Wednesday, October 26,2016 Rome Day 2- Bus Tour

We had our day all planned. We would sleep in, have breakfast, and then get tickets for the hop on and off buses and go out to the coleseum, forum, and pantheon.  Then, we left breakfast and noticed that it was raining outside. Well, that wasn't in the plan. And the weather channel app said only a 5% chance until 7 pm. Clearly that forecast was wrong. What do you do?  Well, we went up to our room, got jackets and umbrellas, and proceeded with the plan.  But, once on the bus, the rain started coming down really hard. We decided the best thing to do would be to stay put on the bus. Ride the complete route, listen to the commentary, then hopefully the rain would stop later. 

 

We got our wish, and the rain stopped by 3:00, so off we went...back to the Coleseum and the Forum.  

 

 

 

After touring the Coleseum, we walked over to Palatine Hill and the Forum. This next picture is taken from Palatine Hill looking down at the Forum. 

 

 

 

We also took a picture looking off towards the city of Rome. 

 

 

We found this cute street with lots of little ristorantes. We went to another one tonight. It was basically across the street from the one we ate at last night. The highlight of our meal tonight was, again, the appetizer. 

 

 

For a rainy day, we saw a lot!  We were tired and ready to be back in our room reading and relaxing. We weren't back 15 or 20 minutes when we felt the whole room start moving. I felt like I was dizzy and looked to Mike asking, "What's going on?"  His response was "An earthquake."  Could it be?  We quickly googled it and saw in the news that 2 hours earlier an 5.5 earthquake had hit 110 miles northeast of Rome. Now we're convinced we felt a pretty strong aftershock. 

 

We're looking forward to tomorrow. It's supposed to be sunny again. We're planning on taking the train to Florence for the day!