Rome was not built in a day

Our second day in Rome was awesome! Ryan decided to take a shot at blogging too! 


So today we had planned to go to the Vatican, but because it is expected to rain tomorrow, we decided to do the Colosseum today instead since it is outdoors.  The Colosseum opens earlier and is farther away from us than the Vatican.  

Nicole checking me out while we wait for the metro

Metro to the Colosseum arriving

Due to the earlier opening along with the farther distance and us taking the metro the wrong direction for a stop (definitely Nicole's fault), we arrived at the Colosseum a bit later than we wanted to.  With the late arrival came the consequences of extreme lines.  Nicole said she read that Wednesdays were the least busy days at the Colosseum, but this place seemed more crowded than Disneyland on Christmas.  There were lines everywhere and we had no idea where to go to get a ticket.  

Nicole Took this while waiting in line to get a ticket

We luckily found the ticket line and the whole time we were waiting not only in the ticket line, but also the line to get in, we were being approached by people selling tours of the Colosseum.  Their main selling point was to skip the lines to get into the Colosseum which seemed appealing since the lines looked so long (would have been an extra 20 Euros per person).  With our budget in mind, we were able to resist the tour salesmen and we got in after about an hour of waiting in lines.  The salesmen were telling people 2 to 3 hours..... 

Us in the actual line to get in

After getting in, the lower area seemed very crowded (probably because the bathroom was there) so we headed upstairs to get some amazing views and selfies of-course.  We found an excellent photo spot, but it was very crowded.  We ended up waiting / pushing our way to the front and we each took some photos of each other.  After leaving the area, Nicole felt that the pictures I took of her were sub par, so we ended up going back and working out way to the front again.... this time not only did I take better pictures of her, but we also took the below selfie together.

One of my favorite things we learned about the Colosseum is that they would reenact naval battles by removing the wooden floor and filling it up with water.  Crazy huh?

So Ryan apparently has "writers block" and is unable to continue finishing the post....psh. I'm just going to throw up some pictures now since Ryan pretty much covered our time at the Colosseum pretty well.

This place is huge.

Ryan waiting in line to fill our water bottle

Finally. I was able to take about 1000 photos before he came back with the water

Statue heads

My pro photo skills.

This is the photo I made Ryan retake, the previous one had a handful of other people in it too. 

We found a cat in the Colosseum 

The Colosseum was pretty cool to see but we actually enjoyed going to the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill the best! There were ruins everywhere at this archaeological site and it was huge! You could get lost walking around trying to see everything. We didn't have a tour guide or anything so we only knew what we were looking at when they had information signs (which were few and far between). While we were at the Colosseum we received a low memory alert on our phone so we had to be frugal with our picture taking.... so here are some photos from the site.

Ryan wanted a photo of the ground because he though it was hilarious that someone was trying to navigate the stone walkway with a stroller

When we finished walking around it was past noon and we were ready to eat something. A place was suggested to us that was about 30 minute walk....we decided to go for it. 

We found a cool fountain. 

This place had some cool statues on it

This is the back of the building (taken from the Forum area) Look at the statues on top

The fountain on the other side had water

The restaurant we went to is called Carlo Menta, we just walked up and sat down ready to devour some food!(Thank you DLC for the suggestion!!) We decided to split the tourist meal which started with an appetizer of toast with tomato and some lettuce stuff on top (so delicious, Ryan wasn't too fond of it).

For the first course we ordered lasagna. Ryan is convinced it was the best lasagna he's ever eaten.... but we still have a few more days in Italy so we will see. 

 For the second course we ordered a pork cutlet with potatoes. We weren't expecting fries for our potatoes, but they were good. 

Ryan took this photo...I need to teach him a thing or two about taking food pictures.....

I forgot to mention that before, during, and after our meal we were sipping on their house wine which was SOOOOOO good. We ordered the LITER .....

Liter of vino

I told Ryan we didn't have to finish it if we were getting too buzzed.... I think he took that as a challenge because he made us finish the dang thing. 

Since we were nice and toasty after our meal we decided we could walk the 45 minute walk back to our apartment. It was actually a pretty pleasant walk back since we went along the river almost the whole way. 

Some cool streets

We are too happy walking back. 

That is Ryan's finger

We stumbled across the Vatican on the way back

See those breaks in the fence? I told Ryan I thought he could fit through them since he's lost some weight. I was right. I tried first and failed. 

After he slid through he wasn't able to squeeze back the other way

Multiple attempt at different locations... he was stuck on the other side. It was hilarious

Vatican backdrop

We are only staying about a 10 minute walk from the Vatican which will be nice for tomorrow. On our way back we were being approached by a ton of sales dudes trying to get us to do a private tour.... Ryan thought that if he spoke to them in Spanish that they would leave us alone...wrong. Apparently they know Italian, English, and Spanish. Lol. I told him he needs to say something in Polish and that might work... we will try that tomorrow. Before we headed home we decided to get some more gelato at the same place we went yesterday and tried some new flavors, I liked both but we couldn't remember the names. 

Tomorrow we will see the Vatican, stay tuned. Ciao!