Rome Part 2:The Ancient Ruins (& more exploring!)

On our third day in Rome we went on a guided tour of the Colosseum and the ancient Roman ruins. This was another tour we booked with "City Tours" and we all really enjoyed it! Personally I liked the Vatican tour a little better but I still loved learning about the ancient Romans and their traditions and the history of everything we were seeing. We toured the Colosseum, Palatine Hill, and the Roman Forum. The Colosseum was cool but my favorite was probably the Roman Forum because it was an area where people gathered and theres the remains of a lot of buildings so its super easy to imagine people actually working and spending time there in Ancient Rome. After our tour we went to the Altare della Patria which is this giant white building that kinda sticks out and it is the World War I memorial. It houses the tomb of the Unknown Soldier and has great views from the top. We didn't pay to go all the way to the top because we had limited time and we had already had great views of the city from St. Peter's Basilica. Even if you don't go all the way to the top you can walk to a really tall lookout area and see a ton. Afterwords we went to a Latin Mass in St. Peter's Basilica which was incredible. After mass we all went to get Gelato then took our time walking to dinner. We went to dinner at this super cute place called Trattoria der Pallaro. One of the guys in our group's parents had been a few years before and it is a little restaurant where you pay a flat rate of $25 per person and you get a five course meal of whatever the chef was cooking that night. The chef was this adorable little old Italian woman and she was so sweet! It was definitely the coolest meal I've had since being in Europe!