We woke up early on the morning of Sunday, February 5 and flew from Paris to Rome.

Rome was not immune to the cold snap across Europe. In fact, it snowed in Rome the day before we got there. It was the first substantial snowfall in nearly THIRTY YEARS. We sure timed it right, didn't we?? They did a pretty good job of clearing the streets and piazzas, but most of the hilly sidewalks were still snowy and frozen over. When you're doing a whole lot of walking and sightseeing, the snow and ice make things a little tricky! The worst news, though, was that the Colosseum and the Forum were closed due to the snow and ice. Here are a couple of news stories/videos about the crazy weather - here and here.

First up was St. Paul's Basilica...

We stopped for lunch at La Taverna dei Forum Imperiali. I can't remember now if that was in the Rick Steves book or if we read about it on Trip Advisor. Either way, the food there was amazing! We may or may not have eaten so much we ruined our appetites for dinner. Even all the walking that followed didn't make us hungry again!

Since the Colosseum and Forum were closed, I only got pictures of the outside. Bummer! That was really our plan for the whole afternoon was to see those two things, so we ended up just doing a ton of walking around. So disappointing!

We went to dinner at Ad Hoc, another Trip Advisor recommendation. It was wonderful. We were wishing the whole time that we were hungrier! You could tell they really took pride in their dishes. The meal took THREE hours. It was so nice to just sit down for that long, but I'm afraid I wasn't a very chatty date. I was pretty worn out from our day of walking Rome! (So much so that I even forgot to take a picture of our restaurant!)

We didn't expect dinner to take quite that long, and it was so cold that we decided not to do the full Rick Steves Rome night walk like we had planned. We walked to the Spanish Steps (which apparently is normally quite the hub, but no one was there in this cold) and to the Trevi Fountain. We threw our coins in and called it quits for this very full sightseeing day.

Rome Day 2 including the Vatican, some yummy pizza, and our stay at the Waldorf coming up next!

And here are the first few Europe posts in case you missed them: Europe by Instagram, Paris Day 1, and Paris Day 2