Our Final Stop - Rome

Honeymoon Day 10 - Rome Day 1

This morning was our final test of our travel adventure through Europe.  We had a 10am train to Rome from Florence.  Thankfully the Florence train station was both close to our hotel and much, much smaller than the train station in Rome (and much less crazy).  We opted for first class tickets on this train, which put us in a business coach, with larger, comfy seats, tables so I could work on the last two blogs and no screaming babies.  The ride was a short hour and a half and the scenery was beautiful, at least what I could see as I may have fallen asleep a few times.  We arrived at the train station, found the taxi stand and made it the short drive to our hotel without much incident.  It was our first experience with driving in Rome, which seems to have no rules.  The lines on the street don't matter, sometimes the lights do and people park wherever they find room (we saw numerous smart cars parked perpendicular to the sidewalk).  Our taxi driver parked on the sidewalk as he dropped of us at our hotel and we thankfully didn't pay an outrageous amount for our ride.  

This hotel is by far the best and they upgraded us for a reduced rate to a deluxe room.  They also sent up a bottle of chianti as a congratulations on our honeymoon (we gladly accepted that)!  And when arrived back from dinner tonight, they had turned down our beds for us and left mints on the pillows. 

Shortly after arriving at our hotel this afternoon, we packed up our tourist bags and headed out to find our meeting spot for our afternoon tour.  We asked at the front desk how to get to the Colosseum and the easiest way was of course the Metro.  We had already tackled the metro systems in London and Paris, so why not one more.  We are truly pros now at subways.  We got our tickets with no problems, got through the ticket gates and quickly joined the crowds on our way to the train.  And when I say crowds, I am not kidding.  We thought the Paris metro at rush hour was crazy.  This didn't hold a candle to Paris.  And it was ever busier on our way back (which I'll get to later).  We got to our stop and as soon as we saw sunlight, there it was, the massive Colosseum.  We grabbed a few sandwiches and popped a squat nearby to admire the view.  We walked around for a little while before our tour and of course found some gelato.  I found the most amazing combination...pineapple and coconut (pina colada in gelato form)...amazing!!  

We met up with tour and took a 3 hour walking tour of the Colosseum, Roman Forum and Palatine Hill.  It was all incredibly amazing and much of the history was very hard to comprehend.  After coming from places that worked so hard to preserve all of their history, it was very different to see a place that was pillaged and crumbed over the last hundreds of years and now stands in ruins.  But our guide was great, and offered up a lot of information surrounding the ruins and the history of Rome.  The theme of her tour was that the Romans were crazy people and by the end we were both convinced she was right.  On a side note, it got into the high 70's here today, which was by the far the warmest of any day of our trip and it was hot!  There were few clouds in the sky and the sun was very bright and very warm.  I have no idea how anyone comes here in the middle of the summer and survives.  Thankfully once we moved on from the Colosseum, we got a slight breeze which helped a little.  Tomorrow is supposed to be just as warm, but most of our tours tomorrow will be inside, so that's good.

After our tour, we jumped back on the metro.  Actually we shoved ourselves onto it.  There were so many people on the platform and in the train that we let the first one pass because we could see no way to get on.  3 people got off one of the cars on the next train, so Trent pushed us onto it (his rationale that 3 came off so 2 can easily fit on made logical sense, but holy cow was that car cramped).  To give you and idea, all of the windows and glass on the doors were completely fogged over because of the amount of body heat on the train.  It wasn't exactly comfortable and was a little smelly, but thankfully we only had two stops until we could get off and switch lines.  Of course the train jerked its way to the second stop and I was fearful it would stop and we would be stuck.  But we finally made it and switched to the second train, which was just as full, but had A/C, which the first train did not have.  

We stopped at the hotel to freshen up and get a dinner recommendation from the front desk.  We asked for something more relaxed and were pointed in the direction of what the lady described as a loud, fun place. We arrived and the place was empty but we had a seat and were greeted by a younger girl who sat down next to us and asked if we had any food allergies or restrictions. Then she suggested an appetizer that she explained in broken english. It sounded good so we said yes. A few minutes later we had a huge wooden plate set down in front of us filled with all kinds of meats, cheeses and bread. It was divine. In the meantime, they played some fun, upbeat italian music, and everyone that worked there danced and sang around. Then an older gentleman stopped by and sat down with us and asked if we wanted to share a pasta. He brought over a menu (kind of...it was a piece of paper with some pasta dishes written in market on it) and explained them to us. We picked the gnochi and were not disappointed. It was the Roman version, which was round and about the size of a popcan and had some cheese of some kind on/in it. So awesome. Then of course we had tiramisu, which was also amazing. Overall, Roman food is just as amazing as the other food we've had so far.

Tomorrow we visit the Vatican for a tour in the morning and then we'll see what we feel like after that. It's our last day and we're starting to slow down a bit so we'll see how it goes.

Love you all!
K&T