Bad Luck in Ostia Antica

After battling through headwinds along the Lazio coast we arrived at our campsite in Ostia Antica for the night only to find it under construction. This was especially frustrating seeing as I had been in contact with the camp the day before and let them know we'd be coming to stay soon - and received a reply indicating they were open all year round. We found a cafe with wifi and frantically searched for other campsites. Having no luck we found a cheap hotel room on lastminute.com and booked ourselves in for a couple of nights.

Ostia Antica township

We had booked two nights so we would have a day to explore the Roman ruins at Ostia Antica - the ancient harbour city for nearby Rome. Unfortunately Sarah and I have been on holiday for long enough that we had forgotten what day of the week it was; and turned up to the gates of the ruins on the one day of the week that they are closed! We cut our losses and headed in to Rome to buy ourselves new sleeping bags. After a fair bit of searching we found some suitable bags and headed back to our hotel room to take full advantage of the room - washing clothes in the sink and camp cooking on the balcony.

Ostia Antica ruins

We got up early the following day and explored the ruins of Ostia Antica. The ruins rival Pompeii in terms of how well preserved the buildings, streets and frescoes are. Being more compact and less crowded I'd say they they were almost better then the sprawling and extremely busy Pompeii ruins.

School group at the Teatro (theatre) in Ostia Antica

Wild poppies at Ostia Antica

That afternoon we jumped on our bikes again and cruised an easy 30km up the coast past Rome's airport to a campsite at Passoscuro. Being the off-season, the camp was nearly empty, however we were stoked to find some otters in the nearby canal and some rabbits in the camp to keep us company.

One of them was an albino rabbit!