Day 1 - First Day in Rome

First day in Roma - part 1

Lasagna, Pizza, Beer and Italian orange soda

After checking in the hotel, we walked out and tried to look for food nearby.  We stopped by the Piazza della Repubblica.... and had our lunch there.... Nothing special, but the orange soda was quite refreshing.  So many birds will come to you when you eat at the outdoor terrace :)

After lunch, we basically just followed the map and walked to the Colosseum.  I researched on the underground tour for the colosseum online and talked to someone over the phone....I never got a proper reply back.  So we were heading there to see if we could book there.

Nope.  We couldn't book at the counter, we had to do it on the phone.  It was the most annoying thing ever to deal with that.  I wanted to book their official underground tour because they were the only tour that allowed their tourists to go to the "prohibited areas and the underground".  Apparently I had to call again to book.

It was about a 20 minutes walk....walking downhill?... We took a lot of photos there..just the outside of the colosseum.

When you thought the cobblestones were from ancient time...nope I just saw some were newly paved.. not sure about these ones

Tah dahhhh....finally arrived to the Colosseo ..... just going to take some photos from the outside for now

lots of ruins everywhere in Rome..

Just a day of exploring rome by following the tourist map :) we walked everywhere...

This auditorium looked like Colosseum

Some fountain in the middle of the road

Random Italian Restaurant in some back alley - Beef Carparcio 

Trevi Fountain finally :):) it looked bigger than I thought.  Night time wasn't crowded

Rome at night was quite peaceful :)

Florence - First Dinner in Firenze

Our first dinner at Florence:

We walked around the Duomo and we decided to have an early dinner right behind the Duomo.  The waiter was waving us over, so we sat at the outdoor terrace.  We were the first guests there as I guess it was a little too early for the tourists and locals to have dinner; it was around 5:30 pm.

Pappardelle with mushroom

We got a bottle of white wine and some fresh bread to start with.  We ordered only two pasta dishes as we weren't that hungry, we just want to sit and chill.  This time we ordered a type of pasta we never tried: pappardelle.  This type of pasta is large and broad, similar to lasagna...I'm not a big fan of this.  I would probably prefer lasagna better.

Risotto with Lobster

I ordered this pasta dish: risotto with lobster.  It was pretty good, quite creamy but not very special.  Overall we were not super satisfied with the food quality, but the location was good.  It was quite a nice place to chill around the Duomo, aka: tourist trap.  It wasn't super expensive though, probably 15- 18 Euro per pasta dish.

Venice - First (late) lunch

After checking in, we were starving! We didn't eat much since our breakfast in Paris.  So we were walking around our hotel's area to find something to eat; it was already 5pm.  Late lunch? or prehaps early dinner?  We took that as lunch!  First day in Italy, of course we had to find some classic Italian food:

Two glasses of Beer, Pizza & Linguine with Clams..anything tasted good by that time we ate.

We weren't just randomly looking for something to eat, we wanted to have some kinda nice view while having our first meal in Venice :)

Expresso after our meal......pretty strong..

The area was quite quiet.  We sat there for a while, and there weren't too many people walking around. I guess it was getting late, most tourists either head back to their hotels outside of the island or their cruises.

Venice was really small.  The streets sign were so small.  It was very easy to miss the street when we were following the map.