Day 1: I Fall in Love

Whew! The last 48 hours have been crazy and fast paced. I have so much to write about and I am seriously exhausted so I will see what I can do right now...

So after sleeping for 12 hours and waking up around 9 am on Saturday, we drag ourselves out of bed, get ready and get a cab in to the city. We go straight to the Colosseum and go about finding out how to get tickets and such. Well, the line is FOREVER long so we finally decided to join a tour instead of waiting in a 3 hour line. That way we get right in and learn something in the process. The Colosseum is awesome. It is sort of amazing to see in person after having seen it a million times in pictures or movies or whatever. The tour was really interesting. I didn't realize that gladiators were slaves and were forced to compete. He talked about the movie Gladiator and then talked about who those people were really and it was all very intriguing. Amazing that people once thought it was fun to watch animals tear people apart. I got a little queasy in the sun hearing about it, especially since we had sort of skipped breakfast.

The tour we took included a tour of Palantine Hill as well, so after a break, some water and splitting a half can of Pringles we were feeling much better. The line for Palantine was also crazy long, so we were very glad that our tour group got to go straight to the front. I really didn't know much about this, but it was basically the place where Rome started. The rich and famous made their homes on these hills, then it turned in to a mall of sorts, then a church, then a palace, etc. Then it was abandoned, filled with trash and not seen again for centuries until people rediscovered it in about the 1800s I think. So all around the hill is where people worked and lived and the Roman Forum are the ruins of the life that took place there. So we saw all those ruins and then we finally decided it was time to eat and grabbed a panino from a little stand by the Forum (FYI - I ordered totally in Italian! Very exciting). It wasn't great but I was starving so we scarfed that down and then went to the Mamertine Prison. It is said that Peter was held here for being a Christian and there is an upside down cross inside to signify his crucifixion upside down. We went down in to the cell and Jason couldn't even stand up. It made me claustrophobic being there for 2 minutes. Can't imagine being imprisoned there.

After that we walked up to Capitol Hill Square and went to the Capitoline Museum. There is tons of art and frescoes in this museum, a lot of them having to do with Romulus and Remus and their she-wolf mother. The beginning of Rome is a myth that the two boys were raised by her and I think Romulus began Rome or something. Can't remember the whole story.

By this point it was sort of getting late in the day and I realized I had yet to have any coffee all day! No wonder I had a headache. So we decided to get a cafe, see the Peter in Chains basilica, then take the Metro over to this huge Piazza at the start of the Via Del Corso, which is this long straight street with tons of shopping. Now, Jason had been 'practicing' to drink coffee for months. He doesn't like coffee but he wanted to have cafe in the cafes in Italy so he started with Mochas at Starbucks, then went to soy lattes, then double lattes, etc so he could get used to coffee. So this is when he had his first espresso. Now, espresso to ME is strong, but he was hilarious trying to get it all down. You would have thought he was eating a lemon. After that we went to the St. Peter in Chains basilica. This church holds the chains that Peter was chained with in Jerusalem as well as Michelangelo's famous sculpture of Moses.

After this we hopped the Metro to the Piazza del Poppolo. Now up until this point I hadn't really had a ton of time to just stroll and enjoy things. Sort of rushing around up until this point. But this piazza is huge and beautiful and everyone is out and the weather is perfect. We just sort of strolled down the Via Del Corso for a couple of hours shopping and such. We finally made our way over to the Spanish Steps and just sat and people watched for a bit. I am totally in love with Rome. I have heard so many bad things about it that I guess I just expected to go, see the historical stuff, but really enjoy Italy in other cities. SO not the case. First of all, it is just beautiful. The buildings and streets and sights are beautiful! It is also not dirty. Everyone told me to expect Rome to be really dirty. I would say it is probably cleaner or at least as clean as any other city I have ever been to. We have gotten lost about a dozen times so far, but we just have fun finding our way around and seeing what their is to see. It is wonderful. Definitely my favorite city so far =). Haha.

So finally it is late and we haven't had dinner and haven't really eaten anything good so far so we try to find a place that isn't too touristy looking that has a good menu and we go in. Oh. My. Gosh. We had some seriously tasty food. We had a caprese salad to start with with tomatoes that actually tasted like tomatoes and such good mozzerella. Also, every table was given this bowl of stuff that we were both a little timid to try. Turns out it was a soup with chick peas and cuttle fish, but I just slathered my bread in it. It was the tastiest thing yet. By the time we get our pasta I am almost full but still manage to shovel down quite a bit of my tagliolini pasta with artichokes and tomato and Jason had this awesome Rigatone type pasta with tomato and bacon. So delish. Well, after dinner we decide we need what else for dessert but gelato! There is literally a gelateria on every stinkin corner, but we wanted good gelato so we stopped at a hotel to ask for some really good stuff. He directed us to a restaurant and I ordered a cup of pistacchio (again totally in Italian - feeling pretty proud of myself at that time ;) ) and holy cow it was good. I am not really an ice cream girl, but gelato is just different. Tastes so fresh and good. Yummy.

So by this time it is about 11 o clock and we are not tired. That's right those of you who know me. I was up past ten o clock! We were having so much fun and congratulating ourselves for being such night owls. We decided we like Rome Kelli and Jason better than Dallas Kelli and Jason. Dallas Kelli and Jason are kind of boring. =)

So we stayed out just walking around and stopped at a pub for a pint before calling it quits and heading back to the hotel.

Whew! Doesn't that sound like an active day? Well it was. However, tomorrow goes downhill and we got absolutely nothing accomplished. Peak your interest? Good. Stay tuned...