Italy Trip - Roma

I'm going to post my Italian Vacation blog in 4 segments, by the 4 hotel stops we had during the tour. The first is Roma, where we stayed at the Hotel Cicerone for 3 nights. We arrived in Rome around 12:30 in the afternoon on Monday, October 8th, after flying for 12 hours from LAX on Sunday afternoon. Our rooms were ready for check in as soon as we arrived. I met my travel partner at LAX, her name is Kathy, too. After a few days everyone called us Kathy-Kathy. We unpacked, sort of, took a short nap, then got ready for dinner and our first night out in Rome. Here we are in front of the hotel bar. I never did have a drink from the bar, I know, amazing.

We walked down the street, all 38 of us, to a restaurant that was ready to serve us a preplanned meal. That's how is was at all the restaurants we went to as a group. It's the only way to serve so many of us at once. The food was always delicious. These artichokes were so good, I even ate the entire stem. This is Veal with prosciutto. I was the beer drinker of the group, as I don't drink wine.

 Here's the restaurant. The neat thing was every night we all changed table partners, so we all got to know each other. Some groups got crazy when they were together, and you know who you are! That's one of them standing there, Judy Kugel. She's a kick!

  The front of our hotel in Rome. We walked (ran) across the street to get to our bus. I didn't realized that the traffic went both ways, I thought it was a one-way street, so I only looked to the right. The last day, I saw it was both directions. They are the craziest drivers ever, especially the scooters.

There are so many buildings that look like this, large and amazing and old. I don't remember the names of them all, but I took picture of everything in Italy (2563 total). We were on our way to the Coliseum on Tuesday. This building was built in 1885, the Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II, houses the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

View from the bus.

Here's the Coliseum!

Our tour group. It was really warm the first few days in Italy and I only brought long pants and Fall type clothes. We always had tour guides explaining it all to us and taking us to the front of the lines.

Looking down into the Coliseum. The wooden floor in the back would have covered the area below where they kept the animals and the gladiators/slaves. There was a manual elevator that brought up the animals through a trap door onto the floor to fight to the death.

 This is a view down below the floor.

 The steps created by Michelangelo, to the Palazzo Senatorio, seat of Rome city government.

 The ruins of the Roman Forum

 We went back to the hotel to regroup, then off again on the bus to Ostia, the ruins of an ancient port, the original port of Rome. This place was uncovered and is amazingly preserved. All the mosiac tile floors, the walls and statues.

 This was a thriving port village where all boats came with imports from other lands, there were warehouses to store the goods, that were then shipped across Italy. A new port was built and this one was abandoned http://www.ostia-antica.org/ this is a link for more information.

 An early version of the public toilets. You and all your closest friends could do your business together.

 We walked for miles, the girls were taking a quick break.

 Vatican Day! 8 am departure so we could enter when the doors opened at 8:30 am. This is the exit door.

I saw the Pope, got the blessing.

 With 25,000 other people.

 Lunch break at the Vatican courtyard. Well balanced meal, fruit, milk and cheese. = Cheesecake and Gelato. Kathy had a donut and gelato.

 Inside St Peters Basilica.

 In front of the Trevi Fountain. Threw in a coin for good luck. Me with Greg and Sue.

 Dinner and Music at Gran Cafe Visconti. We had a super fun evening. 

Here's a YouTube link to 20 minutes of musical entertainment from our dinner that evening. I took this video with the same camera as the photos.

 

Dinners always start with Antipasto.

We couldn't finish the meal, there was so much food.

Tall dark and Italian!