Amanda and Megan Do Europe Day 9: First Full day in Rome

Megan and I woke up in our gorgeous hotel room in Rome on Thursday August 3, 2017 and got ready for the day. We were staying at the Best Pantheon B&B. It was a small 4 room hotel inside a large building. It was the nicest room we stayed in on our Europe trip and we even had our own private terrace. Breakfast was included and served at a nearby restaurant. It consisted of pastries, fruit, coffee, and juice. The "hote loc" was amazing and was easy walking distance from the pantheon, the trevi fountain, the Roman ruins where Caesar was assassinated, and lots of restaurants and shopping. And not so easy but doable walking distance from the Colosseum, Spanish Steps, The Vatican, and the Roman Forum (and close to a bus stop for when we got lazy).

After enjoying our breakfast we set off exploring. We were heading to the Trevi Fountain but a cool thing about Rome is there is amazing architecture and ruins almost everywhere you look. We walked by a building that we found out was called Altare della Patria or Altar of the Fatherland that was an impressive marble classical temple built to honor Italy's first King and fallen WWI soldiers. We kept walking through the busy streets filled with vendors selling everything from purses to pasta (both of which we bought at one point in our trip) and found the Trevi fountain. It was absolutely beautiful and a gorgeous, breathtaking work of art. But it was also so crowded around it we could barely walk through to get a picture. All of our pictures turned out blurry because it was so hot I think my sweaty fingers blurred up the lens. We each made a wish with a coin and walked down the street away from the chaos.

After walking through the busy streets and shopping for a little while (Megan bought her world Amanda famous "Italy hat") Megan declared "I've been in Italy for half a day and I haven't had any pasta! Get me some spaghetti, stat!" (Or something like that) I wanted more Italian coffee so we found a little cafe that served pasta and espresso and sat down for lunch. After that we walked to the Pantheon and explored. For a 2000 year old building it looked amazing. Since it's now a catholic church we were both breaking the dress code with our exposed shoulders, so we didn't stay long. In London we had utilized the Big Bus Tour bus and decided to do the same is Rome. We walked to a stop that was near our hotel and stopped and saw so many beautiful sights along the way like statues, fountains, ancient ruins, and huge monuments. There was a historical and/or beautiful sight pretty much everywhere you looked in Rome. Right by our bus stop we stumbled across this ancient building called the Insula dell'Ara Coeli. It was built in the second century AD and rediscovered when Benito Mussolini initiated a plan for massive urban renewal of Rome's Capitoline Hill neighborhood. It was just crazy to see so much history all over. This wasn't even a popular place or a place you had to pay to look at, just some amazing ancient buildings sitting by a bus stop. Our bus arrived so we hopped on to continue touring the city.

The Big Bus tours were never the most direct route to a destination bus they took us all over the city to the best tourist attractions. There were headphones on board and at each seat you could plug into a jack to hear information about whatever you were driving by. We were on our way to the destination I was the most excited about seeing on our trip, the Colosseum! I guess I just love old buildings. I was so excited when I could see it in the distance. I was just totally enamored by its grandeur. The bus dropped us off and we had to find the business where we had already purchased tickets for a "skip the line" tour of the Colosseum. Be careful when you buy any kind of tour for these big attractions because the wording can be deceiving. We though we'd purchased a guided private tour but I guess it was pretty much just a regular entry ticket to the coliseum. We also took forever (well maybe 15 minutes) finding the office where our tickets were because the map they gave us was not to scale. We did get to skip one long line since we didn't have to buy tickets so that was nice. Before we went in we stopped to sip some of our 87 cent purse wine.

Megan and I had so much fun exploring inside the Colosseum! It was so beautiful. There were areas set up inside like little museums where you could learn more about the history of the world's largest amphitheater and the people who built it. We had fun doing photo shoots as we explored.

From the Colosseum we could see the expansive Roman Forum (ruins of several ancient Roman government buildings). We got a good view of the Forum but didn't feel like we needed to walk around it. Our feet were getting tired, and there's only so much history and beauty a person can take in in a day. We said our goodbyes to the beautiful Colosseum and got back on the bus towards our hotel.

We got back to our hotel and rested our feet for a little while while we looked up where to have dinner. We were starving and wanted to eat somewhere close to our hotel with amazing food. We found a place called "Pizza Florida" with great reviews that said they had "Rome's best pizza". We walked there but stopped on the way at Largodi Torre Argentina, a square with the ruins of four Roman temples and Pompey's theatre. It's rumored to be the place where Caesar was assassinated. Today it is now a cat colony that over 200 cats call home. We went cat watching for a while and spotted lots of the felines who aren't very people friendly and are fed by volunteers. We grabbed some pizza and beers at Pizza Florida and ate outside watching the cats some more. We saved room for gelato and wine. (When in Rome... we really loved that saying) We sat out in the square near our hotel for awhile finishing our carafe of wine, people watching, and just enjoying the warm Italian evening. Eventually we made our way back to our room to get some sleep for our busy day of exploring Vatican City that lay ahead.