YL had pre-booked tickets online for the Colosseum for 15 Feb so we had an early 8am start :D By the way will totally recommended booking the tickets online in advance because the queue is absolutely crazy!!! We arrived slightly past 9am so went to collect tickets for the 0930 time slot. Was really glad that we went early because the crowds started coming in around 10am but by then we were more or less done. The tours are quite expensive especially if you want to see the arena so we didn't go and just walked around by ourselves. There were lots of exhibits but being not really history people we only briefly read the descriptions ... But anyway the Colosseum is HUGE and we were lucky to have sunny blue sky weather that morning!!!
Walked around the long road with all the ruins after that and then decided to go to the Roman Forum as our tickets included entry for that and the Palatino too - so actually it's cheaper to book online because we paid €16 in all for the Colosseum and Roman Forum/Palatino (which we later discovered had the same entrance) and normally the Roman Forum alone would've costed €12. Walked around a bit in the Roman Forum and went to climb up the hill for the panoramic view :) After that we went for lunch at this restaurant that I found on Google Maps called La Taverna dei Fori Imperiali. It had good reviews so we decided to give it a try and was not disappointed! I had chicken in truffle sauce which was really good and also a change from the usual pasta and pizza, while YL ordered a pasta and a seafood platter which consisted of prawns and calamari. Apparently the seafood isn't in season now so they used the frozen ones (it's stated on the menu). I also ordered dessert - white chocolate soufflé which was the most amazing thing I've ever tasted!!! Am honestly willing to go back just for the dessert again omg!!
Walked around more after that and saw the Altare della Patria but by then it was starting to get a bit cloudy and drizzled a bit. Also went to the Pantheon (we confused that with the Palatino) then Ponte Sant Anges and Vatican City! The queue for Vatican City was crazy so we decided to visit the Castel Sant'Angelo instead. Unfortunately the reduced price only applies for EU citizens and they only do student fares for selected degrees so we paid the full adult fare. Was quite nice exploring the castle and we concluded the tour with an amazing panoramic view of Rome at sunset with the silhouette of the Vatican Basilica!
Decided that we had done enough cultural activities for the day so we went to shop at the Brandy on Via Cola di Rienzo instead LOL. I didn't buy anything for once while YL was the one who bought stuff haha. We had made a dinner reservation at this restaurant called Le Cave near Piazza di Sant'Ignazio because we'd passed by during the walking tour the day before and happened to see some English football players (?? VIP for all I know) going for dinner there with a lot of security so we reckoned it should be good. We both got pasta - I ordered carbonara while YL got a tomato-based one. I found the carbonara to be quite salty and regretted not getting a tomato-based one too. They also had this strange blown-up cracker (biscuit/pastry/crust???) appetiser which was quite cool hahaha. No more gelato was too full after dinner so we just went back straight to the hotel and that was all for day 2 in Rome!
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