I thought I wasnt going to be able to wake up early after such a long and tiring day the day before but surprisingly, I managed to get out of bed at 7am. Joon Tian is used to waking up early so she had no problem in doing that. Our plans for that day was to visit the Colosseum, Palentine Hill and the Roman Forum which are the main tourist attractions in Rome's city centre so it's important to beat the crowd!
We made a slow walk from Trastevere to the Colosseum and reached there just in time for it's opening. One travel tip to anyone who is going to travel to these very touristy areas is to ALWAYS pre-book your tickets if you know the line is going to be super long. Check online for reviews and comments though coz some places charge you a lot more to pre-book than to buy at the ticket counters. For these three main places, we pre-booked our tickets. But there wasnt a long queue while we were there. Maybe because it was still early.
On route to the Colosseum! Thankfully we had a small map (which was lying around the apartment, so we took it) so it wasnt that hard to get around.
After walking for almost 45 minutes, we finally saw it!
The excitement!
I saw online that they even have night openings at the Colosseum and I thought that would've been so cool to go visit it at night with all the night lights and the whole different atmosphere but it costed quite a lot. If you're rich and don't mind, definitely go for it!
I took lots and lots of photos at the Colosseum. I'm sure everyone does. Not going to upload all of them to bore you guys.
These steps were so hard to climb because they were just higher and steeper than normal stairs.
But when you reach the stop, you'll know that it was worth it. How amazing is this???
Me and my chubby chub chub cheeks.
You can see that by the time it was around 10am, more people came in, that's when we left.
We then made our way to Palentine Hill. It was such a big place so there was just a lot of walking but the good thing about it being big was that all the tourists were spread out so it wasnt crowded. Except when you bump into tour groups, that was probably the most annoying thing.
By then, my poor legs were alr tired and couldnt take it anymore so we had to rest. My poor shoes too, thankfully they were really good and my feet didnt hurt that much but I might need to get new ones soon. I love these though... I've had them for so long... :(
A small tunnel leading to a vineyard.
Ruins everywhere
The view from on top of the hill~
Look at all those roof top gardens~ I would love to have one of my own
Walking towards the Roman Forums!
A lot of these pillars are all marble. Like, just how did people to build such huge buildings?
I can totally imagine how it would've been before everything was ruined. How majestic it would've been.
We then walked up a lot of stairs and reached the Capitolini Museum, which we didnt go in to because you needed to pay to get in and we wasnt sure whether it was going to be worth it.
An overview of the Roman Forum.
A statues of (not the real) David!
The Altare della Patria (Altar of the Fatherland) also known as the National Monument to Victor Emmanuel. It's a controversial building in Rome. Apparently a huge part of the hill had to be destroyed for it to be built and Italians say it's too white and boxy and just doesnt fit in the the city.
And once you sit on the steps, guards will be blowing their whistles at you.
The Trajan Forum. If you saw my V&A Museum post, this might look familiar!
Piazza Venezia! The central hub of Rome~
We then made our way to Trevi Fountain!
I was so looking forward to tosh a coin and make my wish but they put railings up around the fountain. boohoo :( You cant even take a good photo of the fountain without getting the ugly railings into your photo.We even prepared our coins before we even reached the piazza because we thought it was going to be really crowded but it wasnt as crowded as we expected. Probably because you couldnt throw coins into the fountain anymore. I wonder why....
People who watched the Lizzy McGuire movie would rmb this place very clearly~
We wanted to find a gelato place but without knowing, we ended up at the Pantheon!
We planned to go there after we got gelato because we really needed a rest.
The big hole in the middle of the dome. I was hoping it would rain when we were there so I could witness it raining indoors. LOL
We then made it to the popular gelato place~
Look at that huge cone of goodness! I got three flavours Gnutella (that's how they spelled it), Oreo/cookies and cream (which I didnt really order, but he accidentally added it on) and Opera (which is like coffee) and topped with panna (whipped cream)! It was amazing. Really amazing. We tried a few places throughout our trip in Italy but this was still the best. Always, always get at least one chocolate (there's a few of different kinds of chocolate flavours). I told myself to try something different but chocolate is still the best and it wont let you down.
Another thing, we werent really allowed to sit inside because you need to pay for service or order other drinks/food if you sit down, so we were kind of indirectly and politely chased out LOL
After that amazing (and huge) gelato, we made our way to the beautiful Piazza Nanova!
We then went into the church of Sant'Agnese in Agone which was so beautiful. My jaw dropped when we entered the church. It was just... wow. Every little detail of it left me in awe. It wasnt a huge church and there wasnt too many people in it so we could really get a good look of everything on the walls and on the ceilings and it was just exquisite.
There were lovely flowers everywhere~ I wished London could be like this too.
I can't rmb what building this is.....
We then made it back to the Trastevere area and saw these chairs and people with instruments so we guessed that there was going to be a performance but we didnt wait for them to play because we were famished! We had to find food~
So we went to a restaurant nearby that square to have dinner! I cant rmb the name of the restaurant but the waiter wasnt the friendliest. He knew we werent going to afford tips so we didnt really serve us with a smile. I dont need his smile anyway! We just wanted yummy food. I ordered a risotto with aubergines and tomatoes which was so so good if you love aubergines~ Joon Tian ordered a spaghetti alla carbonara which I normally cook for myself LOL. but it was delicious~ Bacon always makes me happy.
We then walked passed the square again and saw that an orchestra has started playing! They were playing The Simpson's theme song while we stopped by~ It was nice to see them play~ If you ever go to Rome, dont just go to the touristy places. Walk down those small lanes with lots of local Italians and you'd find a gem.
After a nice meal and some good music, we headed back to our apartment.
We went back to the apartment and had a dessert we bought at the supermarket and it didnt look like how it looked on the packaging so we were disappointed. LOL
That's all for Day 2! My internet is super slow. So it takes a long time to upload photos so I'm trying to upload a minimal amount of photos. Let's hope I can get Day 3 up soon~
