Europe Honeymoon - day 2 in Rome

Day 2 of our Europe honeymoon – We ventured out to get our Roma pass. This is a must if you are visiting the touristy places and travelling via the metro. It’s available at most newstands and it’s 25€. In return, you’ll get a Roma pass that is valid for 3 days (upon activation) that allows numerous trips on all public transport (in our case, metro rides), and gives you access to museums and archaeological sites. We visited many places with this and didn’t had to pay a single cent for entrance! Together with the package, there is an Internet access card that gives you information about shows and other news during your stay (we didn’t use this at all), a detailed mail of the city, a guide of the museums and the monuments of Rome and a newsletter of events and services that the pass holder is entitled to pertaining to art, cinema, dance, music, theatre, festivals, sight seeing tours and other tourist services. Still, it was a well worth buy because the value in which we got back was almost triple.

The plan of the day was visiting the colosseo (colosseum) and look who’s having fun?! Outside the colosseo, there are many gladiators waiting for tourists to pose with them. I suggest you don’t go near them unless you are willing to part with your money, and seriously, I was rather disgusted with one of them because he was peeing in public (right before my eyes) and well, let’s just say there wasn’t any hand washing areas nearby and well, I wondered who was the next person that took pictures with him and his dirty hands. Eeeuueewwwww..

Top to bottom is the view from left to right from the inside. I did wish Rome was not that hot!

From the various angles.

And yes, it was crowded and I was secretly being the cheapo and was trying to follow a tour group with a guide to listen what the guide has to say for the place. There are also audio guides available but seriously, der and me couldn’t be bothered and read the info off the signages.

The pillars that’s holding the place up..

The real gladiators gear. There were many different types on display, signaling their different roles. Very interesting display along with many weapons and archaeological finds like fossils of animals and cockles shell. The audience in the stands used to eat cockles while watching the gladiators contests or animal hunting in the amphitheater. I thought it was truly amazing, and that there was a massive collection of items which told stories. Der n me spend a huge amount of time looking through and reading all the artifacts on display, and it helps that it was shady as compared to standing out in the hot sun.

The view from the second level..

Errmm. Look who is the camwhore here?!

From a different angle. Imagine this place can hold 50,000 people in the stands. I wonder how many people our stadium could hold.

Arch di Constantino, a triumphal arch situated between the colosseum and the palatine hill and was erected to commemorate Constantine I’s victory over Maxentius at the battle of milvian bridge.

We moved on to the palentine hills, one of the most ancient part of the city, where the Roman forums are located. the Roma pass also helped us gain free entry to this place. If I remembered correctly, the entrance fee was 8 or 12€ so the Roma pass is a must!

The roman forum is a small open rectangle surrounded by ancient government buildings in the center of Rome, and for centuries, it was the center of the roman public life, the site of elections, the venue for public speeches and the nucleus of commercial affairs.

The arch of Titus, a 1st century honorific arch, built by roman emperor Domitian shortly after the death of his older brother, Titus, to commemorate his victories.

More pictures of the place and ruins.

The temple is Saturn, a monument to the agricultural deity.

Temple of Vespasian and Titus

The arch of Septimius Severus. Of white marble, it is built to commerate the Parthian victories of emperor Septimius Severus and his 2 sons, Caracalla and Geta.

A far shot of one section of the place against the sunlight..

With that, we parted the place and was super famished. Unfortunately, the nearest restaurants were quite far away and we had to walk a fair bit, miss a few of the places we had intention to visit before we could have lunch and no way I was willing to retract my steps after lunch because it was so far. We ended up buying a box of ritz biscuits from a cart nearby and water and plonked ourselves down at the foot of capitoline hill for some shade and to recharge before proceeding to the capitoline museums. I was too tired and didn’t have the attention span to throng the aisles of the museum’s gallery so we just walked around the area to soak in the architecture.

The staute of emperor Marcus Aurelius in the centre of piazza del campidoglio, at the top of the capitoline hill. The statue is a actually a copy, with the actual statue housed within the walls of the museum.

Another shot of the place from the steps leading up to the piazza.

