We arrived in Rome after watching the police in the London airport on Segways (Sean loved that!). We took the train into town and our hotel was next to the train station, which is a great location because we were centrally located, but very noisy. We had a VERY small hotel room with three small single beds (smaller than a regular single) and a REALLY small bathroom (reminded me of an airplane bathroom). Of course the bidet was fastinating to Sean - try explaining one of those to a 5 year old! The shower was 2 ft. by 2 ft - hardly room to move! But it was clean and the staff was good. It was a warm room, and they couldn't turn down the heat, so we opened the window when we could. Until of course we broke the window and the it wasn't soundproof anylonger! But that was only a problem for 2 nights. Our first night we found a cute Italian restaurant (it was just how I pictured it: quaint and cozy with small tables right next to each other). We had great food and wine, but as we would soon learn, poor service. The next morning we had breakfast at the hotel, which consisted of the following - every day, for 5 days: ham, cheese, white buns, croissants, corn flakes, warm milk, coffee and juice. There was Nutella, so Sean thought it was great to have a chocolate bun every day for breakfast! I had a ham and cheese sandwich for breakfast every day...so I won't be eating those for awhile!
The first day we went to the Colosseum via subway (VERY dirty, crowded and graffiti all over...I wouldn't ride it alone at night - too scary!). We walked out of the subway and there it was! So cool! The pictures above don't do it justice. It is huge, and Sean was fastinated by its history - now he is playing gladiator all the time! We rented the audio guide, but as we learned is standard in Rome, nothing was marked, so we were never really sure what the audioguide was talking about! But it was still really cool and we had some great views of the city from there. The top picture of it shows where the stage would have been, and underneath it was storage and passageways for the animals and prisoners/gladiators. The gladiators in the photo above asked if we wanted pictures with them, and then after we were done taking them, they told us it was standard to pay 10 euros each! No way! We've been many places with dressed up "characters" and didn't have to pay, so we decided to give them 2 euros and figured it was a scam...the first of many tries to scam tourists out of money we discovered. It was a bright and sunny day and we strolled back towards the hotel and had lunch in an old piazza cafe (I tried an espresso - yuck!) and had our first of many gelato's (the best ice cream!). We ate the gelato at the Santa Maria Maggiore church piazza.
After another wonderful pasta dinner (Sean ate lots of spagetti with butter in Italy), we wandered to the Trevi Fountain. Sean loved throwing in money and taking pictures there. Appartently if you throw money into the fountain, you are certain to come back to Italy. It worked for me - I threw in money during my student abroad trip and I came back! The fountain is really beautiful - it is basically coming right out of a building and at night is all light up. Lots of people there, and the scam artists trying to get you to buy something, or let them take your picture. We made sure our money was secure from pickpockets and didn't have any problems with that the whole trip. But I can see how easily pickpockets can make a living - I couldn't believe how many wallets I saw in back pockets or in purses that were unzipped!
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