Rome: Day 2

[I took a ton of photos.  I'm not going to post them all here; just the best ones.  If you'd like to see the rest of the photos I took, please see my whole photo album HERE.]

We got up pretty early on our second day in Rome so that we could do some exploring before our next tour.  We pretty much just wandered around aimlessly.  But, we got to see some cool things.  Unfortunately, Philip got duped almost immediately that morning.  

This guy in costume asked Philip and I if we wanted a photo.  I said no and tried to walk off but the guy was persistent and Philip gave in.  I tried to tell Philip that he shouldn't do it but he insisted.  Well, I took 2 photos and then the guy said,"That will be 5 Euros" (almost $7.00 for my American friends).  Philip was surprised but handed over the money.  Afterwards, I told him, don't take anything from anyone who seems "nice."  Nothing is free in Italy.  

The view from the roof of our hotel.

Anyway, we continued our wandering around the city.  We visited a bunch of the places we saw the day before.  We wanted to see them when we were rested and when it was actually daytime.

We saw a ton more ancient Roman ruins.  Most everything in Rome is absolutely beautiful.  There are ancient ruins sitting next to relatively modern buildings.  

This is the "wedding cake," or actually Altare della patria (or also il Vittoriano).  It makes a great landmark to find everything in Rome!  Oh, there's the wedding cake, so X site must be this direction. 

After much wandering, we decided to scope out the meeting site for our next tour.  When we arrived, we still had a ton of time, so we walked down to the train station to book our tickets for our trip to Florence the following day.  

After quite an adventure, we had our Eurail passes activated.  Then we had to wait in line to get our actual tickets for the Florence train.  It was a hassle, but we got it done and headed back to the meeting site for our next tour.  

We met in Barberini square.  We had some time before the start of the tour, so Philip and I grabbed some lunch before heading back to the fountain.  Then, it was time to start the next tour!