Our travels on Sunday July 10th were long but went smoothly so that was good. We first had to drive two hours to Trieste Italy to return the car and then take a train to Venice and another train to Rome. Luckily the longer train had a bar car and we got a couple free drinks, so that made it much better!

Rome, what can I say about Rome that you don't already know. It's a big dirty city with lots of people and hot as heck in the summer time! Oh wait, there's also a ton of ruins and great architecture and yummy food. It's also expensive. We found an Airbnb in the nightlife section of Rome, Trastevere. Cobble-stone narrow streets lined with bars and restaurants. It's fun and energetic to be in this part of the city, we just aren't taking advantage of the party scene, since we are only here during the week and Paul has to work each night. Oh well, we do enough walking during the day to tire us out. Our Airbnb is an old monastery, it has some very unique artwork and features to it. Kyle has a loft to himself with his own bathroom, and Braydon's bed is in a nook under the stairs. It's quite cute. But unfortunately, the Wi-Fi is not great and we've struggled with working the oven (all the symbols/numbers are scratched off) and the washing machine (it didn't add water the first time around...hmm...!) These are some of the struggles we have staying at different places each week.

Monday, Kyle was our tour guide and had to figure out where we were going and lead the way. I've been doing most of the research and Google Mapping, so it was nice to just follow. We saw Trevi Fountain, Pantheon, the Spanish steps, a big beautiful church, a bunch of ruins where a cat colony apparently lives now, and got some gelato. It was hot and we were tired after all that walking, so we called it a day after that. I did go out later that evening to walk some more by myself and wandered through the Jewish Ghetto and along the Tiber River where a bunch of pop-up tent restaurants and some fair games were set up. It was beautiful at night.

We didn't do much on Tuesday as we were slow getting out the door in the morning, we took a bus over to the Colosseum area and walked around the outside. There are a bunch of different archeological digs/ruins in that area, so we looked at those and then just wandered around. We are going into the colosseum on Thursday.

One of the first things I booked for this trip was a food tour in the foodie section of Rome called Testaccio. We went on this on Wednesday morning. I upgraded Paul's and my tickets to include the drink package and right off the bat before 10 AM they were bringing us Prosecco. There were 7 other people on the tour with our family and Paul and I were the only ones drinking. It was a little weird, but I love a good glass of Prosecco, so I got over the weirdness quickly. Our tour guide gave us a lot of insight into the food scene in Rome, the difference between Prosecco and Champagne, and some good little tips and tricks to survive Rome! We went to so many places it's hard to remember them all. First stop was to a bakery where most of us (not me because I'm gluten-intolerant) tried thin little pizza, which they call a snack-so it's different dough from a typical round individual pizza. Then off to a deli to try Prosciutto and Pecorino and 4 different types of Balsamic Vinegar. Paul and I were served a second glass of wine here, and 4 other people jumped on the bandwagon and upgraded their tickets to include the drink package! We were no longer drinking alone! ;) Next stop we were brought through a food market, open air market with lots of different vendors. We were taught how to know if the fish is fresh, which meats are common here, and different produce. One of the vendors prepared a tomato salad for us, that most of us put on bread to make bruschetta. The tomatoes and olive oil were delicious! Then we took the same tomatoes and added them to Buffalo mozzarella, I can't tell you how good this cheese is here, we certainly don't get this kind of mozzarella in the states. Apparently it loses it's flavor with 72 hours, so if you are going to buy it in Italy you need to ask when they made it, you want to buy it less than 48 hours after it was produced. The cheese when squeezed drips out milk. We ate some sort of beef and greens as well. All of this before our sit down lunch! Our lunch consisted of 3 different pastas (for everyone else, I only had one GF one) and wine. Everyone really enjoyed the pastas and were stuffed to the gills! We walked a bit afterwards then our final stop was at a gelaterie. We were given yummy gelato with homemade cream on top and limoncello. Paul and I felt like we were full for a good 24 hours afterwards! I would highly recommend a food tour on a vacation, it was a great way to experience a city and it's culture. We used EatingEurope, which has tours in multiple cities.

That was our main activity here in Rome, so we didn't buy a guided tour of the Colosseum, instead we used Rick Steve's free audio tours of both the Colosseum and Roman Forum and all of us listened to it on our phones while walking around the Colosseum. I was a bit bummed that the only time I could get was 12:00 noon, but we lucked out and walked right in through the ticket line and security, NO WAITING!! We were all prepared to wait in line for an hour, because that's what I've read, I guess everyone is eating lunch at noon. I can't say the Colosseum was any of our favorite things to do, but it's something you have to do in Rome. The Pula Arena in Croatia and the gladiator fights we saw there was way more fun.

That concludes our Rome part of the trip. Stay tuned for Athens.