When in Rome...

...eat. 

We started our mornings by sampling the local bakeries and building up our energy for the day.

Then onto the sites... Rome is probably one of the greatest cities for exploring culture both ancient and contemporary.  First stop is Matt's favourite:

Colosseum

Roman Forum:

Constantine's Arch:

Italian Parliament: (Wedding Cake Bldg)

Inside the Pantheon:

Piazza del Popolo

Piazza Navona:

Castel Sant'Angelo:

Trevi Fountain:

Throwing in one coin means you will come back to Rome.  It worked the last time... so we did it again.  (Also, we couldn't remember what throwing in more than one coin meant...)

Spanish Steps:

Back to food... Despite the fact that there is a McDonalds located within 100 yards of wherever you might be in Rome, we happily pursued the local cuisine at every opportunity.  (Although we did make use of the free access to toilets at McDonalds on a couple of occasions!)

We ate a lot of really fabulous food.  At some really cute restaurants.

The weather was beautiful.  Sunny and quite warm....so we had to treat ourselves to gelato.  At least twice a day. (Took us a week to work through the withdrawal symptoms once we returned to the UK). Our Italian vocabulary more than doubled just by learning the various gelato flavours.

Other treats:

I have no idea what this was called.  It had a shortbread crust, then some kind of jam filling with a whole lot of hazelnuts on top.  It looked good and tasted good.  So I guess it doesn't really matter what it is called.

Best treat of all - we went to an opera one night.  It was spectacular.  Italian opera is a beautiful experience alone.  But Italian opera in Italy.  Wow.