Day 1: Colosseum - Rome, Italy

We left our flat around 5:00am and waited outside the Hanger Lane tube station about 30 minutes. Then, we boarded the first Central Line tube to Liverpool Street. The weather was cold as usual. After collecting our train tickets from the ticket machine, we went straight to find the Stansted Express. The Stansted Express train ticket costs us around £30 for 2 person - singe trip. We did not buy the return ticket because of the engineering works in few stations this Sunday. Early in the morning, a couple was arguing about something in the station. The boyfriend was cursing so loud like a crazy person, while his girlfriend just walked away from him. We boarded the second express train to Stansted. Few minutes later, after we tried to take a short nap, then the couple boarded the same train compartment. We could not believe it! He was still cursing about something so loud. He did not speak English and therefore we could not understand why he was so angry. Quickly we grabbed our bags and moved to the next compartment. I noticed few passengers also following our moved. The train took 40 minutes to reach Stansted Airport

We boarded Ryan Air flight to Rome Campiano around 9am. We reached Rome at 12++ noon. Italy is an hour ahead of London. The rain has stopped when we walked out from the airport to wait for the TerraVision bus to Termini Station. While others including us queuing for our turn to board the bus, the suddenly two Italian guys just walked straight to the bus compartment to put their bags. What the heck! Anyway, the journey took us about an hour to reach the Termini Station in Rome City. We noticed that the roads around Rome are narrow and with so many cars on the road, obviously the traffic jam was unavoidable. Now I can understand why our travel book
discouraged tourists to drive around Rome City.

Our hotel - Hotel Mariano - is located next to the Termini Station. We got lost on the way to the hotel. About 10 - 15 minutes walking, we saw the small hotel signboard. The good news is the hotel is really not far from the Termini Station. We checked in at the reception and paid in full. The two Italian old men were friendly despite their struggles to communicate English with us. The room is small but very clean. I guess this is the kind of three star hotel in Rome City. The room only equips with basic stuff such as telephone and a small TV, but very clean. We paid about Euro 140 per night. Because of the Easter Break, all the hotels have increased their price.

Based on the map, Colosseum (or Colosseo in Italy) should not be that far from our hotel. Since I have purchased two Roma Pass that include the transport ticket and tickets to two museums that valid for three days through Internet, we don't want to waste our money to use the Metro yet. We need to collect our Roma Pass at Colosseum ticket counter. On the way to the Colosseum, we passed through the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, an old church. We reached Colosseum around 4pm. There were so many tourists there and it was quite difficult to ascertain which way is the ticket counter. After asking the staffs around the area, we managed to locate the ticket counter. We had to pass through a security check before going into the ticket booth area. The queue was quite long, but since we had a reservation already, we didn't have to join the queue. We used the Roma pass to enter the Colosseum. You can read details about the Colosseum in Wikipedia. In addition to Colosseum, there are many historical places around here. [Arch of Constantine, Roman Forum, Palatin Hill, Circus Maximus, Imperial Fora , Santa Francesca Romana]