Planning a Trip to Rome

One week tomorrow I fly out to Rome. Exciting!

I’ve been busy trying to work out an itinerary for when I get there. There’s a good website called Inspirock which I found useful.

I like Inspirock because it’s easy to add places you want to visit to a calendar and drag them into whatever time or day you want.

It can even fill in the calendar with suggested activities if you want, but I prefer to do it manually.

Here’s what I’ve got so far:

I still need to add some more things but the plan is starting to take shape.

I am trying to work out which attractions are near to each other so that I can do them together in one day. On the planner it tells you how long it will take to get from one attraction to another, which is useful. I don’t want to be zigzagging from one side of the city to another in one day.

On 3 May I am going to St Peter’s Basilica and St Peter’s Square, and then in the evening, the Vatican museums.

Here’s a great tip that I came across recently. From late April to the end of October people can visit the Vatican museums and the Sistine Chapel on Friday evenings. I’m hoping that at this time it will be a lot less crowded.

I’ve read that the Vatican museums are always packed with tourists, especially the Sistine Chapel, but on Friday evenings it’s a lot quieter.

I don’t fancy battling for space with hundreds of other people. Plus I probably wouldn’t see much apart from people’s backs.

I also want to see some of the obvious sites like the Colosseum, the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, and the forum. But apparently even a lifetime would not be enough to see everything in Rome.

With the forum I’m not sure how much I will actually get to see because a lot of the grounds seem very uneven. I guess accessibility wasn’t high on the agenda for the ancient Romans. They do have a lift on the site though to take wheelchairs to different levels, so there must have some degree of accessibility at least. I will go there to find out and report back to you, so watch this space.

One day I am planning to go to Pompeii. This would involve taking a train from Rome to Naples and then on to Pompeii. I think it will be quite straightforward (hopefully!).

Our hotel is right next to the main train station so we won’t have to go far to get the train. Plus I have read that there is an assisted travel service in Italy called Sala blue which could provide assistance to the disabled.

They have an office in the train station so I will go and have a word with them when I get there. I have wanted to go to Pompeii for quite a while so it will be worth the journey.

It will be nice to get out the city as well and see a bit of the Italian countryside.

One thing I’m not looking forward to in Rome is the cobblestones. I hate cobblestones, but they are an evil I am willing to endure to explore this city.

I was going to go on a tour with a company that has a Contraption that could comfortably go over uneven ground. But they charged something like €750 for a 3 hour tour which was a bit too expensive. We will be fine making our own way around anyway.

Of course, I will be writing a full accessibility review of Rome once I get back so keep an eye out for that.