When in Rome...

Veronica: "Oh, well, when in Rome."
Ron: "Yes? Please go on."
Veronica: "Uh, do as the Romans do? It's an old expression."
Ron: "Oh! I've never heard of it."
Veronica: "Oh."
Ron: "It's wonderful, though."

So...you get the gist of me & Scott's convos for the day! ;) Ron Burgundy really has an influence on our lives.

Well, we started out very early this morning, at the train station. So yeah, it was rough. We did really well again with finding our hotel walking from the station. We're now masters of finding stuff in Italy, we need a new challenge. Pssshaw. Hotel Golden is fabulous! We got here super early so the front desk guy was not really ready for us, but he was so nice and gave us breakfast and let us leave our bags and helped us out a ton.

First stop? Duh, Il Colleseo! We even watched Gladiator to prep for it before we left, even though I got bored halfway through bc there was too much killing and stuff. The real thing was awesome! We especially enjoyed the RS audio guide (obvs) and the enormity of it. The structure was so impressive - it took them years and years to build and it was BC then too! And over the years after it ceased to be used to have slaves and prisoners fight to the death, people used to come and pilfer some of the stones so there's big holes in the structure.


As you can see...we started out thinking - oh crap, another cloudy and possibly rainy day and ended up w/ a gorgeous blue sky. Who knew!



We stopped at Trevi Fountain on the way too. It wasn't as big as I though t it was going to be... I think I saw too many ppl's pictures! :-)


Again, they make you buy a dual ticket w/ the Colleseum for that and Pallantine Hill. It was kinda of booooring, in our opinion. The Roman Forum was so much cooler, we were totally enthralled by it! :) It was just so freaking cool to walk throughout the remains of one of the greatest civilizations ... The Roman Empire was big from 500 BC to 500 AD... the "piazza" or square set up of towns & cities originated in this very place. And Julius Cesar was killed here - like you know, "et tu Brutus!?" Yeah, him! Crazy!

The remains of a HUGE church - this was just the one side. It was really freaking big.
The Arch of Settimo Severo in the Roman Forum.


Check out the water fountain! Do as the Romans do...even if it seems like it's weird. The water was delicious though.

After doing all the ruins and stuff we were pretty beat and decided we needed...um, showers. We hightailed it back to the hotel and recooperated a little, which made all the difference. For dinner, we went on a leisurely walk to the Spanish Steps, which were cool, but the main tower thing is in scaffolding, which stinks. It seems like a part of all of the big sights we want to see has scaffolding on it!! Ok, enough whining. On to the wine.

For dinner, we had FABULOUS food. It was a wine bar in the Spanish Steps neighborhood and O.M.G it was fantastic. MMMMmmm. I had Ricotta and Spinach Crepes followed by Tomato and Mozzarella Caprese salad. And wine. Scott hit up some gnocchi and veal and was also pretty satisfied. It was an adorable authentic Italian place and I'd eat there everyday if I could.

We're trying to figure out the climate here... it's not humid like it was in Florence... and it'll go from being almost HOT (we got sunburn on our faces a little today!) to chilly if you're in the shade. Weird. Rome is a lot different too, it's definitely a much bigger and more bustling city than the other two we've visited so far. It's so exciting to see the actual pieces of history and all of these famous sights right here in Rome we will get to visit! Tomorrow we're doing a walking tour (self guided, thanks to Let's Go Western Europe 2002! I ripped out the pages w/ the walking tour, I'm so bad...) and we'll get to see some parts of the city we didn't get to today. I might also attempt a run in the Borghese Gardens too (like Central Park kinda...)