Babymoon-Rome

Hello, friends! Welcome back! Today we are continuing our journey through Italy. I have to mention about our stop at the Autogrill before we got to Rome. It is basically a truck stop, and they were all over the place. Most of the time they spanned across the highway like an arch, but the one we ended up stopping at was just on the side of the road. They had the biggest chip bags and largest popcorn I have ever seen. Think Costco or Sam's Club, and triple that! Big Bang Theory must be popular over there. We watched a marathon while getting ready for bed in London and the series was for sale at Autogrill. We had the best Italian food at the truck stop, up to this point in our trip. Maybe American Italian food is based on Italian gas station food, but nevertheless we thought it was delicious! Plus it was very clean, had free bathrooms, a kids' play area, and a great selection of drink choices. Enough ramblings about the truck stop, onto Rome!

We didn't realize Italy was going to end up being such a huge part of our journey, but we had such a great time while we were there! Even though Italy was such a huge part of our trip, we only spent 24 hours in Rome. We had a lot to see!! We started at the Colosseum. Luckily, I had some other friends visiting Rome in a couple weeks who had an extra set of skip the line tickets which saved us some time!

We did not pay for a tour or download any audio guides so Matt gave us a tour via Wikipedia. It was very informative!

At one point he even showed us a video of what it would have been like to see the Colosseum when it was in its prime.

After the Colosseum, we walked past Palantine Hill. 

We did not go in, but it looked like it would be fun to see the home where Caesar used to live. 

I saw a stone that I thought was shaped just like Nebraska!

We also walked past a park where they used to race chariots. The amount of history is just so crazy!

We walked past several other buildings, but I can't even tell you what they are.

We thought this building was really cool! I think it's called Piazza Venezia.

We walked some more to find the area sacra which is where Caesar was killed.

More walking until we found the Pantheon.

We made a wish at the Trevi Fountain.

We stopped for gelato and then walked into this tiny chapel that was absolutely gorgeous! It was totally off the beaten path and not on our list of things to see.

Our final stop took us to the Spanish Steps to watch the sunset.

At the top of the steps sits another cathedral so we went to check it out while waiting for the sun to set a little bit more.

Such a beautiful view! We walked A TON today. As we looked over the city we realized we saw a lot, but there were so many places we didn't see. There were tons of buildings we didn't even get close to!

We hopped on public transportation to get back to our hotel. I must say, Rome seemed to be the easiest city to get around by public transportation. As we walked back to our hotel we saw tons of these trees. Doesn't is seem like they belong in Africa?

That night, Matt had quite the experience ordering pizza for us. There was a little pizza place behind our hotel so Matt walked over there to order. It was pure Italian speaking, and he said he struggled a bit! But the pizza tasted great so he seemed to do a good job, and I think it will be a great memory for him! See you back here tomorrow so I can show you our visit to the Vatican.