3 Days in Rome - Itinerary questions

Stephanie: If you are flying in from the US Wednesday you are going to be tired. Pace yourself! The Colosseum self-guided will take about an hour, so perhaps you should see the Colosseum (1030-1130), get some lunch, then meet up with your Underground Tour at 1300. After that tour, go check in (where is your hotel?), take a shower, unpack, and rev up for evening. If you can pace yourselves and stay awake until 2100 or 2200, you can be on "local time" by morning. After check in, go out for a walk and dinner, even if it means returning to the Centro Storico from the suburbs. Shops are open until 1900 or 1930, some later. Thursday: Since you already have the Scavi Friday, do all of your Vatican activities that day. Thursday can be for the Forum, Vittorio Emanuel, Pantheon, assorted churches, National Museum, or Borghese. You'll have to decide what's most important: museums or historical sites, or just enjoying the city by walking! Note the Forum and Colosseum don't open until afternoon due to the parade on Via dei Fori Imperiali, so you might focus on Pantheon, Trevi, Borghese, etc., and see if you can wander through the Forum later in the day. Rick Steves' Guide has some nice walks for evening, like Night Walk Across Rome and Dolce Vita Stroll. And yes, shops and restaurants are open. Friday: See St. Peter's Basilica in the morning, before your Scavi reservation (allow plenty of time to go through security and check your backpack if you have one!). Then have lunch and go to the Vatican Museums in the afternoon when the crowds are reputed to be lighter. Get a ticket in advance so you have a reserved entry time, or sign up for a tour. You will be tired after this day! It's a lot of on-your-feet time.

Hi Laurel, Thanks for your reply. To address some of your questions – we will be in Europe for almost a week prior to arriving in Rome so I'm not concerned about the jet lag so much. We will be staying overnight at a Rome airport hotel the night before our arrival in Rome, so will be well rested. On previous trips to Europe, we usually do exactly what you suggest – head for the hotel, take a shower, and power through until about 22:00 PM local to try to reset our internal clocks! We are staying at the Rome Cavalieri (a Hilton property). It's about 2 miles outside the city center. I wouldn't normally pick a property like this #1, couldn't afford it! #2, we like to stay at smaller, locally owned places. However, staying at these properties is allowing us to have a longer trip than our budget would stretch. This hotel has a free shuttle, approximately hourly, leaving from Barbarini metro. It's not on the train line, but a public bus runs fairly closely to the hotel. Taxis would be 15Euro (per my estimates) from a metro to the hotel (but I'd welcome additional thoughts on this!). By the time that we deal with all of those logistics and cost, I think that I'd rather leave the luggage at Termini until we're ready to head to the hotel in the later afternoon/evening. However, I'm open to suggestions from those who know better! Which is the greater evil – Termini left luggage, or assorted back and forth to the hotel? :-) My only question is whether leaving the Colleseum after seeing it, going to lunch, and coming back for the Underground Tour would take my 2 "free" Roma pass entrances to the Colleseum?

Ah, no jetlag problems make all the difference. Nice they have the shuttle, though, so you can come and go easily. You sure can power through the Colosseum and Forum on Day 1, then. Not sure about in-and-out on your Roma Pass. I wonder if the Roma Pass website can give you info on that. You surely can break between the Col. and Forum, though, as it is two separate sites treated as one. FYI, the Palatine Hill is worthwhile too. You can do all three sites in 1/2 day. A cool way to end the Forum tour is to ascend the Elevator in the Sky at the Vittoriano. There's a "back door' descirbed by Rick Steves' in the Rome Guide. Very nice over-the-rooftop views especially late in the day.