COLOSSEUM & FORUM TOUR! | Rome, Italy

It is our second day in Rome, and today we're doing what every tourist must do when you come to the city. We are going to the Colosseum.

Fight.

Not to fight.

Italia Rail has hooked us up with their show and go pass, which is a pass that you can buy off their website. You can show up and you can go on a guided tour. You don't have to schedule it ahead of time and you get to skip the line. So we'll be using that pass today when we go to the Coliseum, and also tomorrow when we visit the Vatican.

So excited. I can see it.

Wow. That is a ton of people.

Romans had an invention called the aquifer. These are basically giant bridges going directly from the source of water to the hill.

We just did our first stop. Our guy's name is John. He speaks great English.

We learned about the gladiator school, which is actually over there, and it had underground tunnels that went straight into the Coliseum.

It depends on the day.

Right?

Today, I don't know if you saw.

That enormous line on the side.

That's about a three hour wait.

That was crazy. So because we have the show and go past, we all just got to walk past this line that he told us is about a three hour wait. It's like having the fast pass at Disney World. Skipping everything. We are officially in the Roman Coliseum.

So we just spent the last 20 minutes learning a ton about the Coliseum. I learned a ton of things that I had no clue about. When you watch, like, gladiator movies, all you see is people fighting with swords. But apparently there are underground tunnels that used to be connected to the Coliseum and they could fill it up with water. And they would have naval battles here. So we'd fight on ships inside the Colosseum that was full of water.

And also the games were free. Like, a really rich person would schedule the games, pay the fighters, pay for all the food and drinks. Like, if I was super rich and my son was turning 16, I could throw him a birthday party by hosting games, scheduling the games. Crazy.

He said at one point they were doing as many as 200 games per year. So, like 200 days out of the year, there were people or animals fighting and dying inside of the Serena.

There's no way we can recap everything we've just learned. So now those are two things we found most interesting.

Now they've given us 20 to 25 minutes of free time to go explore the rest of the Coliseum.

Get it? Got it.

So all of the walls of bricks that you see behind me, that was actually underground. The top of the stadium floor actually sat on top of these walls. And they made it out of sand so that the blood could sink into it and it wouldn't just, like, get gross. Sand was the easiest way to clean up the blood. That's where they used to store the tigers and the elephants. All right, we're gonna be late.

So we just left the Coliseum. It was fantastic. But our highlight of the Coliseum is probably not what a lot of other people were. We met four people from South Africa that watch the vlog.

So, you guys, can we take us off?

Yeah.

Just made our day.

South Africa is one of our favorite countries, and they were so nice.

Thank you for saying, hey, you made our day.

Nice to meet you guys. Our next and final stop is the Roman Forum. We just walked, like, two seconds down the road. Also known as the Foro Romano Palatino.

Basilikos is a Greek word. It means big buildings. Christians adopted the phrase for big churches. We have churches, basilicas, cathedrals.

Right.

They're different by size. Basilicas in Roman times were either visit centers or town halls. Every city would have one, and they were usually the biggest buildings in the city, Hence the name Basilica.

Big building.

Right.

The tour just ended here overlooking the Forum, which is probably my favorite view in Rome so far, because a lot of the buildings that were here are still, like, pretty much intact. So you can get an idea of what it would have been like to live in the early 80s and, like, walk down this main street and the buildings that you would have seen. It's been really cool a lot of times. K and I try to save money and not get a guide, but this is definitely somewhere where I would highly recommend taking a guided tour, because there's just so much to learn, and there's no way that you could appreciate all the history behind these buildings without a guide. So now that the tour is over, we have time to go walk through the Forum, spend as much time as we want here. We're both hot, and we're gonna grab some L.

After the tour ended, we were both completely exhausted from being in the sun all morning, walking around and standing up. So we actually just went back to the apartment, sat in the air conditioner, and knocked out some work.

And now it is about 6:30pm which means it is dinner time. And our friend Edmundo from Italia Rail hooked us up again with a really awesome restaurant recommendation.

