Roman Forum & Palatine Hill

After our Roman Coliseum visit, we exited around 10:30AM and went to get some orange juice for me at one of the overpriced vendors. Dreadfully hot, we sat in the shade while I finished. Then we head down to the entrance to the Roman Forum.

We walked down the stone road in the same direction as all the other tourists. Though I have to say the road wasn't the most stroller friendly surface. I eventually just got out and started hopping from stone to stone.

We got in line, but then my father went up ahead to scout out the entrance. Sure enough, the line was for people looking to buy tickets. We had already purchased our Forum/Palatine tickets as a part of the same Coliseum ticket, so he waved us over to the front of the line where we went right into the Forum.

The Roman Forum was a huge central plaza during Ancient Rome. Kind of like how Times Square functions today in NYC as a iconic hub. Here's a map that helped orient us as we were wandering around aimlessly eavesdropping on English speaking tour guided groups.

Candidly, it's really tough to envision how the ruins must have looked like during those times, but it was still cool to be surrounded by history.

We also walked up the Palatine Hill which was more of a spread out garden/park than a concentrated set of building ruins. It was much less crowded given how dispersed the structures were. We had a leisurely stroll through most of Palatine before we realized that we needed to get back to the InterContinental by 2PM to check out.