The things we love..: Ancient Rome

04.01.2012 – Wednesday, day 16

Wow what a great first day in Italy, 16 degrees and sunshine! Today we visited the Colosseum and the Roman Forum or Imperial Palaces on Palatine Hill. We did some research last night in preparation and thanks to the Lonely Planet Guide we managed to get straight in with no queues, and had a walking tour guide all day to tell us about the history of these amazing ancient ruins!

Here is what we have learned: You can purchase the “Roma Pass” from the train station which will get you free entry into most of the sites. From there you can use the pass for three days worth of free travel via train, bus or tram. We caught the tube straight to the Colosseum and since we didn’t need to purchase a ticket we joined a guided walking tour with “Gladiator Tours” for half the price (thanks to the Roma Pass). The guides were really good and reasonably priced too.

In about six hours we had walked several laps around the Colosseum, learned about the great fires of Rome and how the city was re-built using the remains of burnt out monuments; visited the imperial palaces (most of which is now either underground or completely gone); had a taste of Italy (Pizza!) and finished off by putting our feet up with some great Italian wine.

Tonight we are heading out for more Pasta and tomorrow we have another guided tour at Vatican City. We will also be doing a spot of shopping tomorrow afternoon since Adam has managed to tear a hole in his Jeans which have been stitched up twice already (thanks to Naughty Nanna!).

Oh, we also managed to change rooms this morning to a Junior Suite which is much more to our liking… not that we are hotel snobs or anything, but we figure if we are going to be here a while then it’s worth paying a bit extra for some space and a decent spot to relax. Last night we had to sleep with earplugs in because the traffic was so loud!

We do not have WiFi access here so it is difficult to Skype and respond to messages, but we will try our best to update when we can.

Buonasera (or Buongiorno to those in Australia!) xxx