The Colosseum and Roman Forum

Today we got a fairly late start as we didn’t need to be at the Colosseum until our 12 o’clock entrance time. So we took it easy — Cliff cooked himself quite the breakfast — and just enjoyed the morning in the apartment until it was time to go.

Before heading to the Colosseum, we did take a short walk to a street market where we bought some dates and looked around. Right after that, we stopped in a coffee and pastry shop to get some sweets, a drink, and Jim got one of their pizzas. It’s not the kind of pizza that you usually think of … Pizza in Italy means bread with some sort of topping. This pizza was like a thin focaccia topped with mortadella and a cheese sauce and pistachios. Despite what might seem like an odd combination, it was quite delicious.

After a short Uber ride, we made it to the Colosseum with plenty of time to get in line to enter. After we got in, there was a little bit of confusion about where we were going, and what we needed to do. We had purchased the tickets along with a deluxe tour, including the underground, and unfortunately, there were no English tour guides available when we purchased the tickets. The only option was Italian. Long story short, we had to get caught up with the group and were helped by one of the very friendly staff.

Quite a few people in the group had the same problem we did because most of them spoke English or Spanish or another language. The tour guide did most of the tour in Italian and she sprinkled in a little English here and there, we were able to get the gist of most everything. It was quite an extensive tour. 

After the Colosseum tour, we walked about a block and found a sandwich shop and had some coffee and a bite to eat. 

It was then on to the Roman Forum ruins, which is right next to the Colosseum. We opted for a self guided walk and look at all of the amazing old crumbling structures. It’s quite fascinating to think that all of that is thousands of years old and we were just walking around admiring it.

We tried to take it a little slower today and decided to head back to the apartment for a rest as we had dinner reservations at 8 o’clock at a pretty nice restaurant. The restaurant is called Osteria Circo. Jim and Kristi had dinner there a few years ago when they were here. At that time it was owned by the brother of a friend of Jim, although the brother is no longer a partner at the restaurant. We decided that it was good enough to give it another go this trip.

We Uber-ed over to the restaurant and found that when we got there, at the Circus Maximus across the street, there was a Christmas festival going on. So before we went to dinner, because we were a little bit early anyway, we walked through and looked at the stalls that were selling food and drink and other things. We even got to take a picture with an Italian Santa Claus.

The dinner was quite delicious. We had pasta, Mary Lou had a delicious roasted chicken. We also had the fried Roman artichokes and steak tartare. It was a very delicious meal and a fun evening.

After dinner, we headed back to the apartment for our last night. We have to get up a little bit early and get to the train station for our ride to Naples tomorrow.