We woke up VERY early (4am), which was of course expected due to the change in time zone. The hotel’s breakfast buffet was your typical European style buffet with lots of choices of breads, pastries, jams, cheeses, eggs, ‘bacon’, etcetera, etcetera. We both found something to eat, and we both had yummy coffees. Today’s planned activity: a guided tour of the Colosseum and the Roman Forum/Palatine Hill. The tour would start early in the morning, so we started walking right after breakfast.
Walk to the Colosseum
The colosseum is about half an hour walking distance from our hotel. The picture above was taken from the “Via degli Annibaldi”, the street that leads to the stadium. This was basically our first view of the colosseum as we were walking toward it from the hotel. As you get closer, where we are walking is actually a few stories above the street level entrance of the stadium.
We found a couple of stairs that seemed to be closed off, but some people had pushed the fencing open wide enough for us to be able to walk through. We were not really supposed to walk down there but there were actually stairs leading down and we didn’t know how else to get down there. It wasn’t hurting anything and hey we’re stupid tourists right… We had some time to kill before the tour, so we walked around the Colosseum a bit.
Start at the Forum
Our guide was an archeologist, and he had a ton of information to share with us. The tour setup was really cool – you get this little radio with a single earbud, and the tour guide has a microphone on his end. You hear their voice loud and clear, well as long as you stay relatively close to them. Much nicer than walking around a cacophony of screaming tour guides. Came in handy a few times too, as we were stopping at the same spots with other groups a number of times.
We started up the Palatine Hill to visit the Forum first. This is important because you need separate tickets to see the Forum and the Colosseum, they are NOT on the same ticket. So many spots at the Forum with SO MUCH history. I could have easily spent the whole day there and read all the signs, maybe even get an audio tour and listen to all the detailed explanations of all the things there.
There’s one of the oldest churches in the world there, there’s an excavated Roman mansion that we basically ran through, lots of ruins with signs next to them. I feel like we really only skimmed the very surface of the Forum, I would love to go back there and spend maybe a whole day there.
On to the Colosseum
After the Forum we made our way to the Colosseum. Initially, we had booked tickets to go into the catacombs of the Colosseum. A few weeks before the trip, we had gotten a message from the tour company that the catacombs part had been canceled. Our guide told us that the city had imposed limitations on the number of people that they allow to go into that part of the stadium. He said that normally he would take 3 groups a day down there, and this year the last time he had even been down there was back in April. It’s a good thing that these sites are preserved, but we were REALLY looking forward to that part of the tour.
Our guide took us through the whole place, and we got to see everything above ground there. We were on the arena floor itself, and we walked up the stairs to one of the outer rings to see it from above. It is a very double thing because of the violence that was part of its history, but at the same time it was SO cool to finally be there.
At this point we had basically seen all there is to see at the Colosseum, and the crowd was again getting to me. We were also getting a little (meaning a LOT) hungry. I really wanted to go back to the Forum, because there was so much there that we had not seen. Unfortunately we didn’t hold our own tickets (the guide did) and we would not be allowed to return there anyway. Lesson learned about visiting this area: tickets to the Colosseum and the Forum are separate. The tour guide left us there to explore the Colosseum. I felt like the tour should finish at the Forum, because I felt like we would have been able to explore that a lot more than the Colosseum.
Time for Lunch
So lunch it is. Instead of sitting down at the first place we ran into, we decided to walk a few blocks away from the Colosseum and find some food in a less crowded area, off the beaten path so to speak. We walked around a bit and found a place called ‘La Folia’, where we had beers and food. Sara had a Caesar salad, and I had some lasagna.
The food was nice enough, not spectacular. As we walked back to the hotel, we passed some places that looked a lot nicer. Can’t complain though, we had a good meal after a great tour of the Colosseum and the Forum.
Almost Forgot Dessert
With our bellies full, we went back to the hotel for naps and post-nap drinks and appetizers at the hotel’s rooftop bar. Spritzes all around and more focaccia. As we were on our second (or maybe it was our third) Spritz, we decided we were in the mood for some gelato.
In preparation for the trip, we had found a YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/AplinsintheAlps) that had recommended a bunch of things to do in Rome. Can’t find the actual video itself right now but there’s one where they list some of their favorite food places in Rome, and one of those was a gelato shop called “Come Il Latte”. It was a bit of a walk to get there, and when we did, it looked like a little hole in the wall. OMG though, the gelato was out of this world. The best I had ever had. Stole the picture from the internet, I was too busy eating my stracciatella to think about taking pictures myself.
Apparently, what you should look for is a gelato place that keeps the ice cream in covered containers. The ones that show the gelato in big heaping mounds have to put ingredients in there to keep the gelato from melting in the Italian heat. The ones that keep their gelato covered don’t need to do this, so it is less diluted with preservatives, and will taste better anyway. They are generally also less brightly colored, so less artificial chemicals in there just for the sake of making it look good.
Nightcap
Back at the hotel we decided to get one more drink to cap off a wonderful day in Rome. Back in the room around 11pm, hopefully a full night sleep.
Walking the streets of Rome is SO awesome. The hotel doesn’t feel like it is quite as central as much the Waterloo is in London for instance, but ‘stuff’ is still close enough to walk there. The GPS is taking us through lots of back streets though, and this part of the city doesn’t feel like it was planned very well, so it feels a bit like a maze. It is hard to get familiar with the layout of the streets and where they are in relation to each other. Good that we do have a GPS, so we always find what we are looking for.