Day 1 of being a tourist

 I want to start this post off by talking a little bit about my Italian family that lives here in Rome. Alfredo Mazzetta is our cousin and he is married to Maura. They are the sweetest most fun loving couple you ever wanted to meet. Maura is actually a tour guide here in Rome so she is the one that will be taking us around on most of our tours here in Rome. She speaks very good English. Alfredo is retired and he speaks very little English. All of us have had the best time communicating with Alfredo. He trying to speak English and us trying to understand and speak Italian and remember there are 6 of us. It’s amazing how we can just make it work and understand each other. They are very gracious people and treat us like royalty. Did I mention how cute they are together and they both have a great sense of humor. How blessed are we to have them as family.

Our starts off  around 9am. Take a 10 minute walk to get the taxis . Since they’re six of us, we need two taxis. Lesson learned today negotiate your taxi price before hand. The taxi that I was in cost €25 to get to the Colosseum the taxi that Nick, Kylie and Alexis were in cost €12. Like I said, lesson learned.

We all met up at the Colosseum. It’s the largest ancient amphitheater ever built, and is still the largest standing amphitheater in the world, despite its age . Alfredo was going to join us today and said that This was going to be his first tour with Maura as a guide, then he started laughing .Finally Maura had all of our tickets ready and since she was a tour guide, we were able to get in without waiting in a very long line. I’m sure a lot of you have been to the Colosseum but if not, it is an amazing place to be standing in. There is so much history and so much of the original construction still standing I believe she said it took eight years to build. We thought wow how fast is that. Maura told us that they had a lot of prisoners that did a lot of work along with other free workers. It’s an amazing piece of history to be standing in.

Fun Fact:

Did you know the Emperor Vespasian invented the first public toilet? 

By the way, did I tell you that the temperature was 96°? 

After our colosseum tour we walked or as Kylie and I said hiked up Palatine Hill. 

Oh by the way, did I tell you we walked 23,000. Yes you heard me!

We ended our tour around 1:30 PM and then we walked to the place where we were to have lunch. It was the first beer establishment in Rome.  I think it was called Berra Restaurante! Yummy, yummy, yummy! Pasta all around !

Back to the apartment for a rest!

After our rest out and about we went in search of the Spanish steps and the Trevi fountain and of course dinner!

Dinner at Ristorante Alla Rampa!