Hi! We're the Traveladdicts and we'd like to tell you about the sights that we saw when we went on a week long citybreak to Rome.

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The preparation for this trip was a little rushed. We had originally planned a tour of the Mayan ruins in Mexico at Easter but we went off that idea while we were in India - we couldn't face another touring holiday so soon and particularly one to another third world country. So we had to think of somewhere else to go and, because of the excessive time it took writing our Postcard from India, we didn't decide on anywhere in time for Easter.

We finally settled on two destinations - one for each of the bank holidays in May. For the May Day week we chose this city break in Rome as we had enjoyed visiting the Greek ruins in Athens and we wanted to see how the Roman ruins compared to them. For the Whitsun week (just two weeks later!) we learnt to scuba dive in the Red Sea - so there wasn't much time between these trips to write this!

Here is a quick run down of the some of the things we saw while we were in Rome:

• The Pantheon: a magnificent domed church built around AD118. What surprised us about the dome was that it was made of concrete cast in situ over a wooden framework.

• Trevi Fountain & Spanish Steps: two of the most popular attractions in Rome where tourists and locals alike just seem to sit around for no obvious reason.

• Santa Maria in Cosmedin: this church houses the Bocca della Verità or "the mouth of truth" as featured in the film Roman Holiday. Legend has it that it will bite the hand of those that lie. We both passed the test though!

• Santa Maria della Concezione: The crypt below this church is rather gruesomely decorated with the bones of around 4000 monks.

• Scala Santa: this is a flight of steps which were brought from Pontius Pilate's house in Jerusalem and are said to have been used by Christ during his trial. It can only be climbed by the faithful on their knees.

• The Catacombs of San Sebastiano: These are on the outskirts of Rome on the Via Appia Antica which also contains many other catacombs and early Christian tombs. They are a maze of underground tunnels carved out of the volcanic rock where the early Christians buried their dead. They supposedly stretch for miles on multiple levels. We went down with a guide who rather amusingly waited until we were deep within the narrow, dimly lit tunnels of the catacombs before asking if any one was claustrophobic… and somebody said yes! (as if he'd forgotten). He had to be led out in a minor panic - what a plonker!

• Circus Maximus: This was ancient Rome's largest stadium but there is little left to see now. Amusingly, a school was holding its sports day in it when we went to see it.

The Colosseum © Cresta

We covered many of the ancient monuments on our first day in Rome which was quite exhausting. We first headed for the Colosseum, built around 80 AD, which is still very impressive despite the criminal and short-sighted damage done to it during the Renaissance where stone was plundered from its façade to build other buildings (including St. Peter's). Half of the outer wall was taken and general decay over time has destroyed all of the spectator's stepped seats (other than a small section which has obviously been restored so that visitors can picture what it used to be like). The arena floor is also missing but this reveals the network of underground rooms where the animals were kept to be brought up to the arena in a complex scheme of pulleys, ramps and trapdoors.

Just across from the Colosseum is the Roman Forum. This is littered with ancient ruins some of them very impressive but many of them need a lot of imagination to picture what they were like in their hey-day. We were helped out by our guide book which described the individual ruins and often provided artist's impressions of the original structures.

We had expected the Roman relics to be very much like the ones we saw in Athens - and there were similarities - but the main difference was in the Roman's use of brick in many of the relics. This makes some of the structures look deceptively young (or even restored!).

Adjoining the Forum is the Palatine hill area, itself rich in ruins, but also quite a nice park area. This is where, according to legend, Romulus & Remus were bought up by a wolf before they founded Rome and one of the greatest empires TV has ever seen.

