All roads lead to Rome...

We were welcomed to Rome with a welcome drink on the patio at our B&B. And we all immediately fell in love with Rome. 

Our Bed & Breakfast was very cute with an old Victorian style. We settled in and then went to dinner at “the best restaurant in Rome” per our hotel shuttle driver. It was delizioso! We all ordered pizza and were not disappointed… although the boys were eyeing the huge sizzling steaks that passed by. Meat is always a little dicey to order off of a menu in a foreign language (see horse incident post). 

 

On Wednesday we were off to the Coliseum and Roman Forum. John was really excited to see all of the Roman ruins. We rented audio guides so we would know what we were looking at but found them to be confusing and really long winded. And John knew most of the information from watching the History Channel anyway. We also noted that John got an audio guide tan line on the back of his neck to show for his crazy escapades in Rome. We all loved the Coliseum though and liked hearing the stories about how they would bring out animals, nature scenes, and the gladiators.Our favorite Coliseum fact was that the Senators had special seats with their names engraved in the stone (no Lazy Boys at that time...). When a new Senator took over, they would chisel out the new name.

 

 

 

 

 

We hit the other big sites on a walk up one of the main streets in the city that afternoon. We made a wish at the Trevi fountain, ate gelato by the Pantheon, and walked by the Spanish steps. We were on a roll to fulfilling our Rome goal of eating gelato every day. Lofty goal, yes, but we were determined. 

 

 

 

 

We made it back to the hotel and decided to meet back out on the welcome drink terrace in 15 minutes. Jenn and John were the only ones to make it back out of the room. Michael and I felt sick and ended up staying in the room for the rest of the night, so Jenn and John went out to dinner to the same restaurant as the night before. After staring at the menus for a minute they realized they were in English, and John got to order the fantasy steak. All 2.2 pounds of it. Minimum order. 

Perhaps not surprisingly, when we woke up on Thursday John also felt sick. We had tickets to the Vatican that day, so Jenn, John, and I went while Michael was too sick to move. It was a very slow day since neither John nor I felt good either, so we saw the big square, beelined it to the Sistine chapel, and then got back to the hotel as soon as possible. Needless to say, all of our gelato dreams were crushed that day. And one of the four of us now knows how to use a bidet.    

 

 

Jenn and I went out to dinner and had the best nettle pesto gnocchi and big spaghetti noodles with olive oil and tomatoes ever prepared. The men guarded the hotel that night. We were a sad group.

Friday morning we flew back to Geneva...