Chaos in Italy

Well our forst two days in Rome have been fantastic! We absolutely love it here, and apart from the traffic you don't really feel like you are in a big city at all. The streets are all cobbled with really old stones, and the buildings are lovely. The food is fantastic as well, quite simple but really tasty and so much to choose from! Yesterday we went for a walk around the city and did the outside of the Colosseum, the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps and then had a general wander around the city in and out of all of the little streets. Today we had an early start and headed straight for the Vatican City........absolutely beautiful! We ended up getting a tour to avoid the massive queue but we are really glad we did as we got a lot of background on the actual paintings in the Sisten Chapel and on Michaelangelo himself that we didn't know and it was very interesting. The scale and beauty of the paintings right throughout the Vatican are indescribable. St Peters Bascilia is also quite mind blowing, and the have tombs in there for all of the deceased Popes.
We then headed to catch some other sites taking in the Piazza Novona and the Pantheon. After heading further into town to find the Metro station we noticed a massiv Polce presence and then eventually all of the streets were emptying. We found they Police had the streets blocked off for quite and area, and when we asked them what was happening they informed us there was a demonstration. We were around the area the demonstration was happening and needed to get through the block to get to the Metro station so they directed us around the block to get there. At that point we saw the crowds gathered about 100 metres away at Piazza Della Repubblica and the speaker was sounding fairly serious. We decided between that and the riot police and helicopters circling it was best to get out of the area as quickly as possible.
Once we got back to the hotel, about 20 minutes later, we turned on the TV to see riots had broken out in that very area so we watched it all unfold as we listened to the actual sirens and helicopters only about 3 or 4 blocks from our hotel. It all got pretty serious with cars on fire, tear gas, mini bombs and masses of people and Police going head to head! We will definitely be avoiding central Rome at dinner time tonight.

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