Ancient Rome! (fullfilling a childhood dream)

So we arrived in Rome on Easter Sunday, and the train was not nearly as crowded or crazy as we expected, which was great. We had a moment of severe panic when we arrived at our Bed & Breakfast and no one answered the door. Luckily the nice restaurant owner next door was able to hunt down the B&B owner's cell phone number and found out that he was just running late. Once we got inside the B&B via a terrifying 1930's elevator everything got a lot better. The place is super cute, and the owner is really nice and helpful, and even reserved our Vatican Museum trip for Friday. We even have a view of Castle St. Angelo from our room! Everything is IKEA so we feel right at home here. If you know anyone that wants to go to Rome, we would like to recommend our B&B. There are only two rooms, and it's 80 euros a night with a private bathroom. We totally lucked out. We took it easy the rest of Easter Sunday doing laundry and having dinner at the restaurant that had helped us out earlier.

On Monday, we went to Palatine Hill and the Colosseum. Thank you Lonely Planet for telling us to get our tickets at Palatine Hill for both places because we still had to wait an hour, but it was MUCH better than the never-ending que at the Colosseum. This was something Isaac had really wanted to see since he was little, so it was a real treat. This is a photo from inside the Colosseum.



Below is a photo of the Ancient Roman ruins at Palatine Hill. It is amazing that things are still so well preserved.



Afterwards, we went into Vatican City, which is right by our B&B. We had hoped there would be some gate where they would check our passports, or something that would make us feel like we had entered another country, (Vatican City is not even a member of the EU, so in theory they should have a Customs check, and stamp passports). Nope! We were walking around wondering when we would arrive there, and suddenly we were in St. Peter's square. There is a big wall, but no signs, gates, or officials! So weird. We got to St. Peter's square right before it started dumping rain again. Still, it HAILED at breakfast, (no joke), so at least it wasn't hailing! Still we are getting sick of the rain. "Real" restaurants around here don't open for dinner until about 7:30pm, and it was about 6:30, cold and rainy, and we were hungry. We found a decent touristy place that had average food, so that was OK, but nothing special.

Tuesday = Pompeii! :)