The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel © Edizioni Indaco

Rome is rich in museums and art galleries but none of them compare to the Vatican Museum which we spent the majority of our second day perusing. We arrived just before it opened (at 8:45am) and followed the 5 hour route around the museum. The building itself was, in our view, at least as impressive as its contents of art and antiquities - particularly the painted and sculpted ceilings. This was supposed to culminate in the Sistine Chapel but we were a little disappointed when we finally entered it. It was probably due to all the hype over the years which had built us up to expect something more awe inspiring. It was also relatively dark in the chapel and we had already been through many well lit rooms some with truly fantastic ceilings. What did amaze us, however, was the fact that this was Michelangelo's first ever painting. I suppose you can forgive him for giving Adam a naval (think about it).

St. Peter's Basilica

After we had finished in the museum we went into Saint Peter's Basilica which is really enormous - it claims to be the largest cathedral in the world and it's really impressive inside. We went up into its massive dome and climbed the staircase between its inner and outer walls (which leans over quite a bit as you get towards the top) and we had a spectacular view of Rome and the Vatican.

Papal Audience: When the Pope is in town he holds private audiences on Wednesdays and also pops out on Sundays to bless the crowds gathered in St. Peter's square (which actually is an oval). There were organised tours to each of these but they were a complete rip off as the Vatican is really easy to get to and we found out that you could just turn up for Sunday's blessing and, surprisingly, also for Wednesday's audience as it was held outdoors in fine weather.

Well, despite neither of us being in any way religious (although Chris is, ironically, supposed to be a Catholic), we decided to attend Wednesday's Papal Audience and we were actually quite impressed. We arrived early and waited, watching the doors of St Peter's for the Pontiff to emerge and bang on time we heard a commotion in the crowd - but not directed towards the basilica. Over to our left, Pope John Paul II himself appeared to be walking through the crowd as he entered St Peter's square from the side. He was, in fact, stood on the back of a jeep being driven very slowly through the crowds along fenced off paths with very little apparent protection between him and the ecstatic worshipers all around him.

He spent quite some time doing this before finally being dropped off beside his papal throne. He then gave a general blessing to everyone before individually welcoming each group of pilgrims in their own language (reading from a script). He even waved at them if they cheered at their group's name being mentioned. He looked quite tired as he paused between languages and yawned quite lot. We didn't stay for the end (we left after he had welcomed the English speaking pilgrims) but we caught it on Vatican TV later on that evening in the hotel when, after many more languages, he finally welcomed his fellow Polish people. There were quite a lot of groups from Poland and we would guess that they must have been the second biggest group after the Italians. He certainly seemed to get a second wind with them, talking for quite a while without a script and, we think, much more eloquently.

Getting Around: Our hotel was in a pretty central location from which most places were reachable by foot so we did a lot of walking around and, more importantly, up and down the city of seven hills but we also used Rome's relatively cheap public transport. It has a fairly good network of bus routes which were reasonably easy to get around on (when you could fit on that is) and an underground system with two lines which, although primarily aimed at getting the Italians to and from their homes, were also useful for getting to some of the tourist attractions. These trains were as colourfully decorated with graffiti as the ones in New York that you see on the TV - but they felt much safer.

Food: Not surprisingly, we ate lots of delicious pasta, pizza and other Italian specialities from a selection of the wealth of Italian trattorias and restaurants we came across in Rome. What was surprising, however, was that, apart from a smattering of Chinese restaurants, we didn't find any other type of restaurant in Rome. Well - as they say: "When in Rome..."

Religion: This hits you everywhere in Rome. You can't escape it. There seem to be churches everywhere and, not surprisingly for the centre of the Roman Catholic Church, you can hardly move for nuns and priests. One tip we had been given to combat the infamous Italian drivers was to only cross the road with a Nun. Unfortunately they didn't seem to cross the roads as much as we did so we used a much more common and equally effective form of protection - babies in prams! Having said that, we don't think the Roman drivers really deserve their reputation - but then again we didn't try driving there!

The Weather: This was mostly hot and sunny except for one day of light rain which our umbrella easily coped with and another of sustained heavy rain which slowly soaked us through until we threw in the towel mid-afternoon and returned to the hotel to dry off in time for dinner.