Allora...Roma

We had two full days to spend in Rome and the Vatican which was definitely not enough. Since we knew we had a lot to accomplish, we packed as much into each day as we could. Based on the recommendation of our Airbnb host, we purchased the OMNIA Roma pass which was totally worth it. With the pass, we got access to St. Peter's Basilica, the Vatican museums and Sistine Chapel, 2 other sites from a list of 6 choices, 72 hours of any form of public transportation in the city, admittance to one of the hop on hop off buses that tours the city, and the chance to skip the lines at many of the attractions. We had also signed up for a pizza and pasta making "experience" through Airbnb before we arrived which was scheduled for midday Wednesday. Since that would consume much of our time on Wednesday, we aimed to accomplish as much as we could on Tuesday in the city.

Day 1 - The Vatican and the Colosseum

We made sure to get an early start to fit in all our visits. We started at St. Peter's Basilica. We arrived, and there was already a line wrapping most of the way around the square, but thanks to our OMNIA cards, we were able to walk right in (already worth it!). The Basilica was beautiful and impressively large. It was like we were working our way up to the big leagues with the other cathedrals we had visited up until this point. After looking around for a while, we got in line to walk up the dome to a platform that looks out from above. The whole way up was a total of 551 steps! It didn't help that they were spiraling up, so it felt never-ending and made us dizzy. At the top, we got an awesome view of the inside of the Basilica. When we were ready to go, we discovered that there were more stairs! We thought we were at the top, but it kept going! We made our way up the dome and the walls got narrow and started angling inward since we were inside the dome part of the building. That was a bit disorienting. We got to the top and stepped outside to get an amazing view of the city from the top. It was a lot of climbing, but totally worth it!

View from the top of the dome

We didn't get to spend a lot of time at the top since we had a scheduled entry time to the Vatican museums and the Sistine Chapel. We went down to meet up with our guide to take us over to the museum. It's a funny site to see all of the different tour guides in the Vatican trying to lead groups in all different directions in all different languages. They have to get creative about what they carry to make sure their participants can follow the right person and avoid getting lost. We took a long walk around to the museum, received our ticket, and were free to roam. We spent some time looking at artwork in the museums then made our way to the Sistine Chapel. There are tons of people shoved into the room and told to be silent. Soon the volume increases, so the guards are forced to loudly announce over the microphone to be silent. I think they're fighting a losing battle. After soaking in as much of the art as we could, (there's a lot to look at!) we walked out to find some lunch. We grabbed a bite and spent a little time in the nearby courtyard enjoying the weather, surrounding architecture, and people watching.

We decided that we would visit the Colosseum as one of our additional attractions. We chose to ride the hop on hop off bus over there so we could  see what else we might be interested in seeing while in town since it would pass most of the attractions. We passed a cool area that we decided to come back to on Wednesday. We arrived at the Colosseum stop and walked all the way around trying to find the entrance. We got a great 360 degree view! We finally found where to enter with our cards and explored the exhibit within the perimeter and went to check out the center as well. The site was used for so many purposes throughout history and a lot of the building is in ruin, so it's difficult to imagine what it was really like. There are several different models in the exhibit that portray possible designs that help fill in the gaps based on archaeological evidence. The most shocking thing to me about the Colosseum (and the rest of the ruins in the area) was the location. It's so central to the city, which is different from what I expected. The contrast between the ruins and the modern buildings is always intriguing.

After our visit, we had walked a lot, were hungry, and ready for a sitting break. We tried finding a place to get some dinner, but most restaurants don't open for dinner until about 8pm. We found an Irish pub that was open and got some delicious Irish-Italian pasta (lol).

Day 2 - Pizza and Pasta Making

We got to sleep in a little later on Wednesday since our experience didn't begin until 10:30. We met our host at the end of the metro line, and he drove us to his beautiful piece of land where he has his materials set up for classes. It was an amazingly serene landscape just outside of town where we were surrounded by grassy area, trees, and flowers. He had a tent set up with a couple pizza ovens where we worked. We started by making our pasta dough and learning different techniques for different styles of pasta. We made our pizzas once the oven was heated to the right temperature. We got to eat our pizzas after they were cooked (which was extremely fast in the pizza oven). We also enjoyed some wine made specially for our host locally. Then we decided which kinds of pasta we were going to make to eat and made enough for our second course. We made both a carbonara (without meat for me!) and pesto. They were both delicious! We finished it off with small portions of tiramisu that he had made which were amazing! It was a ton of food which lasted us the rest of the day.

Pasta

Pizza

After our experience, we had some time to fit in a few more sites on our list. We came back to the Piazza Venezia which we discovered on the bus on Tuesday and explored a bit. There were some very impressive buildings and statues. All around the Piazza and towards the Colosseum people were setting up seats for what looked like a parade route. It is Republic Day here in Italy on Friday and there is a massive parade every year (we'll have to celebrate in Venice!). We walked from Piazza Venezia over to the Trevi Fountain and made sure to toss in a coin! Lastly, we headed over to the Foro Romano as our last site to be included in our pass. We were pretty exhausted at this point after eating so much food, drinking wine, and walking around in the hot sun, so we didn't stay long. We made sure to make use of the free restroom and walked around a bit to see what good views we could find of the ancient scenes.

Piazza Venezia

Trevi

Trevi

Even though we only had two days, we made the most of them! We have a bit more time to spend in Venice, so we will probably have some more relaxing time to make up for our busy schedule so far this week. Ciao ciao!