Rome: First Full Day

The weather forecast for Monday was heavy wind and rain in the afternoon. So we wanted to get an early start to beat the rain and crowds. For breakfast, we stopped at a small cafe across the street from the hotel. These cafes are everywhere and very popular with the locals. We learned that most people eat a the counter because you pay more if you sit down, but we weren't in a big hurry, so we ordered coffee and pastries and sat at a table. All the food looked good, and it was. We returned to this cafe the next morning.

Once again, we took the metro to the Colosseum, now being experts on riding the metro. It was cloudy outside but there were no lines to enter the Colosseum and we bypassed the ticket line because we had our Roma passes. Once inside, we all started the Rick Steves audio tour of the Colosseum on our iPods. We quickly realized that we could skip the first two tracks to get to the important and interesting parts. We followed the audio tour, holding the accompanying PDF print-outs of the site's layout, taking photos along the way. After about an hour we were finished and headed over to The Forum.

The Forum is not defined by one single building or ruin, but rather many small ruins spread out beneath a hillside. Following the audio tour was not always easy to follow. We found ourselves walking down a wrong path and looking at the wrong building a few times. The rain begin to fall lightly, and since I left my umbrella in the hotel, I put up my jacket's hood to shield the rain. Once again, within an hour we were done and proceeded to walk to the next site, the Pantheon.

This site is one big building. It doesn't look like much from the outside, but the inside is decorated with statues of both Roman pre-Christian and Roman Christian periods. There is a hole in the center of the domed celine, which lets both light and rain through. At this time light was shining in. We left there and began to look for a place to eat. We found a nice sidewalk cafe and all ordered pizzas. They tasted great, with thin crust and melted cheese. This was also the sunniest part of the day, and we were eating outside, watching people pass by who looked enviously at our lunch.

Our destination was actually on the other side of this building, a "square" with three fountains. There were artists painting pictures, vendors selling their handy-works, and I even ran into the man who was sitting next to me on the flight from New York to Rome. The next stop was Roman Museum. We wandered through the narrow and jagged streets, stopping at various sites for photos. Somehow, we got turned around and ended up back at the Colosseum, where it began to rain very hard. We headed to the metro and took it to the train station, which was the nearest stop to the museum. From there we walked in the rain, but never found the museum. What we thought was the museum was closed, and later we realized the museum was in a different building, but still closed.

At this point we were all getting wet, even with umbrellas, so we went back to the hotel to change into dry clothes, rest, and get ready for dinner. Even though there were many resturants near our hotel, most were fancy and expensive. We ended up eating at the Hard Rock Cafe again, because the night before, we saw people eating cheeseburgers which looked and smelled very good. We needed to redeem our not-so-good meal from the day before.

I ended up ordering a pulled pork sandwich, which was pretty good, but I had a taste of the hamburger and it was much better. I ended the meal with a hot fudge brownie with ice cream. Mmmmm good. It was nearing 7 PM, late enough for the night to end. We were going to the Vatican the next day and needed rest. On the second night of an oversees trip, you always seem to get less sleep. I might of had four hours of sleep, but the next morning I was ready to go walking again.