Part Roma Coliseum

Italy was on our list of places to visit for a couple of reasons.

1. It's awesome
2. It would be place the two of us could experience together for the first time

So it was no surprise that I was so excited I almost peed my pants when I arrived in Rome.

Stephen made me read this taxi warning the explained all taxi's in Rome are white, and it was only 40 euro from the airport to the city center. Lucky I read that, coz some scammer tried to get me to ride in his "taxi" and when he said it was 65 euro, I told him to piss off!

I spent a night in Rome on my own while Stephen was in Russia, living my dream as a lady of leisure ordering room service while sitting on a terrace overlooking the city, reading.

We had booked two tours before we arrived in Italy, the first being the Colosseum . Since it was a PM tour we decided to leave our hotel early in the morning and explore the Eternal City together.

We began our day walking past the Trevi Fountain, which was PACKED! 

We’d read online that it was better to go there at night so we headed over to the Pantheon.

One of the perks of visiting the Pantheon, built in 126 AD, was that it was FREE! The building itself was nothing short of majestic and there was an odd reverence to the place.  

Following our visit to the Pantheon we meandered on over to have lunch and meet up with our tour. 

Food for the day? Gnocchi.  Pasta in Italy is necessary right ? RIGHT!

Our tour was set for 3 ½ hours and it is something I HIGHLY recommend. Our tour group was small, 12 people, and when you pay for private tours you are able to skip the lines, which are ridiculous, and we were able to walk across the stage and under it, as well as walk across the top tier where there was only one other tour group.

The Colosseum is impressive, to say the least. It is massive, built between 70 – 80AD its apparent Roman’s must have been geniuses. The architecture, the sheer mass is completely overwhelming.

After a few hours at the colosseum we headed over to the Roman Forum. For archeologists, this place must be heaven. There were still a number of people sifting through the ruins finding random pottery and other treasures.

Here again, there was so much to see, so much history. There as some old residences that had uncovered terracotta “pipes” that were used to produce hot water for the top floors, I’m telling you, the romans were some smart people.

Once we were done with the Forum we headed over to the Kings Monument. By this time the sun was starting to go down, so we decided to head over to the Spanish steps to watch the sunset, and stopped for gelato on the way.

We decided to finish off our day by going back to see the Trevi fountain and stopping for some dinner at a café close to it. This was followed by another stop at another café for dessert (Tiramisu, Cannoli and more gelato) before comatosing out. 

What a grand day, definitely one of my favs.