Rome Day 3: Audio tours FTW

Today was full of ancient ruins! The Colosseum and Roman Forum are central to Rome's ancient history, and they're mighty impressive to look at. But even though I was here in 2012 and saw both I didn't take a tour, and of course I didn't look up any information before this trip because that would have been sensible.

Enter: The Rick Steves Audio Tours. If you've traveled much, you know the name Rick Steves. If you're like me and grew up on a television diet of PBS, you know him from the Saturday afternoon lineup (probably right after Bob Ross). He's a be-khakied, be-polo-shirted Very Nice Dude who has traveled the world and he brings it to your living room in soft-spoken, digestible 30-minute nuggets. It's delightful! And today we learned, he has an app for Europe. Day = enriched.

All four of us were able to download audio tours of the Colosseum and Roman Forum, then plug in our ear buds and meander on our own through the buildings and ruins. It worked really well for our group. We kind of stayed together without having to stay together or talk to each other. Plus we were still able to talk about what we learned afterwards. Each tour took about an hour start-to-finish, so if you play your cards right — or skip the line by buying your tickets ahead of time (this link is not an endorsement!) — you could easily get to both of these sights before noon. We took a bit longer than that, but we also didn't have a whole heckuva lot else to do today, so we definitely meandered more than we might have if today were our first day.

 

We also ate some delicious pizza, fried anchovies (surprisingly delicious!), perfect pasta, and of course MOAR GELATO. Because when you're in Rome, the food is as much of an attraction as anything else.

For those of you keeping track at home, today makes three gelatos in three days. Batting 1.000! I've tried lemongrass, pear and cheese, strawberry, giuliano chocolate (traditional Italian flavor), and "black passion" which was mega chocolate plus berries. OM NOM NOM.

Rome Day 2: Ancient Aqueduct, Walking Tour, Gelato

OHEMGEE AQUEDUCT.

I jumped around with glee at the sight of the ruins of Rome's ancient aqueduct at Parco degli Acquedotti in south Rome.

The arches, now in several segments instead of one long structure, loom on the horizon as you walk along the path. You're transported immediately from the busy Viale Giulio Agricola to a peaceful park, where locals are running with their dogs and greeting each other on the pathways. Children were laughing. There was even a babbling brook running through this thing. I'll tell you what, ancient Rome knew what was up.

It was super simple to get to, just take Metro A to Guilio Agricola, then head down Viale Guilio Agricola until you see a freakin' aqueduct.

Today we also went on a walking tour with Rome's Ultimate. I was so relieved to finally be on a tour with only six humans and a guide! After the cumbersome 30-plus member groups in Munich, having the guide almost to ourselves was super. Our guide was full of information and was flexible when I commandeered the route to stop for gelato. (What? I hadn't had any yet today!)

I didn't take too many photos (most of what we saw is plenty-well documented by the internets), but I do feel like I learned quite a bit that I didn't know before. And I got to eat gelato.