The McCutcheon's Take Italy: Part 9 of 11

July 9, 2019: Rome

We were up and out by 7am to go to the Colosseum. There's a new system (apparently implemented in March) that mandates each visitor must reserve a visiting time slot prior to coming to the Colosseum. However, Candace and I found this out yesterday while trying to finalize our itinerary for Rome. All online spots were booked. Oops. Our plan for today was to arrive early and hope that we could get a day of spot. Divide and conquer. Candace and Jimmy waited in the line at the Colosseum entrance while mom, dad and I went to the ticket office near the exit of the Roman Forum. We waited until 8:30 when the office opened and were given a 9:40 timeslot. Perfect. Just enough time to use the bathroom and grab a coffee and croissant before heading inside. Bypassing the ticket line is for sure the way to go. It was incredibly long and because we had an entry time we got to walk right past. We wandered around inside, looking at the ruins and exhibits for about an hour.

Then we made our way to Roman Forum and Palatine Hill. Luckily for us it started to rain lightly, which cooled us off and put us under cloud cover. The views from Palatine Hill are really grand.

After exploring we decided to get the bus back but to our dismay we waited for the first cycle, second cycle and finally third cycle of buses before we found out that traffic had been suspended and rerouted because of a man threatening to jump inside of the Colosseum. We decided to walk back which got us caught up in a wave of protesters. We eventually made it out of the fray, hot and sweaty, not really sure what had happened.

We cooled off and ate lunch at the airbnb. We needed a rest because later in the evening we'd be heading out for a food tour. I was really excited for this particular food tour because it was through the same company Mark and I had used when we were in Rome. I couldn't say enough good things about our first tour, so I made sure to book the same one for my family. Since my family didn't have anything to compare it to they were satisfied, but I felt like it was sub par at best. Our guide this time around didn't give us much history at all, nor did he chat with us as we walked from one location to the next. He didn't provide a lot of explanation about our food or why it was important or unique to Roman culture. Even though he was a bit of a dud, we still had some really delicious food at some cool spots, including: ham with pistacchios, deep fried cod, pasta with black pepper, pasta amatriciana and flavored gelato. The deep fried cod place, Filetti di Bacala, and the gelato place, I had both visited on my initial tour and loved so I was glad my family got to experience them.

 One of the few historical things we did learn on our tour pertained to the jewish quarter of Rome. There used to be a wall separating the people living in this area from the rest of the city. Pictured below are remnants from the wall.

After the tour mom and dad went home and Candace, Jimmy and I walked along the river where there are tons of pop up bars, restaurants, souvenir vendors and games. We enjoyed a beer and listened to some live music before making our way back to the 'bnb. When we got there we were relieved to see that mom and dad had in fact made it back and were not wandering the streets of Rome, lost and alone.