That’s the Monumento Nazionzale a Vittorio Emanuele II (National Monument of Victor Emmanuel II) or also known as Alter of the Fatherland. This monument is to honour Victor Emmanuel, the first king of a unified Italy. The majestic building is built with pure white marble with majestic stairways, tall columns, fountains, and statues of the king as well as 2 statues of goddess Victoria riding on quadrigas. The winged statues at the top left and right of the building are what caught my attention most as they are the highest point of the building and can be seen from far far away. They also stand out starkly against the white marbled building.

How the building looked from afar…

We adjourned for lunch in a nearby cafe that we found along our ‘walking trek’ and promptly ate. I didn’t have appetite so it was soup again for me while the boy had the same ham pizza. I think he’s a stickler for routine. Using the mtrip app, the boy also found a famous home made gelato shop while I happily plonked myself down for a big cone and boy, it was yummy! Errmm.. I was too busy lapping up my gelato that I totally forgot to take any pictures of the place, nor have any inkling of it’s location. Will have to dig into the boy’s photo archives for a picture because i remembered he took a picture of the happy me.

Some random buildings along our way..,

Could you guess where we were headed to? Yup, it’s the famous Trevi fountain! And all these, via walking. I think I really can walk because when we headed out in the morning, we took the metro and had to switch metro lines to get to the colosseo, and yet, we ended up at the fountain which was a few streets away from our hotel..

The grand fountain. Prob the biggest that I have ever seen in my life. It is also the biggest Baroque fountain in the city of Rome and of cos, world famous.

It doesn’t seemed like it looks like much in my pictures, but I have only managed to capture 1/3 of the entire structure and the place was so so packed, I couldn’t find a place to stand. So the usual cheeky me, climbed up a small column to take the above pictures and promptly jumped down. Apparently someone else saw what I did and followed suit, only to have the police approach.. Uh oh. Luckily I was quick and the boy was saying he actually spotted them making their way towards me too but because it was so so crowded, they couldn’t walk v fast and I was done before they even reach me. Lol.

With that, we headed back to the hotel for a short siesta before deciding our dinner plans. Look what the little one got awarded with back in the hotel?!

A kinder milk bar! I love that so much I regretted not buying more on the trip. It very milky and rich, jut the way I love it and it has accompanied me through the many cities, filling my stomach with something through the nights where I had queasy stomach or couldn’t bring myself to eat.

Meanwhile, the boy relied on his mtrip app and found this restaurant with very good reviews just 2 streets down from our hotel, very near where trevi fountain is located.

Via in arcione, 95
00187 Rome, Italy
006 797342

The pasta display at the door.

Octopus salad that the wait staff recommended. It was ok, not exactly fantastic and the boy finished most of it because i found it too fishy to swallow and the smell of the celery too strong. Blame it on my taste buds.

And because I haven’t been able to eat right throughout the entire honeymoon, we have decided to cut costs and just order one portion of food because many times, the boy landed up having to eat my portions as well and they are huge portions to begin with. So we ordered more side dishes for variety and one main to share.

Green spinach. I ate 80% of this, dunked in lemon. It was gross looking but ok tasting. Takes a while to get accustomed to the lemon smell but then again, I’m quite a lemon fan so anything goes.

Der’s vongole pasta. Not too bad, but the ones we had in venice was better.

Haha. I insisted on eating this. One of my favourite dessert – panna cotta! I just had to try it in Italy. It’s not as soft as the ones Singapore serves, but it’s rich and creamy and I think it taste rather good though the boy begs to differ (well, he’s quite a stickler to his usual food choices and hardly deviates from his limited selection so I don’t blame him).

The service of the place is quite subjective in my opinion. The order takers and the guy at the door were well versed in their food menu and are able to recommend food and serve their customers rather well, making them comfortable. I can’t same the say for the wait staff as I asked for lemon three times and didn’t get it in the end, so it can be a tad frustrating. Didn’t help that the place was rather cramped (outdoors alfresco area) and the restaurant is rather packed so getting their attention requires a bit of patience.

And yup, that was it. We ended the day in the supermarket buying more snacks and drinks and fruits for me to munch back in the hotel. Day 2 of our Europe honeymoon in Rome came to an end..

Read about us visiting the spanish steps & villa borghese garden.