March 27

Today started early, at 12:40, about an hour after we went to bed, the phone woke us up. At first I thought it was my travel alarm, and then I remembered that the alarm was in the check bag, which I didn’t have with me. I blindly reached over and found the phone.

“There is a delivery for you,” the man said, “your bags are here.” Whoa, that woke me up. Our Bags! Our Clothes! Clean underwear! Face lotion!

“Do you want to get it in the morning?”

“Oh, NO!” I hastily replied, my heart skipping a beat. “We need it, I’ll come down right now!”

Wow, PJ’s, clean clothes, clean socks. I’ve never been happier. Our trip is back on track!

Enough excitement, back to bed.

We woke up a little before seven, got dressed, packed the tripod, camera and headed out to explore. The goal was to get to the Trevi Fountain before the crowds get there. We weren’t familiar with the streets yet so we went down the roads we traveled on last night. Along the way we stopped to take pictures of the Roman Forum ruins. By the time we went around the Vittorio Emanuele iI monument in Palazzo Venezio, it was 8:20. I remember the Coliseum opens at 8:30 and if we didn’t go early the lines would get long. At this time we were between the Trevi fountain and the Coliseum… what to do… We decided to ditch the fountain plans and went back to the coliseum.

The coliseum was awesome! I didn’t go in due to lack of time the last time I came in 2003, so this was a treat. We were able to get our ticket right away and bought an audio guide to bring with us. We spent about 2 hours in there, taking in the ruins, looking at the statues, listening to our guide and taking pictures. The sun even came out, burning away the gloomy, chilly morning. If only the ancient Romans had cameras, what a sight this place must have been in its fullest glory. They built the coliseum, why didn’t they invent the camera!

Afterwards we went in search for food. We looked in our Frommer’s guide and picked a recommend place called Hostaria Nerone. We walked up and down the streets trying to find the place. Starving, we gave up and went into the next place we saw with food. It was a little take out store with pizza and sandwiches. Looking in the glass panel, we picked out a tasty looking pizza sandwich with what looked like mushroom and thick slices of mozzarella cheese and got some water to wash it down. The slice is pretty big, about halv a medium pizza back home. It was re-toasted and cut in half for us. We picked a table outside to enjoy the view.

As I sat down, I glanced over to the place next door, and what do you know… on a small sign, neatly printed was Hostaria Nerone. Great. But at least our eatery was recommended by Rick Steves (for cheap food is my guess), as noted on a sign outside the door.

Well, food is food, and when you’re hungry it doesn’t really matter. I took a bit of my pizza and got a whiff of something fishy. I took another sniff, and it definitely has a faint fish smell. Hm… maybe it’s the sauce. Another bite and I could totally smell it; it smells like…sardines… I asked Jae if his tasted like fish. Jae hadn’t tried it yet, he doesn’t like cheese and was busy picking out the cheese. ‘You must be smelling the cheese,’ he replied, wrinkling his nose at another piece he pulled out. I don’t think its cheese, but whatever… I am hungry and it didn’t taste bad, just smell odd.

A few moments later Jae looked at disappointedly at his pizza and said, ‘ya, it is fishy’. I looked at one of the mozzarella pieces Jae pulled out and picked up what looked like mushrooms, tasting it revealed that it was fish! We had gotten sardine cheese pizza!! EW!

After breakfast/lunch, we went to the metro to see if there is a faster way around town. We bought a day ticket for 4 euros and headed down to the tracks. We took the metro to Barberina which was closest to the Trevi Fountain. After walking around the complicated road system for about 20 minutes, we found it. Apparently so had hundreds of other people. We took whatever pictures we could, and tossed a quarter each into the fountain in hopes of coming back again.
We then went to the Spanish Steps. This plaza was also packed to the brim with tourists. Unfortunately the buildings on top of the steps were under renovation and had scaffolding all over it. Doh! We sat around for a bit on the steps, resting our feet along with a few dozen people.

By now, it was a bit past noon, lunch time. Looking to Frommers for guidance we looked for a place for lunch. A place nearby called Di Fronte a … (in front of…) sounded pretty nice but alas, it was closed on Mondays like many other places in Italy.

Our next choice is a place called Maccheroni which was near Piazza Navona, our next stop. Finding this place took forever, we completely walked past it the first time and then upon back tracking we finally saw it, a small corner restaurant with a small sign over its door in funky scripture font.

We were seated immediately and provided bread. I ordered the pasta with bacon and Jae stayed ‘safe’ with the fettuccini and meat sauce. We had the house wine and bottle water with it. If you want water with your meal, all the restaurants require that you purchase water which comes in natural or carbonated. Many times a bottle of water is the same price as their house wine. After our order our waiter asked what we wanted for a second course. Second course? For lunch? Gee, how much do people eat in Italy? The items on the second course consisted mostly of meat, so I suppose most people start with a course of pasta and then a second of meat. We passed on that.

My the pasta in my dish was heavily doused in olive oil, a little bit undercooked and was very salty from the thick bacon. The bacon looked more like salted pork strips than the red crispy thin strips that I had imagined. I couldn’t finish it since it felt like I was eating salt by the spoonful. Jae’s dish on the other hand tasted pretty good. I snuck a few bites while he wasn’t looking ;P. The pasta is a little thick and tasted freshly made.

The wine was actually pretty good. We had ordered a half liter which was only 2 euros. After a glass or so I was completely flushed. Ok, no more wine in the daytime. We finished our meal with a Tiramisu which was really good and a cappuccino, which was also very good. The total bill came to be around 30 euros which wasn’t so bad.

After lunch we went to the Piazza Navona, which as expected, was packed. We took a short break there and looked at the various street painters. For street work it was kinda expensive, in the hundreds. A short walk got us to the Pantheon. It was crowded, but the sight still amazing. Jae was quite blown away with it. We stayed a while, just looking around and taking pictures.

There is a Frommer’s recommended gelotti place called Giolitte located near the Pantheon. As we approached we saw a large group of school children outside. Apparrently, all of them wanted a mid-afternoon snack. The store was literally jammed packed, everyone screaming their order at the 5 scoopers. This geletti Must be good! Jae and I bought 2 mediums and got in line. Just as we did another huge group of kids arrived. They must be from some kind of school tour. Eventually we did get our gelotti, 3 scoops of yumminess.

We got back to our room at around 5:30. We decided to take a short nap, since Italians eat dinner after 7 we wouldn’t be able to find a restaurant open until then. Well that was the plan anyhow… When we finally woke up it was 10:30! I didn’t realize just how tired we were. Since restaurants would be closed by now we decided to just sleep till morning and get an early start tomorrow.