A taxi ride from the airport to your hotel can be worth the price of admission, especially if the driver drives his fiat like a Grand Prix racer, it’s a beautiful day, and you’ve never seen Rome before. Nothing like driving under the arches of the wall and seeing one amazing site after another from your windows. A train ride wouldn’t have been half as fun.
Doing a neighborhood walk your first evening is a great idea but perhaps have a plan for where to eat dinner or you might be so brain fogged that you dither and wander a bit aimlessly. Too many options and no sleep wasn’t optimal for us in this respect.
My kids can out stamina me in a museum. We went to the Capitoline Museum and they had to go in every single room. My 13 year read everything and my 11 year old created a self directed photo hunt of the most “intersting” and grotesque faces found in all the art. My phone now has a lovely collection of portraits of faces found in urns, statues, busts, paintings and friezes.
This isn’t exactly news to most, but still surprised me that even in February there are really large crowds, especially in the afternoons. I can’t imagine being here in the summer. We have loved early mornings as a way to miss some of that. We are thrilled with our decision to come in February. Temps have been in the 50s and I realized our hotel would have been double the cost in June.
Apparently on Sundays the Via de Fori Imperial is shut down to traffic and becomes pedestrian friendly. We were able to walk from the Colosseum to the Capitoline Museum down that boulevard with several other hundred people. It had an almost holiday feel to it.
Our trip is nowhere near done and I plan on doing a full trip report- but these aresome observations/insights that others might find helpful.