/p>\n
Not Joe. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Guess where we are! Stayed at Gatwick last night – had dinner at home then headed out to Gatwick, but as the Gatwick Express was running late or even cancelling trains it took us a bit longer then we planned. But it was just to get to the hotel and sleep before flying out the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[14,4],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4T97-13T","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3988,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/01\/oh-canada\/","url_meta":{"origin":4085,"position":0},"title":"Oh Canada!","date":"Saturday, 1 July 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"So stayed at Gatwick airport last night, up early to head into the terminal and to our WestJet flight to Vancouver. I booked the holiday ages ago, but only just realised that tomorrow Canada celebrates it's 150th birthday. So this should be interesting . . .\u00a0 Had breakfast at Jamie's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":157,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2008\/06\/17\/jamaica\/","url_meta":{"origin":4085,"position":1},"title":"Jamaica","date":"Tuesday, 17 June 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Just woke up in Jamaica. Of course, there was a bird that was insistant it was morning at 4.30 when it was still dark and I still wanted to sleep and of course it shut up when the sun came out. Stupid bird. The flight was probably the worst flight\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4220,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2023\/12\/01\/searching-for-sunshine\/","url_meta":{"origin":4085,"position":2},"title":"Searching for sunshine!","date":"Friday, 1 December 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"When we left home the weather forecast was for colder weather with possible frost and that four letter word (snow). So we've headed south. Flying out of Gatwick (and I did try to get us an overland route but the one I wanted was our full holiday budget for the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Frog Blog"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2965,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/17\/three-alarm-day\/","url_meta":{"origin":4085,"position":3},"title":"Three alarm day","date":"Saturday, 17 December 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"So, we've had a week of getting ready - warm clothes, seeing people, generally getting stuff done. Then we headed off to stay at Gatwick as our flight was early. As it was we had to get up by 6am to get all checked in and bags dropped off. So\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Frog Blog"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4292,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2025\/12\/14\/and-were-off-again\/","url_meta":{"origin":4085,"position":4},"title":"And we’re off again","date":"Sunday, 14 December 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Stayed at Gatwick again as the flight was very very early morning (06:40). We did the twilight bag drop, you can drop your bag between 20:00 and 22:00 if you have a flight before 8:30 which is very helpful. We still had to get up early, but could just go\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4268,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2025\/12\/01\/nature-watching\/","url_meta":{"origin":4085,"position":5},"title":"Nature Watching","date":"Monday, 1 December 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"So we didn't take a laptop on this trip. For once. But Joe took loads of photos and they'll be on Flickr at some point. And I took notes while we travelled and now updating with dates as they happened. We stayed at the Premier Inn at Gatwick before leaving.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4085"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4085"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4085\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4086,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4085\/revisions\/4086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}