we arrived in rome via munich via philadelphia via SFO. let me tell you, that’s a lot of travel before you finally reach your destination. our first task was to get from the airport to our hotel. i wasn’t quite sure on the details of that, but the hotel offered a shuttle service from the airport to hotel for a whopping $75 per person. i figured we could find other options.

from the airport, we took a train that would take us to the main train station in rome. we had a lot harder of a time buying tickets to this train than i thought because we couldn’t find the ticket counter. it turns out that the rome train terminal is much, much larger than i had thought and where i thought it ended was actually where the rest of the terminal was. once we got situated, we took a bus from the termini to somewhere near our hotel.

it took a little bit to figure out that newspaper stands sold tickets to the buses, but once that was figured out we were on our way. i had looked at the bus routes before we left home so i knew which bus to take and i knew our hotel was near the pantheon, so we took a bus that dropped us off near the pantheon…sort of.

from there we stumbled around looking for our hotel. the actual hotel was not far from the bus stop, but we had a hard time finding street signs. we realized that the street signs were actually on buildings along the street and eventually found our way to the first hotel. we rested a bit and headed off to do some sightseeing.

we checked out the victor emmanuel monument on the way to see the colosseum. we had our first meal at a little cafe near the colosseum.

i had the world’s FLATEST lasagna (or so i thought) for my first meal. i didn’t think that there really were any layers, but it turns out that there were 5. 5 very flat layers. it turns out that the two times that i had lasagna in italy, they were both about this flat. i wonder if this is true throughout italy or if i just happened to get two flat ones.

we strolled around gawking at the old and new structures next to each other. rome is full of scooters and cars and crossing the street was actually a little scary at first. just make eye contact, walk at a regular pace, and you’ll be fine. that’s what the tour book said. we tried, but that’s still a lot of faith that you’re putting in the driver’s hands. we got in pretty late in the day so after a little walking around, we headed back to the hotel for the night.

i’ll see if i can actually remember what we did each day, but here’s the rest of my rome pictures.