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Published: March 26th 2011
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Friday March 18 - First day in the heart of Rome
We woke up early to have a proper breakfast and walked to a local Italian market to see if we could get some wine for the train. Soon after that, we were off to the train station at the airport to begin our journey to downtown Rome. Everything went smooth and we had a quick 30 minute train ride into town. We arrived and our hotel was only a few blocks…..or should I say, should have been….we went the wrong way and ended up walking 30 minutes in the wrong direction before we stopped and asked for help. We walked back where we began only to find that our hotel was literally one block away from the train station. It would have been better without luggage…but we managed to find out place and get checked in. First of all, let me tell everyone that I researched hotels and read every single review….this hotel got nothing but good reviews. When we finally arrived to our destination we knew it was not going to be nice just by the outside of it, but we were open minded and said, what ever
it is, it is a new experience. Even after reading all the reviews on the hotel and nothing but positive things were said…we must have had the worst room in the place. We were in a room with a cot looking bed which was two twin mattresses pushed together without the middle connector, in the attic, and the bathroom and shower were the same room….no separation, you actually took a shower in between the sink and the toilet! We were only there two days and can honestly say we did spend any time other than sleep there…..which is all we needed to do anyway. We put our things down, left the hotel around 1:00 and found a nice café on the street where we had a pizza, a glass of wine and a beer. Then after lunch we walked across the street where we grabbed the most amazing Gelato and now we were ready to start exploring!
We found the Coliseum very easily and decided that it was a good day to do it since it was Friday and Saturday would most certainly be more crowded. We were approached by at least 4 different tour guides before Jon was
able to negotiate a good deal with one of them. During our wait to round up more people for the tour I “boyed” Jon …..those of you who don’t know what “boyed” means it is when you find someone that is dressed or looks like a tool and you say “that’s your boy”….there were several opportunities to do this to each other in Italy! The tour guide was someone I had just “boyed” Jon with unknowingly The tour began and it was about 45 minutes long. The place is just breathtaking and so glad we made that one of our first stops. By this time we were starting to get thirsty and luckily in Rome you can walk around the streets with beer and wine in hand…so there were several stands around the area where you could grab a cold beverage and walk around….we took advantage of this throughout the day of course.. The 2nd part of the tour took us across the street to the Palatino where we took the most amazing tour either of us had been on. The tour guide was awesome! She had so much energy and just what we needed to continue on another
tour. This by far was our favorite part of the trip so far. It went through ruins and the history of Rome in about an hour and a half….dozens of beautiful buildings, statues and gardens surrounded this area and we were both in awe over it all. We decided to head back to the hotel room, but grabbed beer for the walk home. We were about a 15 minute walk back to the hotel when the sky turned black and it started pouring rain! Luckily we ducked into a building where other people were standing out of the rain, sat down on a set of stairs and drank the rest of our beers. The rain passed about a half hour later and we walked back to the hotel just getting a little wet on the way. As we were walking a waiter called out to us to ask us why we didn’t have any beer for him…..more to come on that later!
We quickly changed and got ready for dinner to a little place we had spotted earlier that day, a little place on a side walk that was enclosed. The courses here are much different than America. First
you start with an antipasti, then your first course (pasta), then your main course (meat) then dessert and wine with everything. I don’t know about you, but I was full after the first course, which is almost always a bowl of pasta. We decided to split the main, which was just a few think slices of meet. Our starter arrived and was an amazing pesto bread. Then our first course came out, I had clams with pasta and Jon had Tortellini…..these were by far the most amazing pasta dishes we had had in our lives…..so we quickly decided we wanted to order more pasta! We ordered it before our main came out and waited about 45 minutes, then decided we were not waiting anymore, paid and left. On our walk back towards the hotel we heard this waiter say, “hey where is my beer”…we both laughed because it was the same guy from earlier and can’t believe he remembered us after hundreds of people must pass in front of him every day. We were still craving pasta so we sat down at a table and ordered some garlic bread that was the most amazing garlic bread we had had, another
bowl of pasta and some wine. We made friends with the waiter who was actually Egyptian and a couple from Ireland sitting next to us. By this time it was close to 11:300 and we were stuffed, happy and exhausted. Great first day in Rome! We walked back to the hotel room, had some wine and went to bed.
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