Rome, Italy, Europe

With today being our last full day in Rome, we had to make it count. We woke up early and headed straight for the Coliseum as we hadn’t been over to that side of town yet. We were approached by LOADS of tour operators trying to sell us on a tour of the Coliseum but we brushed them all off because we figured it probably wasn’t worth it. After finding out that the wait to get a normal ticket was a full hour, we rethought our plans and checked out how much the tour was. It was 12 Euros to get in without the tour, and 20 Euros with the tour, plus a free tour of the ruins of the Imperial Palace and the Forum. Sounded like a good enough deal to us, so we took it.

Our first tour guide, for the Coliseum was just okay. He was an Italian guy named Stefan whose English was not great, and he was difficult to hear, but we did get to go inside and check out the Coliseum and picked up a few facts here and there. We then met up with our next tour guide Alex for the tour of the ruins. He was excellent! He had been guiding for 10 years and knew all the little interesting stories that we would want to hear. The second tour was mainly looking at rubble and piles of bricks, because that’s all that’s usually left when you’re looking at ruins. But even though what we were looking at wasn’t nearly as impressive as the Coliseum, the stories were much more interesting.

We finished with that tour and went to get some lunch, preferably at a place with free wifi. We’d been recommended a place called Shamrock by a tour guide, and it was perfect. Of course it was a little Irish pub, but they had free WIFI, were showing American Football on tv and we were able to eat something other than pizza or pasta. So after relaxing for a bit and cooling down in the AC, we decided to move on.

We hopped on the metro and headed across town to get in the Vatican Museums. We arrived there at 3:45pm only to see that the entrance closed at 4pm, so we counted ourselves lucky and went in. We hurried along to the Sistene Chapel because it would also be closing soon and there was no way we were going to come all the way to Rome and not see it! We made it to the Chapel in time to see it, but it was while we were hurrying through the multiple tour groups and thousands of people on our way there, that I realized how big the Vatican is! This place is massive and has one of the nicest collections of art and sculptures I’ve ever seen. It was a shame that we didn’t have more time there, because it’s a place you could easily spend a day in.

Unfortunately, closing time was upon us so we had to make a move. We headed back to the hotel to get a little rest and clean up a bit. It was over 90 degrees so we were sweating pretty profusely and thought we should do something about the smell before getting dinner. We went out and got our last fix of pizza and pasta for the trip and then headed home. We have a big day of traveling ahead of us tomorrow and obviously neither of us have thought about packing yet. Uh oh…