Our Last Day in Europe (Rome Day 2)

For our last day in Europe and our only full day in Rome, we woke up and headed straight to the Vatican.  There was an insane amount of people there.  We started off visiting St. Peter’s Basilica, and we were able to make some moves again and get in line with a big group of kids.  This let us avoid a line that was more than an hour long.  The church was so big and the murals, paintings and statues inside were beautiful.  

After this we tried to see the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel but the line was over four hours long.  We decided since we only had one day in Rome we would have to skip it; so we instead headed to the Colosseum.  We did an audio guide tour (mainly so we could skip a huge line), but it turned out to be very cool and informational.  Included in our ticket price was access to the surrounding historical areas: the Palatine, the Roman Forum and other ancient ruins.  It was crazy to see what the Romans had built back then without the technology that exists today.  There are still many excavation sights today in that area discovering more structures from the Roman Empire.

After the Colosseum, it was pretty late so we headed back to our apartment to start packing since we were leaving in the morning.  We went to the grocery store across the street and bought some wine to celebrate our Europe trip after dinner.  For dinner, we went to a restaurant around the corner from our apartment called La Taverna di Pinocchi.  We sat at a table that had a puppet Pinocchio sitting at. The service was by far the best we’ve had since being in Europe and the food was amazing.  We each ordered the menu of the day which included an appetizer, a main course, a dessert and a drink.  We each ordered the wine and it came with a half liter bottle of the house wine.  Then, the waiter could tell that we weren’t sure what to get for the appetizer so he brought out 3 plates with a sample of everything for us.  For our main course, Jamie and Jose ordered the steak and Cara ordered pasta with bacon and tomato sauce.  Everything was so delicious and it was a nice last meal for the end of our trip.