Coliseum and Da Simonetta (Honeymoon Day 5)

We woke up around 10am, and quickly shuffled out of our room for breakfast in the common area. We had croissants and the prepackaged toast. Emilia helped us make cappuccinos and we talked to her about some of the language differences. We had watched Grey's Anatomy in our room last night and we had noticed last night that the show was completely dubbed over in Italian, making it hard to understand subtle context, puns, and entendres.

We planned out our day a little and then we went out for lunch to Da Simonetta, a small restaurant recommended to us by Emilia. There was no English menu and the staff spoke English, but not super well, two signs that it is not a tourist restaurant. We started off with two small salads and a bruchetta piece. Great bruchetta with real tomatoes. 

 

For the entreè, we shared a mushroom and pea lasagna, with white sauce and chicken with a lemon/white wine sauce. There was some MTV music videos on in the background. The meal was very buttery and rich, but tasty.

We then went to the Coliseum, where we had to buy tickets.  Really only about a 15 minutes line. Not bad at all. We bought our tickets (12 euros a piece) and then we started to walk around. We opted not to purchase the audioguides and instead listened to some audio files that Elisha found online, including a Rick Steve's tour that was very informative. We felt like the audiofiles were a more than adequate replacement for the audioguide, which cost 5 euros. Walking around the Coliseum is impressive. It really makes you appreciate how far ahead of its time that the construction was, considering that modern arenas/stadia of that size (50,000+) were not built for about another 1850 years.

Following the Coliseum, we went walked through the Roman Forum and placed a phone call to Jennie. Eventually, we had to hang up, because the exits were not well marked and we were trying to find our way out. We successfully made it out of the Roman Forum and ventured onto our next stop: Trevi Fountain. By that time, we were pretty thirsty, and instead of buying water from a cafe, we went to Coop (our favorite grocery chain) to buy a .58 euro, 1.5 liter bottle of water. After buying the water, we stumbled upon a Murano Glass store near the Trevi Fountain area. We had really wanted to find a store selling Judaica glass in Murano (we were unsuccessful), so we were thrilled to find this store in the heart of Rome. We were immediately drawn to the large variety of Rabbinical figures. There was a figure for seemingly every different or potential rabbinical duty. There was a rabbi holding the lulav and etrog, a rabbi mid-bris, and many others (Elisha took pictures). For the low price of 890 euros (:/), you could become the owner of a complete chess set with glass figures as the pieces... For futher customization, you can select a set with Rabbi's vs. Rabbis or Rabbi's vs. Priests. We settled on four pieces, three dog pieces, and a wedding piece. 

While the size is not representative, we felt like these captured the spirit of our beloved pups 

Even with trains coming every three minutes, we were still subject to a jampacked train car, so we were very happy to get off at the Re di Roma stop. On our way back to the B&B, we stopped at a grocery store to pick up a few items for tomorrow's breakfast. 

We went back to the B&B and rested a little before going back to Da Simonetta to try there pizza. The restaurant was packed and the owner was moving around, waiting, busing tables, you-name-it. The dinner crowd was so big that we had to wait 30 minutes just to get a menu. We ended up ordering two pizzas, a four seasons pizza for Elisha  and a Sausage/Mushroom pizza that was half pizza, half calzone. 

Both were delicious. For dessert, we each had a piece of Tiramisu, even though we only wanted one. Everything was great, but the meal took between 1.5 and 2 hours.