Next Day!

The original plan for Sunday was to attend the Palm Sunday Papal Mass at the Vatican. However, after the extremely long and busy day of Saturday, we decided against waking up super early to make it to the Vatican by 7.30 am to wait in line for 2 hours. We were a bit disappointed that we flaked out, but it was for the better. Sunday was a pretty lazy day of doing very little. But then came Monday!

We decided to dedicate Monday to the Colosseo (Colosseum), Foro Romano (Roman Forum), and Palatino. I had only ever seen the Colosseum from the outside and oh man was it awesome to see from the inside! I've said it before, but the Romans were so incredible in what they could do back in the day. We had so much fun being silly and taken 'artsy' photos and just laughing and having a great time. One photograph we saw, though, taken from the late 1800s, still had the stadium ground intact. But nowadays, they've peeled back the floor (only a small section remains) to show the basement, or what probably would have been the locker room. It's kind of disappointing that they did not leave the full stadium floor in place as that would have been much cooler to see, in my opinion, that what was underneath. The already awesome day was even better because of the great weather God gave us! The original forecast we had looked at a week earlier indicated rain, but the sun was shining and it was nice and warm! The clouds present produced dramatic photos!






After the Colosseum, we made our way to the Roman Forum. By this point, Jess' camera battery had already died (she took that many!) so it was up to me to take pictures of the Forum and Palantino. Because I have seen the ruins of Tivoli and Pompei, I personally was not quite as fascinated with the Forum as Jess was. Don't get me wrong, it was still awesome to see and I'm very glad we went!






Here's our personal favorite! :-)


The Forum was larger than I originally thought and we walked around forever! By the time we made it to Palatino (it's all in the same area, one ticket for all three things), we were both so hungry and tired of walking! So we left Palatino and headed to a restaurant in the same Piazza as the Pantheon. I had been there with a buddy of mine and it was the main spot I had wanted to take Jess all along. We had a great meal and just sat and people-watched and enjoyed each other's company for the longest time. It was absolutely wonderful. And afterwards, more gelato!!






For sunset we made our way to a lookout point at Villa Borghese where you can see out over the entire city. We got to the spot well before sunset and had a great time just hanging out and being silly. When sunset came, it was a very pretty sight to see!


After that, we made our way back down into the heart of the historic centerto see the Colosseum at night. The moon was in the perfect spot for this awesome picture!