Out on our own again, we said goodbye to the last of our family and headed to kill time before we could check into our new Airbnb. We headed to Termini Station – a train station which we were now far too familiar with – to drop off our bags while we headed out into the city.

Our first stop was to buy some tickets for the Roman Forums and the Colosseum, wanting to buy them in advance to avoid the insane lines we’d seen forming outside of them in the past few days. After getting the tickets we wandered around Rome for a bit, jumping between air conditioned stores to pass the time.

After a couple hours, we made our way back to the train station and headed to our new Airbnb. Unfortunately, this was our first disappointing experience on the whole trip. While the room was fine, many of the things listed in the description turned out to not be available – including free breakfast and a washing machine, things we were relying on during our budget travels!

A little worn out from the heat and frustration, we wanted to eat somewhere close and found a good pizza restaurant nearby. In reality, it was more like three restaurants – featuring a separate bar with buffet, a normal restaurant (where you could not order pizza) and a pizzeria – all in one building! It was quite confusing when we first arrived, but we quickly found some help and made our way to the right place.

The service was quick, and before we knew it we were faced with a great looking pizza! We dug in not knowing exactly what was on the pizza because the menu had been in italian – but excited by what was in front of us. After half the pizza was consumed Becca got a fishy taste in her mouth – assuming it was just contaminated from other pizzas it had been near. She remarked that it was a fishy bite. But the fishy bite turned into a fishy mouthful and Ryan confirmed that it was anchovies. Not fun.

We tried to get the rest of the anchovies off of Becca’s pieces, but it was a failure. In the end Ryan finished the pizza alone. It was strange that the anchovies weren’t on either of the first two pieces though!

The next morning we woke up early to make it to the Colosseum when it first opened. When we arrived there was a pretty long line, but nothing like what we had seen in previous days, and it moved quickly. In the end, it was only 15 minutes from the time we showed up to the time we were inside. Waking up as early as we did was worth it, as we got to enjoy the views of the structure without insane masses of tourists.

We made our way around the entire complex on both floors, finishing our loop as the number of people everywhere was becoming overwhelming. Wanting to get away from the crowds, we headed to the Forum. Our timing was great, as there was no line when we reached the Forum and we were able to walk right in.

It was nice being able to walk through the Forum and take in the sights in relative solitude. We spent a couple hours there, walking along various paths and trying to stay in the shade as much as possible, before the hoards of tourists migrated over from the Colosseum. We quickly made our way out and headed home to escape the heat of the day. Because it was so hot, we decided to take the day as a rest day, listening to podcasts and unwinding.

For dinner we tried some new local cuisine – Trapizzinos – essentially a fancy open-faced pizza pocket. We didn’t know what to expect, but they were very delicious!

To cap off the night, we headed to a nearby gelato place which had great reviews. It was a little tough to find at first, but it was well worth the effort.
The gelato was great, coming with three flavors for only €3.50! They laid on generous servings of fresh made gelato that allegedly had people lining out the door on most nights.

On our final day in Rome we only had one todo before heading to Florence – making it to the Vatican to watch the Papal Address. We headed back to Termini station for the umpteenth time, dropping our bags off and grabbing a metro to the Vatican for the address at 10. The metro station and cars were absolutely packed to the brim, which should have been our first clear warning that we were in for a wild ride.

We squeezed into the car and made our way to the Vatican, getting off at our stop with ~90% of the other people on the metro. All along the way to the Vatican were tourist groups and street vendors, which were trying to direct people in the wrong direction – telling people the way to the Vatican Museum, but not towards St. Peter’s Square. Luckily we knew the right way (thanks to our phones) but it was strange to see all these people trying to misdirect tourists who probably wouldn’t even buy their tours once they realized the truth.

We finally got past all of the tour groups and into the square, only to be met with hundreds of chairs set-up and a few fences to direct where people should stand. There were screens set up around the square as well to stream the event. Normally this would make sense, as the address was supposed to be outside, however, there were very few people standing around and we realized something must be up.

We asked someone who looked official where the address was being held, and he pointed us towards the Basilica (little did we know that he too was trying to sell tours). We waited in line to make it through security and entered the basilica to see … far to few people again. We walked quickly through and on the other side found a different security line leading to another building. We asked another official looking person and he told us that tickets for the address were required so we should give up – BUT we should definitely go to the Sistine Chapel. Another person trying to sell us things.

At this point we realized the address was definitely in a small church and not in the square, and that we weren’t going to get in, which was disapointing. But we knew we could watch it from in the square which is what we initially expected so that wasn’t so bad! It was only 9:15 and the sun was beating down on us, so we decided to go back through the security line to go to the Basilica again so we could enjoy it properly. Unfortunately, when we made it from the front of the line the screens switched to show the Pope coming into the church!

We were even more confused than before because online it had said that the address was typically at 10:30, but was sometimes at 10 during the summer because of the heat. But it was only 9:30! We still went to the Basilica for 10 minutes or so, admiring the beautiful art and ceilings.

We exited from the other side and found a spot in the shade to watch the address on the big screens. We listened as they went through language after language welcoming everyone to the event and imparting a blessing which was really neat.

The entire experience was incredibly confusing and it felt like we couldn’t trust anyone around us to tell us the truth which was too bad, because the actual address was really wonderful. We also don’t understand why there were so many chairs set up in the square!

After the address we decided to stop for coffee at Ryan’s friend Aidan’s favorite coffee shop in Rome. We grabbed an espresso and a doughnut, enjoying a little refuge from the heat. The coffee was definitely the best Ryan tasted in Rome – although it wasn’t saying much as the rest of the coffee had been from pods or cheap coffee provided by our Airbnb hosts – it was really good though! After stopping for coffee, we headed back towards the train station – grabbing our bags and some lunch before the train ride.

As we left Rome and Termini station behind, we were definitely ready to be heading to Florence – and hopefully to some cooler weather!