Roma!

We began the day with breakfast at a restaurant on Piazza Il Campo, which came with our hotel booking. As we ate our breakfast we watched the piazza come to life for the day. We then returned to our B&B and headed out for the train station to move onto Rome!

Continuing the theme of our whole trip, the train stopped on the tracks for 20 minutes, making us 20 minutes late pulling into Florence where we were connecting from a regional train to a high-speed train to Rome. Our layover between trains was 20 minutes. We arrived just in time to run up to the doors as they were closing, with a gaggle of other travelers close at our heels. I held my tongue as one of the train employees smirked and told us that once the doors were closed they couldn't open them and we'd have to purchase new tickets, even though he clearly new what was happening and could have told them not to close the doors when a group of ten or so people were running together toward the train. Instead of purchasing a new ticket at the machines like he told us to do, I found a very nice woman working at the ticket office and showed her that we had been on the delayed regional. She went out of her way to personally help us get onto the next high-speed train to Rome, one that was even faster than the one we had originally booked, without having to buy another ticket or pay any extra. The catch was that we had to go without reserved seats, but it turned out to be a relatively empty train and we found seats no problem. Relaxing a little from the stress of missing our original train, we enjoyed a lunch of panini, grapes, and Parmesan cheese that we had picked from the grocery store on the way to the station in Siena.

Eventually we arrived in Rome a half hour later than we had planned and it took a little longer to get to our hotel than we'd planned, which through off the rest of the day but we pushed on. We wanted to purchase the Roma Pass (which  gives you use of public transportation and two museums free of charge, plus a reduction in price for other state-run museums and events) because we heard that there was a separate, shorter line for the Colosseum. We asked our hotel the best place to buy them and they actually sell the passes so we didn't have to waste any time looking!

We walked a couple blocks down the road to visit the Colosseum, something Russ has wanted to see since completing a report on it in the 5th grade and the thing he has been most looking forward to on this trip. (I forgot to mention that our hotel room has a balcony with a view of the Colosseum!)

Upon arriving we found that the Roma Pass/reserved ticket line was the long line and there was no line to purchase tickets! We soon found out that this was due to security measures that we have encountered at many sites in Italy that are significantly increased from when I was here years ago and, therefore, hadn't anticipated. We eventually made it through the line and Russ was able to fulfill his childhood dream! We also have a night time tour of the Colosseum booked for Saturday, so we didn't linger too long, but hurried over to the Roman Forum because we only had an hour before it closed. It was a lot bigger than I had remembered and we had to rush through, but it was neat to see all the ruins up close.

Thoroughly exhausted from the day we headed back to our hotel, but not before stopping around the corner for some pizza and fried mozzarella!