We arrived in Rome after a decent night of sleep on the train. Not great, exactly, but at least there were no train changes and it wasn’t an early morning.

We had to walk to our hotel, the hotel Felice, and although it was close to the train station, the streets were very bad for walking. Very narrow sidewalks, half covered with mopeds, and sometimes blocked completely by  street lights. And lots of cars everywhere. Very different than what we are used to in northern Europe – hotter, more crowded, noisier, and dirtier. Graffiti everywhere.

The hotel, when we found it, turned out to be nicer than I was fearing it might be based on the neighborhood. The guy behind the desk was friendly and spoke with lots of Italian mannerisms, and sort of reminded me of Robert Dinero. We had to wait to check in, so walked the area looking for a place for lunch, but could not find anything that was open. As we would later learn, Italy, or at least our neighborhood, does not really wake up until noon, and lots of activity does not really get going until after sunset.

We returned to the hotel without food and checked into our room, which was fine. We then headed to the Metro and explored the city a bit. Like everything else, the metro is dirtier and more crowded than what we’ve seen in the north, but it was also much cheaper, which was a nice change.

I intended to lead us to the Trevi Fountains, but took a wrong turn and we never made it.  We stopped at a local tourist trap for lunch (pizza), and then went to the Piazza Republicca, including an old basilica church seemingly built into some ruins.

It was quite hot, so we headed back to our room. After resting, we headed back out.  I lead us through another part of our neighborhood, hoping for a nicer area to walk through to get to the metro, but it was just as bad. We caught a bus which took us to the Coliseum. Our hotel is next to some very old looking brick city walls that look like they could be roman ruins, and the bus ride took us past many more of these walls. It seemed as if the city was sort of stuck with them. They were clearly in the way and weren’t being cared for or integrated into the city in any way, and yet they presumably could not be taken down because of their historical importance, so they just put up with them and build around them.

It was close to sunset when we arrived at the Colosseum, and the stones really shone in the sun. We poked around the area a bit, and then walked a stretch up the road to a restaurant where we had more pizza and pasta. I had something that was supposed to be crustini but was actually baked.

Anyway, we got some gelato and then returned to the Colosseum to see it at night, and then returned to our room. We took yet another route which turned out to be farther but was at least cleaner and safer and so much better with kids after dark.

Sleeping turned out to be a challenge, though. Due to the heat, we had to open the window, but our room is directly above a busy pizza place that was noisy until well after midnight. The sounds from the street were nice in a way, and I’m sure I could get used to them if given some time, but they made sleeping hard.