ITALY Day 1- ROME

I have free time and a few friends to meet in Italy...so why not pack my bags and jump on a plane to the country of amore?!

First, I flew to Rome and met my friend Grant.

 We boarded the hop on/hop off bus of the city and our first stop was the Colosseum.

The colosseum is super impressive, but right across from it is the Palatino and Roman forum area which is massive and super fun to roam around inside. DO NOT SKIP IT. 

You can also get a great panoramic shot of the area there.

 We continued on the bus tour with our headphones toward Vatican City.

 The lines are huge at everything here and there are a million tourists in Rome 24/7 it seems. If you want to go inside, you can either wait in line for hours or pay for a tour which allows you to skip the line.

We decided to take a photo outside of this one (sorry Sistine Chapel)

and eat pizza instead.

There was a lot of construction happening and this cool Trevi fountain was out of order.

Next stop was the National Monument to Victor Emmanuel II with the tomb of the unknown soldier. On top of this building is a cool terrance with an option to get a view of all of Rome. It is totally worth the hot elevator ride up.

 We climbed up a ton of stairs to a few places with neat sculptures

 and churches. Rome is fabulous!

I didn't mention the 3 gelatos along the way of the tour, but I think that's a given!