Supposed to have the best Roman food in all of Rome, according to him.

Which I hope means more homemade pasta. Any carbs, really?

Rome's good at their carbs.

Just casual Roman ruins in the middle of the city. No big deal.

While we are in route to the restaurant that we're eating at tonight, we had a few more thoughts on the tour that we went on this morning. First, I don't think we, like, put enough emphasis on how big a deal it was that we got to skip a three hour line. I cannot imagine how miserable it would have been to wait in the sun for three hours and then go in the Coliseum.

Especially if you didn't have a tour.

We were exhausted just from going in the Coliseum. See them? Yeah, that was my big. That was my big thought from the tour.

Okay. The one thing that I just can't stop laughing about is our guide was telling us about how everything used to be made of marble. Like the entire coliseum was white, shiny marble. And so was the palace that we were standing in front of. That's no longer there.

This way.

And it's so easy to, like, think about that time and be like, oh, that would have been so cool. And like, walking around the ruins, I'm like, I wish I could just live in that time just for like a little bit to see what it was like, like just so grand. And then he reminded us that the plumbing system, like, wasn't really a thing in these times.

You went to a public bath and you pooped next to each other.

Like, it was like a social thing. Like, everybody would go to the bathroom together and, like, sit on these toilets together. And then like, if you went in your house, you dumped it outside of your front door and then somebody would come scoop it up later. He basically told us if you were a common person, you wouldn't last a week.

If you were transplanted back to Roman times, there's no way you would last a week as a common person.

But it was normal then. So, like, you know, it was great still to them, but to us, I don't think it would be as great.

Okay, we're almost there. End of tour thoughts?

The restaurant looks super cute.

I think this is it. Should we look again?

Scratch that. That wasn't our restaurant. It's down here. Where is that? It is.

So for real, when we were over there and we thought that was our restaurant, I pointed at this restaurant and I was like, I really like that one. And this is the one we're eating at. I love all the green.

Nate.

I love this place. I saw these two menus on the table and wanted to look at the food, so I thought it was this menu. This is the wine menu. This is the food menu. A little bit of a difference there.

Oh, you want to try one plate. The ham and the buffalo mozzarella.

We definitely think that's.

This is a fresh. The name is Frosinone. Frosinone.

It's a. Is it balsamic? Yes.

Michael got his number.

Oh, my gosh. That's crazy.

Okay, so these are not possible to buy in the shop because arrive direct the producer, and arrive is a real botanic.

Thank you.

So we asked our waiter what we should order. Because this menu was so overwhelming with good foods, we just didn't know what to get. And I think he brought us one of the best things I've ever seen. We have eight yummy. That has been aged for 36 months with some cheese with balsamic on top. That's been aged for 25 years.

So, Roman, round two of appetizers. We got a zucchini flour, deep fried.

Thing. Smells amazing.

That is so much better than I thought it was gonna be. I don't know why I'm surprised. Everything's been so good. I have no idea what a zucchini flour is, but I love it. The main course is here. I got the carbonara. It looks so good, and it has lots of bacon on top. Very excited about this. Nate got the kakioi pepper, and it came in the pan that was cooked in. And I'm a little jealous of his pan, but I'm so really excited.

No lie. That's the best pasta I've ever had. The bacon is so crunchy, and the sauce is so creamy.

I love Rome. I'm so happy.

Here's what's gonna happen when you come to Rome. At some point, you're gonna want to splurge on a really nice meal. Like, just really good Italian food.

At that point, you'll be faced with, like, so many options, and you're going to have no earthly idea where you should go. We're going to solve that problem for you right now. Go to the restaurant that we just ate at. We will link it down below.

The Italian food is just my favorite anyways, like, the cheese, the bread, garlic, the tomatoes, the bacon, and they just care.

It was so good. A fantastic second full day, but actually third day in a row.

Gonna walk it off tomorrow at the Vatican.

What a cutie. He's kicking his little legs. Oh, my gosh, the smell right now.

This smells like bacon, not like grow in public.

It's been aged for 36 years. I mean, months.