We arrived in Rome mid afternoon and checked into the Hotel Masgagni. Very nice hotel, and quite near to the train station for our trip to Florence. Great little coffee shop just down the road with expressos for €1 as long as you stand up and have them at the bar. We will get to be experts at that over the next two months!

We decided to go for a bit of a walk towards the Colosseum and Roman Forum . Again we were blown away at how you can walk along the streets of Rome, surrounded by ancient relics from thousands of years ago. When you look at the ruins, the differing layers of stone are obvious, some built that way, but others having been built over/added to over centuries.

We went out for a light dinner (light because we were still relatively full of plane food after 30 hours of flying) and Garth had his first pizza (surprise surprise!!) and we drank our first bottle of chianti. We stumbled over the restaurant we went to with Lance and June last year, which made a nice start to eating out!

Off to Florence on the train today.