After our Seafood cooking day (link), we went back to the hotel and packed our bags for a one night trip to Rome the next morning!

Bright and early the next day… we packed our bags, had breakfast, and then walked to Florence Train Station

Our train was leaving around 9:00ish and we were set to go 😀

After checking-in in our hotel we bought tickets for the “Hop on hop off” buses, which is a service provided to tourist to take loop buses around the city! They provide you with headsets that you can hook to your seat and listen (to a language of your choice) to your tourist guide! You can hop on and hop off as much as you like for 24 hrs 😉 (this kind of service is available in many European countries)

We took the ride and made our first stop at the Colosseum (Colosseo)– some of us hopped down while others stayed in the bus

It was a sunny day and the lines were way too long… so we paid for a Tourist Guide to take us in! You pay around Eur25-30 per person for this kind of service!

From my experience, most of those tourist guides are funny and they tend to make jokes of the people within the group… like they’ll ask you what country you’re from, and if you say Kuwait be ready to be picked on (Oil, Cars, Money…etc) and same goes for other nationalities as well… they’re very creative at that 😛

Check out the details of the interior of the Colosseum arena and hypogeum, which is still in a good shape! As many of you know, the Colosseum was used to host Gladiatorial shows in the past. The hypogeum consists of cages underneath the arena… that is where gladiators and animals were held before the contest began! Today the arena is used to host special events and concerts sometimes (Paul McCartney, Elton John, Ray Charles)

The place was lively! It was a nice summer day with lots of tourists around!

The Colosseum overlooks some Roman ruins and the Arch of Constantine (Arco di Costantino)

Quick piece of info: The Arc de Triomphe in Paris was designed on the model of the Arch of Constantine in Rome 😉

And as usual, me clicking random pictures of random people around doing different things…. two love birds inside the Colosseum

A girl tanning outside the Colosseum

And outside the Colosseum, specially in peak hours, you will find some local Italians dressed as Gladiators that you have to pay them to pose for a picture with them 😛 If you want your picture taken with them… negotiate the price first! Believe me 😛

Then we hopped back on the bus to continue our day….

Read the story behind another lense at JustNoon!

To be continued 😉