Intro to Rome

We arrived in Rome around mid-day on Sunday. I had decided to take public transit to the hotel from the airport, mainly just to get a feel for how it everything works here. It was actually quite easy, there’s a train from the airport outside of town that is an express to Rome’s main train station, Termini. Once there, it’s a long schlepp to the subway station, where we discovered there are not alway escalators or elevators available moving between levels…not good news when you’ve been on a plane all night, you’re hauling suitcases and it’s 85 degrees and humid.

Anyway, we made to our hotel, the Hotel Lumiere, small but nice, only a few blocks from the famous Spanish Steps. After we cooled off a bit, we changed into cool clothes and hit the streets.

A street performer in Piazza del Popolo

The tourist areas were very crowded, and the day was quite hot, but we wandered in and out of some beautiful little churches, had our first Italian pizza (very good!), and just generally tried to get our bearings.

The famous Trevi Fountain...we'll try again later...

We had a nice dinner at Ristorante “34”, recommended by the hotel staff, then we wandered around the Spanish Steps area before going to bed early (quite jet-lagged).

Dusk falls over Rome as seen from the top of the Spanish Steps

The next morning we walked down to the “Ancient Rome” area where we toured the Roman Forum and the Colosseum.

All that's left of a once-mighty government...

This says it all about the layers of history present in Rome.

The floor of the Colosseum has been partly restored.

I love to watch the sightseers...

We then adopted the traditional Italian idea of a break in the mid afternoon and cooled off at the hotel.  Then we went out again, toured a couple of interesting churches, found ourselves near the Pantheon, the last great imperial structure still intact. We had dinner in a little alley way ristorante, then some gelato at Piazza Navono, finally headed home after a busy day.