2025 Italy - December - Day 05 - Oh my Rome!

December 6, 2025

Hello Rome.  Holy smokes…I think I walked this entire town and my feet so much!  All our feet hurt a ton!  Here’s what went down.

We were up earlier than we wanted to this morning.  We were on the road around 8 AM as we had tickets to get into the Coliseum at 8:45 AM.  Actually 9 AM but you needed to be there 15 minutes early.  Managing our way on the metro to the Coliseum was straight forward.  We were there in plenty of time.  The lines were already long.  But having tickets in advance helped a lot.  We were in the Coliseum before 9 AM.   The Coliseum is always amazing to me…its size, its age, how it is engineered.  Such history here.  After we walked up the Palatino hill to look out over the Roman Forum.  It’s a pretty area and the walk was not too bad (at the time).  The forum has some cool old buildings.  But we didn’t spend  long there as we wanted to get to the Vatican to try and get into the museums, Sistine Chapel and the Basilica.  

The bus ride to the Vatican got interesting.  We caught the first bus just fine.   However, I think we go on the 49 bus going the wrong way.  I tried to ask the bus driver if we were on the right bus and he just got frustrated and angry with me.  So I backed off.  He spoke no English and I no Italian.  So I stayed on the bus.  As I watched the GPS, the bus was going the opposite direction that I needed to go.  So I knew I got on the wrong 49 bus.  So I thought we’d just get off at the first stop.  But as the bus drove, it looped around and started to follow the same path if I were to walk it.  So I thought, let’s just stay on it until it starts to veer off the walking path the GPS showed.  Well, the traffic was horrible.  So we stayed with the bus until we were within a 10 minute walk of the Vatican Museum entrance.  As we got close, we could see the long being amazingly long to get tickets.  There were guys on the street pushing tours.  So Denise and Michelle inquired of what they were offering.  In the end, we bought a tour but it wasn’t going to start for about 2 hours.  So we decided to go get some lunch nearby.

Lunch is something to write about here.  There were 2 places on opposite corners of the street.  One had little people eating there.  The other had quite a few.  I checked the prices at the one with fewer people and they seemed a bit high.  So we went to the other.  It turned out to be amazing.  We ordered our 4 plates and then the food began to come.  They brought a 2 liter bottle of water.  They brought bread (first time we’ve seen that in Italy for a meal).  They brought a plate of what seemed to be pork and beans to share (they were awesome).  They then brought our plates.  Great portions.  But then the guy brought an extra plate of pasta that we did not order.  Unfortunately it was too much to eat.  After we were done, the guy brought a desert out to share.  And then, they brought a couple of alcoholic drinks (limoncello and something else) which we turned down.  We laughed wondering what our bill was going to be?!  Well, it turned out to be the price for basically our 4 plates.  We still wonder why they were throwing all that food at us.  But it was a really good place.

Finally it was time to go on our tour.  Our tour guy was a nice Italian guy that spoke fairly good English.  It was interesting to see all the different types of art.  But I find it funny that they cover all the groin areas with leaves on all the statues.  These were all added long after the statues had been created.  We walked through many of the museums before we entered the Sistine Chapel where conclaves are performed and pope’s chosen…which was done quite recently.  The work of Michelangelo is pretty amazing in there.  After completing the chapel, we headed out to St. Peter’s Square where every Catholic in the world was.  Apparently some Jubilee is going on and some door leading into the Basilica is open that only opens every 25 years.  Yes, every 25 years.  Also, Sunday and Monday, the Vatican is closed…Monday due to a religious holiday.  The place was packed with people and we had to wait a good 30 minutes to get in and walk around.  I think the Basilicia is the biggest cathedral that I’ve ever been in.  It’s huge and I liked its interior.  It’s pretty.

After completing that, we had about 25 minutes of walking and about 10 minutes of metro to get back to our flat.  We arrived back around 6:30 PM wiped out looking for Ibprofen!

Here are some pictures:

Pretty fountain at St. Peter’s square.

Inside the Basilica at the Vatican.

Beautiful center of the cathedral where the do the mass.

Our lunch spot and waiter.

This is the spiral staircase that you use to get up to the beginning of the Vatican Museums.

This sits in one of the squares at the Vatican.  It’s just an art piece.

You get to see lots of these beautiful domes that some famous artist created.  There are many who have done works in these places.

Just masses of humanity trying to navigate through the halls of the museum chambers.

Masses of humanities trying to get in through this sacred door.

More pictures of the throngs of pilgrims.

Throngs of people.

Us at the Coliseum.

One of the newer buildings in Rome.  🤓

These girls are having fun being together taking pictures of anything moving or old!

Nice pics of the Coliseum.

This guy showed up and just stared at tourists for the longest time.

Looking down on the Roman Forum.

Good pic of what was under the floor of the Coliseum.

I liked the trees in this picture with the Coliseum in the background.