One thing I had to remember on this trip...I was not the only one traveling. In the past, I have been known to over schedule our travel days. Therefore, I couldn't make this trip all about what I wanted to do and every place I wanted to try to see while we were there.

Since we had a pretty full day before, I knew we needed to scale back and take things a bit slower on our second full day in Rome.

Can you even imagine how hard this was for me?!?

Anyway, we planned for a slow morning with an afternoon trip to the Vatican. We purchased tickets ahead of time online and walked to a cafe to get our morning cappuccino and croissant.

After our late breakfast, we started walking towards the Vatican.

We were told that it is best to go to the Vatican either very first thing in the morning, or wait until the afternoon. And plan on at least 2-3 hours.

I kind of had a feeling we would be there for more than two to three hours since this was the one thing on my husband's bucket list!

Look at all of these people! And this is in mid February!

Once we entered the Vatican Museum, I was so glad we were there during the off season. Can't even imagine what the halls look like during the height of travel season!

We quickly passed by a lot of the statues and found a hall filled with tapestries.

Details about one of the tapestries at the Vatican Museum

The detail on these tapestries was amazing! And look at when these were made, 1524-1531?!?

This one hall was lined with tapestries on both sides. One side depicted different things about the popes, which I really didn't even look at. The other side was all tapestries depicting the life of Jesus. The tapestries were enormous! The one I shared above is over 18 feet wide!

Hall in the Vatican Museum with maps of regions of Italy

The hall with all of the maps of regions of Italy was my favorite. Looking at all the detail, I am not sure how people can only spend two to three hours in this place!

We were finally getting closer to the Sistine Chapel!

One thing I was disappointed about was learning that I would not be able to take any pictures of the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel! So I had to settle for taking photos of other paintings in the museum. The one above is a pretty famous one called The School of Athens by Raphael.

Once you exit the Vatican Museum, you have two choices. Enter St. Peter's Basilica is what most people do.

The other choice is to climb up inside the dome.

What choice do you think we made? Or rather, I made...

Once we got to this point, we thought this was as high as you go. This view in itself is pretty incredible.

But we quickly learned, there were more stairs to climb.

The final set of steps you go up before you are able to walk outside of the dome are a set of tight spirals with a rope for you to use for the 'hand rail'. That was interesting!

There might not be a better view of Rome...

View of Rome from the dome of St. Peter's Basilica

The trip down the stairs was much easier than climbing up all 500 or so steps to the top!

It was starting to get late in the afternoon and we were not sure how much later St. Peter's Basilica would be open, but we wanted to make sure to look around inside before we left here.

This...almost had me in tears. This is the Pieta by Michelangelo. What was going through Mary's mind as she was holding her beloved son and Savior after his death on the cross?

Overall, I believe we spent over 5 hours here! I am so glad we didn't plan on trying to see too many things on this day.

By now, both of us were starving since we hadn't eaten anything since our cappuccino and croissants much earlier in the day.

We started our walk back across the Tiber River...

We found a place online to try, but getting there was a bit of a challenge.

Eventually, after walking past the restaurant, we found the place we were looking for!

Cantina e Cucina...this place had some great reviews online, and there was a bit of a line. We started chatting with a couple of men who said this was a great place to eat. They live in England and travel to Italy for work.

Can you even imagine that? Hoping on a plane and being in Italy in just a couple of hours?

Anyway, this is not the place to go if you are looking for a quiet dinner. It was an interesting set up inside with lots of seating for just two people. But the tables were really close together. We ended up chatting with the couples on either side of us. Which was actually kind of fun!

And for dinner...

I had pasta and my husband had pizza. Then for dessert...

Tiramisu, again. Might as well compare it with the one I had the night before!

Have you ever been to Rome? If so, what was your favorite part of Rome?

Before we started exploring Rome on our first full day in Italy, we had to go try an Italian cappuccino. After a quick search, I found one within walking distance (actually, a lot of places were within walking distance!)

Once we arrived and figured out where to order our cappuccino and pastry, we waited at the coffee bar for our order. Seating in this cafe was extra, so just enjoyed our first breakfast standing up.

Croissant and cappuccino in Italy for breakfast

This was amazing!! I could get used to having this for breakfast every day!

Now before I write much more, I have to warn you that these Italy posts will be photo heavy. I did take my Nikon DSLR, but honestly, it was so much easier to just capture images with my iPhone.

After we finished our breakfast, we attempted to get an Uber to take us over to the Colosseum. Let me just say, our GPS did not work very well while we were over there. So we didn't find the spot where we needed to get the Uber. We ended up just catching a taxi to help cut down on the amount of walking we would be doing.

We did not purchase tickets ahead of time, so we stood in line to enter Palatine Hill first.

I loved seeing excavation work going on at Palatine Hill. I wonder how many items they still find in the area.

View of The Colosseum from Palatine Hill

All of the signs had Italian and English. Do you see the dates on this sign?

It is incredible how many structures are still standing in this area from almost 2000 years ago!

After spending quite a bit of time walking around Palatine Hill, we made it over to the line to enter The Colosseum. The sheer size of this building is overwhelming!

I tried to photograph some of the less photographed things I found while walking around inside The Colosseum.

How many hearts do you see in this wall?

We even had someone take our photo!

By this time, it had been quite a few hours since our cappuccino and croissant.

I don't even remember all that we ordered for lunch, which is why photos from almost six months ago are helpful! But I do know, since it was a bit cold outside, we did have another cappuccino.

After we finished lunch, we started walking toward The Pantheon.

We walked by the Imperial Forum. Some of these walls and columns were constructed before Jesus was born!

The Pantheon is one of the buildings I did not want to miss on our trip.

This was my best attempt to capture the inside of The Pantheon. It is mind blowing to think how they constructed the inside of the dome and this building!

As you can see, many of the streets in Rome are quite narrow and nothing like the modern streets we have in the United States.

Many of the churches in Rome are open to the public. I recommend walking inside a few of them to admire the elaborate details.

We have heard that most people who travel to Rome, stop by Trevi Fountain to throw in a coin. Apparently, if you do this, you are guaranteed a return trip to Italy...that is if you believe in that kind of stuff.

Did we throw in a coin? You bet we did! We had to do what all of the other tourists do!

By this time, after walking who knows how many miles, it was time to find a place for dinner.

We decided to give this place a try...

...because they had homemade gnocchi on the menu!

Because we did so much walking, we ordered tiramisu for dessert, yum!

Probably the strangest thing we saw on this day was these Unicorn Fruit Loops in the market. Too bad we didn't have room in our luggage to bring a box or two of these home!

Have you ever been to Rome? What is the strangest thing you have ever seen while out of the country?

Stay tuned...day three of our trip will be coming soon!