Day 1 in Rome: Old Rome

Happy Birthday to me! We headed out early this morning and caught an 8:30 water bus to the train station.  It was a lot of fun to see the countryside from the train, and it's such a simple trip.  We bought tickets online ahead of time, and bought them for the fast train, so the ride was just under four hours from Venice to Rome.  The train is great, the seats are comfy and we reserved seats at a table so that we could play cards and use the computer. 

We arrived in Rome in the early afternoon.  After grabbing a quick sandwich we headed out to see the Colosseum. 

Unfortunately there was a bunch of scaffolding up around the outside of the Colosseum, but more of it was open to walk around than the last time we both visited Rome.  We opted for a video tour where they give you an ipod touch equipped with an app that walks you through the Colossuem, which was pretty neat. 

When we were done we walked across the street to the Palatino and explored the park and ruins.  When you climb up the top of the hill there are some really great views of Rome.  While at the top of the hill we saw green Parrots! Something I did not expect in Italy! We traveled back down the other side and exited by the Roman Forum, taking in some of those ruins as well.  The sun was quite hot that day so we were glad for a bit of cloud cover when it came. 

Something we learned this trip… make dinner reservations ahead of time! This really only applies to the few restaurants that have awesome reviews in our guide book or on Trip Advisor, but we found that all the places we wanted to eat were booked way ahead of time! I don't know why we didn't think of that, it's the same way in NYC! Silly us.  No worries though, we've great meals everywhere we've been so far.

For my birthday dinner we opted to have dinner in the Campo di Fiore around the corner from our hotel.  This Campo seems to be lively 24/7.  During the day it hosts a colorful market of fruit, vegetables, flowers, cookware, spices and clothing.  At night the square is skirted by outdoor dining tables for all the restaurants and bars.  We were told it becomes quite the party later at night. Given that we are old and 30 now, we didn't make it to the party stage of the square!

We started chatting with the two women at the table next to us and pretty much talked the whole evening with them.  Turns out that the older one lived in NYC for over 20 years, made Epanadas that she sold to Dean & DeLuca, and was a writer.  Her friend was a bit younger and has two kids that now live in NYC and she owns an apartment on Amsterdam and 96^th that her son lives in.   Both are originally from Argentina but have lived basically all over.  They were very interesting and we had a ton of fun with them.  We topped the night off with some of the best gelato we've had so far this trip at a funky place called Flor right in the square.