First Day in Rome – Hop on/off Tour & Colosseum 9/30/2014
Found finding addresses difficult in Rome
We purchased on the web before we left a 3 day Omnia Pass that provided 3 days of transportation and lines free entrance to Vatican sites and Rome tourist sites. It included the Roma Pass. On our 1st morning, we bought a train ticket on Metro to get to St. John Lateran’s Basilica. We had directions from there to pick up our Omnia pass . However, it was a very frustrating experience. Finding street names was a chore. We felt lost. One fellow sent us the opposite way. We did find people who would help you. It took us an inordinate amount of time to find the office. Once we got there, we had to wait patiently in line while the attendant explained all the benefits of the pass to each purchaser. We thought we would start our Hop On/Off bus tour about 9:30 am but didn’t start until 11:30 am.
Hop On/Off Bus tour – Visit to Colosseum
We decided to take the Hop On/Off bus on its full route through Ancient Rome. We took a few pictures as we passed the various sites, many of which we planned on visiting shortly. This took about an hour and a half.
Then, we entered the Colosseum. It was as spectacular as you had imagined. The views of the surrounding areas from the 2nd level were nice. The pictures tell the story.
When we left the Colosseum and marched up to the Forum, we were told with many others that the Forum was closed and come back tomorrow. It seems there was a strike in process. We learned a little about the Italian ways!
We did walk around the Forum area and tried all the entrances. Our pass let us in the Colosseum and the Forum on the same day. We have an itinerary for Rome that may now preclude us from seeing the rest of the Forum. We will see.
We were tired and took a 1.5 hour nap when we got back to the Beehive. When we got up at 7:30 pm, we selected a restaurant by comparing Yelp with Beehive recommended restaurants in the area. Beehive has a Rome Guide which we downloaded to our ipad kindle reader. We had an excellent meal at Meid in Nepols, about 4 blocks from the Beehive. We had to wait 15 minutes since we didn’t have a reservation. Fred had an excellent Fettuccine dish with sausage and mushrooms as well as a Veal Stew. Milly had breaded veal and a potato gnocchi. We both shared an assorted vegetable platter as a starter. Of course, we had table wine; red for Fred and white for Milly. We have found the tables wines excellent!
We slept well but had to awake at 6:15 AM to get to St Peters to meet out Papal Audience guide at 7:30 am.