Rome (the first) - big 'ole old buildings
10/19 - First dinner in Rome
To wrap up our travel day to Rome we stopped in for drinks at a museum cafeteria nearby our hotel. The dining area was in a room with floor to ceiling rainbow and floral wallpaper, and was itself an art installation. Tallying a few more spritzes onto the counter, we got a chance to decompress before heading back into the city for dinner nearby at Emma Pizzeria. On first glance, it looked like a pretty small space, but the host led us down and back into a cavernous space with a full charcuterie counter and many more tables. The dinner was really tasty - we had a pizza, and some cacio e pepe (a theme that will repeat a few times over the next few days). After dinner we made our way back to our hotel and crashed before our early morning the next day exploring the Colosseum and Roman Forum.
10/20 - Colosseum, Forum, Formula 1
We got up and moving early to reach the Colosseum when it opened, and discovered quickly that the marathon was in town. The Rome Half Marathon was actively happening today, which meant extra large throngs of people around the monuments that we were visiting. After passing plenty of people with marathon bibs, we found an easy breakfast around the corner from the Colosseum to start our visit.
The big focus of our day on the twentieth was sightseeing around the Colosseum. Rather than book one of the many many tours, we opted to explore at our own pace with the Rick Steves audio guide / walking tour. We used a TON of the Rick Steves tours in Rome (and planned a few dinners based on his recommendations) and were pretty impressed overall. The Colosseum itself was hugely impressive, although the museum portion was unfortunately closed for maintenance. Still, exploring the rows of the stands and looking down into the lower portions was a great experience. The sheer architectural willpower necessary to build something like that is astounding. Arriving right when the Colosseum opened was definitely the move. The place was very busy, swarmed with tour groups almost immediately after it opened.
Our next stop was the Roman Forum - once again, guided by Rick. His audio guides heavily feature lines like “imagine now the throngs of people walking along the Via Sacra,” which was a very cool way to experience these ancient spaces. Even more architectural marvels here - especially the three massive porticos, which themselves were a smaller part of an even larger portico. Something about being open-air constructions makes those especially impressive, even compared to places like St. Peter’s Basilica (coming in a future installment). We stopped in to the museum at the Roman Forum as well, then made our way around to Palatine Hill and explored the grounds / gardens there.
After fighting the post-marathon crowds back to our hotel, we had a lazy afternoon. Ariel had some homework to catch up on, we had some notes to take for future blog posts, and were tuckered out after so much sightseeing. For dinner, we stopped in to Cul de Sac around the corner. It was a really nice little wine bar, with an immense binder of wines available. Truly a manuscript of options. The food was great as well, per usual - a house made lasagna and carbonara. And that evening, it was the Formula 1 USA Grand Prix! We briefly considered a sports bar, but ended up not being able to confidently find one we liked so instead settled for streaming it in the hotel room. (F1 2024 spoilers ahead) Fittingly, Ferrari pulled off a 1-2 win while we were here in Italy visiting.
10/21 - More sights! More engineering! More sculptures!
The next sightseeing target on our hit list was the Pantheon. We got breakfast along the way at Saint Eustachio, which was probably the stand out coffee shop so far of the trip. We’ve had a set of Saint Eustachio espresso cups in our house for years and years (thanks Bonnie and Peter - Ariel’s folks!) so it was really cool to be able to see where they came from. Arriving early at the Pantheon, we got our tickets right ahead of a guy buying 51 individual tickets for an unknown reason, and got to see it with about as few tourists as possible thanks to our early arrival. Crazy engineering prowess here as well. The dome is genuinely so impressive in person, and seeing the sun rise and start to move along the inside of the eye at the top of the dome was magical.
After the Pantheon, we finished up the back half of Rick Steves “Heart of Rome” self guided walk and tour. That led us past the Trevi Fountain (unfortunately drained for maintenance, and we decided that it would be bad luck to try and bean one of the workers cleaning it out with a coin) and a Bialetti store. +1 moka pot to our personal tally, bringing our total collection to four. Continuing on to the Spanish Steps, we strolled up and past the sinking boat fountain. To feel extra fancy and take a breather, we decided to attempt a coffee at the Hassler hotel at the top of the steps. At an absolutely bonkers $1,700 per night for a standard room, managing to make our way to the dining room for coffee felt like a small intrusion in its own right. The coffee itself, however, was quite good!
After our coffee break we moseyed back over to our hotel and grabbed a quick pizza lunch at a place called “La Zozzone”. We dropped off some of our purchases from the day before heading back out to the Capitoline Museum. This was one of the more varied museums we’ve seen so far, featuring lots of sculpture, painting, and tile work. The Neptune fountain was particularly impressive, as was the overlook on the Roman Forum from the lower level. This was probably the best view of the forum we found, including Palatine Hill. It was a beautiful, and much quieter, overlook on the entire forum and many of the most famous temples (including the temple of Jupiter).
At the end of the day, we headed to Tavernetta 48 (another nearby spot - we ended up in a little foodie hub with our hotel, which was awesome) for an appropriately slow and super tasty dinner. The restaurant had a porcini mushroom seasonal special, as well as some truffle-focused dishes that were really delicious. Wrapping up the night, we wandered our way slowly back to the hotel and prepared for another big day of sightseeing the next day - this time, the Vatican!
Spritzes drunk: 14
Espresso shots consumed: 40
Gelato scoops: 13
Liters of wine drunk: 7
Cats seen: 5