Europe - Days 1 & 2

Day 1 - Rome, Italy

We landed in Rome in the afternoon around 1Pm. We were specifically told repeatedly to watch our for the luggage since there are a lot of thieves in Rome who usually target International Visitors. After collecting our luggage from the baggage claim, we were asked to go outside to the White taxi service, which is regulated. If you ask, they will also tell you how much it would cost beforehand to reach your Destination so that you will know that you are not being cheated. After reaching our Hotel(Mercury Rome West), our tour guide met us there in the lobby. He gave us our rooms and told us that dinner would be served at 8:30 in the banquet hall in the lobby of the same hotel. 

We went to the room, got freshened up and then went outside for a walk to see the real Italy. I was surprised to see that everything there reminded me of India right from the local stores to the vehicles and the roads, except for the fact that it was a little cleaner than India.
We walked in to a local pizza shop after looking at the ratings online. The pizza there tasted amazing and the good part was that they cut the pizza with a scissors(in rectangular shapes) and sold it by weight instead of slices.

That evening was all about walking on the streets of Rome. We came back to the hotel had our dinner and slept, since we had to report early the next day in the lobby (7:30am) for breakfast. 



Day 2 - Rome, Italy

After having our breakfast, we started off to St. Peters Basilica in the Vatican city. The queue there was surprisingly long and we had to wait for almost 3 hours there before we could get in. 

From there we started our guided city tour of Rome. We saw the Victor Emmanuel II monument and some other historic places before going to the Colosseum. We didn't have much time at the Colosseum so we were asked to take some pictures and return to the bus in about 15 minutes. This was the sad part because we couldn't go inside the Colosseum. 

From there we went to the city of Pisa which was a four hour drive in the bus. 

After vising the Leaning tower or Pisa, we went to our Hotel in Florence, Italy.