Roma 2: The Essentials

I'm subtitling this post "The Essentials" because there are certain things that you must see when you visit Rome. You can't go and not see the Colosseum. You just can't. On the 2nd day of our visit we saw everything that was essential to a Rome visit. We had a scheduled Colosseum, Palatine Hill and Roman Forum Guided Walking Tour at 9:30, so we were planning on getting up at 8:15 in order to have breakfast and walk to the meeting place. We didn't ask for a wake up call because we went to bed at 8pm, so surely there would be no way we could sleep 12 hours. We were wrong. My dad panicked at 8:45am when he looked at the time on his blackberry. We threw on some clothes, chowed on some granola bars my mom had in her luggage and started the trek towards the Colosseum.

My mom had printed off walking directions on Mapquest to get us to where we were going to meet the guide. I'm going to be blunt here. Mapquest sucks! I'm sorry if you are personal friends with Mapquest or whatever, but he (because obviously nothing that wrong time and again could be female) screws me over all the time. I ended up just taking a map and planning my own way there (once I figured out where the hell mapquest had taken us). Luckily, McDonald's has locations near every major attraction and has wonderful signs like this

They are actually better than the official Rome tourist directional signs. We make it to our tour on time. I had heard the Colosseum was one of those places that's not as great in person as it is in photos, but I thought it was amazing. It's a 3 hour walking tour. It's great not to have to wait in line at the Colosseum or Palatine Hill, but it's hot and by hour 2, I'm so over it. One good thing about Rome is that there are fresh water fountains flowing everywhere, so you just need to carry a water bottle and refill it anywhere.

After the tour, we were starving and ready for lunch. My mom had found a place during her trip research that was near the Colosseum and supposed to have good food at a reasonable price. We go in, sit down, and after looking at the menu, my dad asks the waitress if they have any pasta. She says no. He looks like someone just stole his puppy. I have a very good chicken curry with couscous, not exactly what I was expecting to eat in Rome though.

We then go to 3-D Rewind, which is supposed to be a 3-D re-creation of what the Colosseum would've looked like back in its prime. It was ok, a little overpriced and a little kidsy for me. From there we headed to the Pantheon (which I repeatedly called the Parthenon, eventhough my mom repeatedly told me that the Parthenon was Greek...oops...really wish I had brushed up on my Roman history before I went). We sat on the steps of a fountain in front of the Pantheon a little while to rest and then headed toward the entrance only to then have barriers put up in front of us that blocked anyone from entering. No one had any idea what was going on, and there were bewildered tour guides with unhappy groups of tourists everywhere. We could see inside, but figured we'd probably catch it on another day. We headed to the Trevi Fountain. I wanted to do the whole throw a coin over your left shoulder for good luck or to return to Rome or whatever, but found it quite difficult because the crowds looked like this.

We found a good view about three levels up on the balcony and I was pretty sure I could throw a coin to the fountain from there; however, the over the left shoulder thing might be a problem. We were too far away for it to be a mere toss. I angled myself so that I could overhand throw the penny (cheaper than .02 Euro...my mom insisted. Of course she did) with my right hand. The other thing that made this slightly complicated is that there were two police officers below me near the edge of the fountain, so I couldn't short the throw at all or would risk hitting one of them in the head....not a good thing I'm thinking. I made it. Actually overthrew and hit a rock in the middle of the fountain.

Next we headed towards the Spanish Steps which were also on the way towards our hotel. As we were taking pictures of the Spanish Steps it began to rain. We high tailed it back to the hotel only to ask for a good gelato stand and head back out in the rain (no umbrella still). Crazy Americans! Gelato today was stracciatella (think mint chocolate chip, but with vanilla instead of mint ice cream). Obviously we then went to the pool before going to bed.