Rome, italy

We said goodbye to Venice and headed to Rome.  We had reserved our seats online the day before, but weren't sure if we needed to print our ticket. So we left for the train station about an hour before departure, which we thought was early enough, but the water bus took a little longer than expected. We got to the train station and split up into separate lines across the station, to ensure that one of us would find the answer to our ticket question.  With just six minutes before the train left, Jillian got to the front of the line, only to find out the electronic copy was sufficient.  In a panic, we found each other and raced to our train with just two minutes to spare--phew!!!  We thought our worries were over, but realized otherwise , once we got to our "hotel".  What was described as a B&B really turned out to be a room in some guy's apartment, that smelled like stale cigarettes and urine.  So needless to say we thanked Booking.com for canceling our room, booked another one and got th heck out of there! The guy was nice enough to call us a taxi...thank God! The hotel we booked ended up being located in Rome's Chinatown--ironic-- it was an ancient monastery with no elevator and three locked doors to access your room! But really it was fine and ANYTHING was better than the first place! We started our on/off bus tour at the Colosseum that night, which was perfect--no crowds, not as hot and such a sight to see! Then we trekked across the city to find Pirelli's, a highly recommended restaurant, stopping along the way to have a cocktail and some bruschetta--the best we've had!  Our waiter was awesome, made good recommendations for food and made sure we got on the bus safely.  On the way home we stopped at the Irish pub around the corner from our hotel.  The beer was good, but the entertainment was priceless.  We met a three year old little Asian girl named Angela, who spoke only Italian.  She talked us through the dinner menu, cheered us with her water shouting "salute" over and over again and gave us candy from her Hello Kitty backpack! She was absolutely ADORABLE!  The next day, we finished the bus tour seeing all the ancient sights.  That night we had dinner at the famous Fettucini Alfredo's, where they claim to have created Fettucini Alfredo.  It was delicious and we made friends with three American sailors, who we ended up having drinks with and danced the night away with at a local club. Late night, but fun!