Colosseo and Paletino!

The day started off early...6:45 to be exact...we needed to make sure we caught the 8:20 train bc the next one doesnt come until 10. We gave ourselves plenty of time this time to make the walk there. We ran into a small bit of confusion but a nice man in line spoke some English and luckily helped us out. The train ride in was beautiful....as we mentioned before the rolling hills in the northern suberbs of Roma seemed endless and almost impossible. Every shade of green imaginable was seen, and the sun rising over the mountains made us feel so lucky for where we are right now.

We rolled into Roma, followed the crowd to the underground metro to the most famous and notorious sight of all...the Colosseum, or Colosseo!

When we walked out of the metro station it was just this massive structure there without any warning! Crazy! and beautiful and jaw-dropping! I of course immediately wanted a picture...

We kind of walked around for a bit....being hassled by tons of different people to take this tour and that...but eventually just decided to walk in ourselves! We ended up buying the "Roma Pass" which gave us free entry to 2 sights, and free public tranport for 3 days....SOooo worth it!

Even withthe hundreds andhundres of people there...it was an amazing sight! Everything was sooo "grand" as Brad and I decided is the best word to descrbe it! I couldn't get over how in the world they built such a humungous structure. Apparently it is kind of contraversial because it was a crazy bloody warzone in there. They would import all these exotic animals like leopards, bears, and Rhinoceraus's...and just put men in there to fight them til their death. Sometimes they would just throw criminals in there naked and unarmed to be torn apart. But still...somehow it is easy to look past all that and admire the view!

As we were exiting we realized how important it is to arrive at the attractions early. The line almost wrapped around the entire structur. So to bask in our accomplishment we decided to eat a snack in the park overlooking the massive line and of course the colosseo. The next stop on our first day of touring Roma was Palatino or Palantine Hill. After waiting in a long ass line we figured out we could probably use our Roma pass to bypass all the people patiently waiting. Fortunately for us, it worked!

The grounds of Palatino contian the old emperor's palace, tons of underground tunnels, beautiful gardens and endless ruins. It took us around 3 hours to walk through but we still probably missed something cool.

From there we walked over a cool bridge that had shops in the middle of it got some gelato. We briefly explored Trastevere section of town which had some cool shops and bars. Soon after this we started to get tired from all the walking and made our long trek to the train station and caught a ride back to Morlupo.