We left home by taxi at approximately 12:15 on the morning of Monday 19th March, 2012. Having been up since 7:00 AM the previous morning, we were already quite tired, particularly as we'd only had 4 hours sleep on the night of our wedding. At this point we were a little over 12 hours away from our destination, so opportunities to sleep were never going to be abundant. Luckily, not only do I consider the lack of sleep to be a part of the adventure of travel, this gave me an ideal opportunity to fulfil my role as protector of my new wife, allowing her to gain rest at several points on our journey, assured that her husband would keep her safe.

At 3:00, we arrived at Heathrow, terminal 4. It appeared at this time of day that even the world's busiest airport was experiencing a lull in activity and we availed ourselves of a free comfy seat in Caffe Nero to enjoy our first over-priced beverages of the trip. For a newly married couple the world is an exciting place and even waiting around for four hours to board a plane was a pleasure. We have both flown before, but I realised that this was the first time I had ever flown with a companion and I was proud to be able share the experience with my wife. The flight itself was uneventful, a short while later we caught our first glimpse of the outskirts of Rome beneath the thick cloud.

We arrived safely in Rome at 10:55, our journey from Fiumicino airport to the centre of Rome was by coach. The boarding process was by far the most chaotic of our inbound trip. Any semblance of a queue quickly gave way to a pan-European clump of weary, suitcase-hurling travellers, desperate to gain a seat on what they clearly believed was the only coach in Rome. Gaining the very last seat on the coach, I spent the next lonely hour several rows back from my wife, sandwiched between a German group and a solo young female traveller. The sights were a little disappointing this far from the city the dilapidated buildings of the outskirts appearing more third-world than I would expect from this once great city, however as we approached Rome, the architecture appeared increasingly...Roman. We pulled up at the Termini station, quickly retrieved our suitcases, lest they should fall victim to the voracious suitcase hurlers. Our first experience of the enterprising Roman street-hawkers quickly alerted us to the danger of standing around with a map open. A practise we would subsequently avoid wherever possible. The young girl from the coach also apparently identified our unfamiliarity with the city, choosing to ask us for help in finding her own destination. Once we had found where we needed to go, I valiantly google-mapped her hotel and she departed, apparently satisfied. We may never know if she arrived safely at her destination.

With a clear picture of our projected journey through the busy streets, we made our way quickly to the hotel. It appeared round the wrong corner, but it was definitely the right hotel so we checked in, found our room and almost immediately went for a well deserved nap. At this point, my total hours slept since the morning of our wedding was around six, so I began learning Italian. Five minutes later we began to think about how wed like to spend the rest of the day and decided to walk down to the Colosseum, via a restaurant.

We found our restaurant in the form of 'Bella Roma,' a fairly unremarkable little place on the corner a few hundred yards from the hotel. The food was, of course, delicious and the staff were friendly enough, considering we at first made no effort to speak their language. We started with a selection of Bruschetta (One Olive, One Artichoke and one Fresh tomato) which was quickly followed by my enormous Quattro Formaggio Pizza and Aimee's Spaghetti in a tomato sauce. Desert consisted of ice cream, Aimee's with profiteroles. As we paid our bill and prepared to leave, an accordionist entered the premises and began to play. We were a little disappointed that we had to leave at this point, but we enjoyed his playing briefly as we exited the restaurant and began making our way down to what turned out the be the ruins of the Roman Forum. It seemed that with every step, the ruins opened out into another breathtaking view and as we made our way towards the massive Roman Central Museum, ancient Rome became more alive.

Finally, the Colosseum. This would be a brief visit, tonight's walk was to gain a feel for the city, to see what Rome had to offer in terms of culture and cuisine. We returned to our hotel confident that we would satisfy our hunger for both in the coming days.