Talk about making and ignoring plans. I hit Tripadvisor and looked up the restaurants in the neighborhood of the hotel as I did not want to wander far. I reduced the number to six, drew a map, which showed them to be in two clusters of three, and then set off towards the western ones. I found one quite quickly, but it was on the bottom of my list and wasn’t sure I fancied it tonight, The next two were nowhere in sight. But what proved to be a lot closer than expected, just 10 minutes walk, was Il Colosseo, The Colosseum.

I’m still trying to work out my views on The Colosseum. I walked up to the balcony overlooking it from the other side of the road from the east side and felt little. It’s almost as if I was expecting to be blown away as I was on seeing Todai-ji and Qtab’s Minar in the flesh, but I wasn’t. It’ not that it’s small, though it was not as large as I expected, I just can’t quite put my finger on it. Still you can also see ruins by its side so I do expect to spend a fair time there tomorrow.

While by The Colosseum the old ‘Sereno Curse’ struck again, I seemed to be the one everyone came up to for directions. Perhaps one of these days I ought to learn Italian just so I can deal with this.

Post musing over antiquities, I wandered back towards the hotel, failed to find either of the other two restaurants, however I did cone across a piazza with a few places on or near it.  I stopped at one popular trattoria, a ubiquitous cafe/restaurant where I had a salad followed by veal.  The food was nothing special, but not bad.  The draught beer was nice and went down well though.  On the way back to the hotel I grabbed a gelato which was nice and refreshing, but now I’m thirsty (good job I still had two big bottles of water left from Leonessa) and if anything could do with a cup of tea.  I think Italy is the only country I’ve been in where there appears to be no in-room tea facilities (actually I think the hotel I stayed in at Barcelona was the same).

Plans for tomorrow … The Colosseum, Palato, and the area around there.