We arrived in Rome via train from Chiusi, a little town in Tuscany. The train ride was only 1.5 hours, arriving at 3pm, and was uneventful. This train only cost 40 euros for both of us in first class, a far cry from the 240 franks we paid to get from Lugano to Florence. We got off the train at Rome Termini, the main train station in central Rome. Whew, that place is seriously busy and packed with people on a Tuesday mid-afternoon. Kevin didn’t like my plan to take the subway down two stops to Collosseo, the subway stop very close to our hotel, because he didn’t want to lug his luggage. So, we took a cab. A waste of money in my opinion, but it makes Kevin happy.

We’re staying at the Royal Art Cafe, which has a few hotel rooms above a restaurant directly facing the Collosseum. I’ll write more about it later.

The bad news is that it is a rainy day. There are still plenty of tourists walking around the Collosseum with umbrellas and plenty of vendors walking around offering to sell umbrellas to the tourists. We spent the afternoon in the hotel restaurant eating a long dinner and, as we had a table right in the front window, people watching. We just didn’t do much of anything, although my itinerary called for us to go to the Roman Imperial Forum and Collosseum today.

Tonight, we went for a little walk after dark. We started out looking for the laundry place that Cattia, the hotel manager, had told us about. She didn’t know where it was exactly, just the general area near the hotel, so we set off looking. After walking every street in the area we could not find it and were glad we had not lugged our suitcase of dirty clothes with us. Since we were in the area, we then took a walk around the back side of the Collosseum and Palatine Hill and I took some cool night shots of these sights.