Ciao, Roma!

So it is currently siesta time here in Rome, and while Eric is enjoying his afternoon nap, I thought I'd take a moment to update our wonderful readers about our time in Rome thus far.

We arrived around 7 Tuesday evening, but it was nearly 9 before we got into town and found our hotel, the Best Western Globus. We're staying a bit outside of town, near the University, and coincidentally, about 3 blocks from medical school. Our area is completely different from the typical tourist stops, which we really like. There's always lots of students walking around and hanging out at the local gelaterias etc. We're still only 5 minutes from the metro though, so it works out well!

We took a bus tour yesterday and saw a lot of the smaller fountains, statues, etc. that we may not have seen otherwise. We also hopped off a few times and tried out a local snack bar, and went to go see the Trevi fountain (which I Loooooved -- I think every city needs a humongous fountain running with free cold water for the masses and amazing sculptures to look at while you're cooling off!), the Pantheon (which is WAY bigger and fancier than I imagined it would be!) and Piazza Navona, where we got our first gelato. Mmmm.

This morning we slept a little late, then took the metro to the Spanish Steps, and visited the chiesa (church) at the top. We also explored the area some, which is hoppin' with designer stores like Gucci, Prada, and Burberry. Pretty sweet!

I've been trying to use what little Italian I know as much as possible. That's been fun! We've also been enjoying some delicious Italian meals -- the continental breakfast at our hotel is AMAZING and offers free cappuccino (oh, yeah!) as well as all sorts of pastries. We've also had some wonderful spaghetti, pizza neopolatino, and some italian doughnuts. Yum!

Tonight we're planning on going to the Colosseum, and hopefully we can pry ourselves out of bed in the morning to visit the Vatican! We have reservations at the Galeria Borghese tomorrow evening. And of course somewhere in there I still have to have some real tiramisu. :-)

Until next time, Ciao di Roma!