Rome, Italy (Day 3)

What we did:
- Woke up early for our colleseum tour! Quick cafe stop on our way over. You are required to have a tour guide to enter so we were in a group of 30 or so tourists with a super Italian, old man. Probably spent more time bashing other guides than giving facts but he was funny in his little fits of anger. We walked through the Colosseum, Palatine Hill, and the Roman Forum. Pretty impressive to see the historic buildings!
- Having conquered the last major tourist activity in Rome, we headed back to Trastevere to hunker down from the rain and get back to our wheelhouse of eating and drinking.
- We stopped for lunch at the notorious Suppli takeout place. See below for a description of this wonderful creation.
- Then we holed up in a wine bar and over potentially our favorite charcuterie board and Tuscan wines, and revisited our wedding plans. Is Gordon Lodge in Door County right? What if our dates get taken and we miss out? Is it crazy to book without visiting? Eff it we should just elope. No, we shouldn’t elope should we? You know what, no, we want a wedding. After hours of circular discussion and a couple glasses of wine we decided, let’s do it! We got real close to booking while in Croatia and the longer we’ve sat on it the more it just makes sense. Let’s call the Moms tonight and see if we’re crazy.
- Energized and now with a plan, we decided to initiate a wine bar crawl. After failing to get into two packed ones, we finally holed up in a corner bar and had some Aperol Spritz. Not quite the plan, but hey Aperols are good with us.
- After drinks we headed back to the hotel to regroup and then went to a casual dinner spot. Another solid meal! We have absolutely loved Rome. Originally intimidated from what we expected to be a super crowded touristy city, the vibes and food in Trastavere made it one of our favorite stops so far in Italy!
- We headed back to the hotel and called Sally and Helen/Brian to talk wedding plans. After lots of good questions we got complete support to go for it! Excited, we sent a note to Amy at Gordon Lodge that we wanted to lock down our date after a few clarifying questions. Wooooooo!

What we ate:
- Breakfast of croissants and coffee at Giselds bakery
- SUPPLI! So good! Had this for our lunch at “Suppli Roma” and breakfast on our way out of town the next day. It’s like Arancini, but so much better. Little balls of fried risotto and we tried three different types - Classico (red sauce), Cacio e Pepe and Cacio e Pepe with lemon 🔥🔥🔥. Bring these to the USA ASAP.
- Delicious Italian cold cuts and cheese platter with Tuscan wines as an afternoon snack at Vin Allegro. Also got super fresh prosciutto melon!
- Dinner at Trattori Del Teo. Steph got carbonara and Trent got seafood linguini. Delicious fried artichokes, a Roman staple, for an app!

Fun facts:
- 6M people visit the Colosseum every year.
- When Mussolini was in power he put a lot of resources into modernizing some of the old buildings to help with bringing back the Roman Empire glory days
- Back in the day if a building was declared for religious use it was protected from being destroyed/pillaged. If a building was not protected by the church, it was typically destroyed for use in other buildings.
- Over the thousands of years Romans just kept building on top of other layers of buildings so when they excavated you could see all the different eras stacked up. We found it crazy to think how much is under Rome that they dont even know aboutRead more