Rome and Saying Goodbye to Florence

Our other adventure last week was a day trip to Rome.  Now, those of you who have been to Rome (or lived there!) might be thinking, a DAY trip?  Are you people crazy?  Well, perhaps we are.  We tried to pack in the top highlights, realizing that there is so much more we would like to see if we had the time.  We did make it to the Sistine Chapel (fortunately with the line-skipping passes, or we never would have seen anything else), but found the Vatican grounds and museum extremely difficult to navigate. 

Once we left the Vatican, we took the metro to the Spanish steps and had lunch there.  Then it was on to the Trevi fountain, the Pantheon, the Forum, and the Colosseum.  Sadly, we arrived at the Colosseum too late to go inside, so we had to settle for the views from outside.  We gave ourselves a mediocre grade for our tour of Rome.  We'll just have to go back another time and do a better job!

Trevi Fountain is back there, but not so easy to see through all the tourists.  This is about as close as we could get.

Back in Florence, we enjoyed our last two days.  We revisited the Duomo, meandered the streets, now much warmer and more crowded with tourists, returned to our favorite gelato spots (Gelateria De Neri and Santa Trinita Gelateria, for those of you planning a trip to Florence any time soon), took in the amazing views from Piazzale Michelangelo and had our last dinner at our favorite restaurant, Trattoria ZaZa (highly recommended!).  We look forward to returning to this beautiful and vibrant city in the future.