Sight Seeing!
Places you want to check out!
St. Peter’s Square/Sistine Chapel/Vatican
Forum
Colosseum
Piazza Venezia
Fontana di Trevi
Piazza Navona
Spanish Steps
Pantheon
Piazza del Popolo
Castel Sant’Angelo
Basilica di Santa Maria in Cosmedin. Folks like to go here to see the Bocca della Verita from Roman Holiday.
You will most likely get a map from your hotel, but basically most of the sites above,except for the Vatican area, everything else is within relative walking distance (i.e. once you are at one site, you can keep moving along to the next).
The way the sites are laid out is:
St. Peter’s Square/Vatican/Sistine Chapel and Castel Sant’Angelo are the only pieces that are separate from the rest
Once you are at the Colosseum, you can walk to the Forum;
By the time you come to the end of the Forum, you end up at Piazza Venezia (which is a square primarily famous for a giant monument for Vittorio Emanuele II, who was responsible for the unification of Italy)
Right down the middle of Piazza Venezia is Via del Corso
So you have Piazza Venezia at one end of Via del Corso; at the opposite end, you have Piazza del Popolo (which is kind of like Rome’s Trafalgar Square, in that it has a fountain with four lions in the center)
Smack in the middle of Via del Corso you have a street running perpendicular to it called Via dei Condotti – this street takes you to the Spanish Steps as well as comprises of all the major high fashion labels…Gucci, Prada, YSL, Chanel, Dior, etc. 
From the Spanish Steps, there are walking trails/signs that point toward Trevi Fountain, Piazza Navona and Pantheon
Dining
La Montecarlo (a 2 min cab ride from Piazza Venezia) is famous for their pizza and pasta; http://www.lamontecarlo.it/ is the Web site; address is Vicolo Savelli, 13, although since this is a small side street you would want to take a taxi and explain that you are looking for the pizzeria Montecarlo; it’s off of a large street called Corso Vittorio Emanuele, which is found right next to Piazza Venezia.
If you want to explore, take a taxi to an area called Trastevere (Piazza Sant’Egidio is a good place to tell the driver to take you that will be more specific) and look around for restaurants; the area is nice and famous for dining. Anything in this area is good. Ask your hotel for the best restaurants in Trastevere. They will know plenty.
Ristorante Nerone (this is always a nice choice, plus they have some older, authentic Roman dishes as well)…it’s near the Colosseum at Via Delle Terme Di Tito, 96; they don’t have a site, so I hope that they are still there. I don’t see why they wouldn’t be. I would have the hotel call them at 064817952 to make sure they are even still around)
Pastarito/Pizzarito is a fun Italian chain where you can make your own pasta or pizza (like pick everything from the type of pasta to the ingredients to the sauce); the two locations that would be most convenient to find are near Piazza Venezia (Via IV Novembre, 139) or near the Vatican/Cola di Rienzo shopping area (Via Cola di Rienzo, 16/20) This is slightly touristy in that it’s not a family-run, solo restaurant. Chains in Italy aren’t common, but it’s a pretty decent and fun place to go to if you want to potentially stop for lunch where you can customize down to the level of spice.
About the pizza: There are two types — pizza you get in a restaurant, i.e. a full, thin-crust pizza; and “pizza a taglio” which is square-cut pizza that you can carry with you and eat (they wrap it like a panino so that you can just eat it while you walk around). You must try both. They do not taste the same and are both very good. Pizza a taglio places will be all over the city. You can usually see the pizza from the windows (and a lot of them literally just have signs that say “pizza a taglio”)
Shopping
-Via del Corso (longest street for shopping in Rome that goes from Piazza del Popolo to Piazza Venezia)
-Via dei Condotti (intersects Via del Corso midway and extends to the Spanish Steps – as mentioned above)
-Via Cola di Rienzo (this is near the Vatican and is another central place for shopping)
Transportation
There are only two metro lines – Linea A (orange) and Linea B (blue); Colosseum is on the blue line (the stop is literally called Colosseo), everything else is on the orange. E.g.:
Flaminio is the stop for Piazza del Popolo
Spagna is the stop for Spanish Steps
Barberini is closest perhaps to Trevi Fountain
Cipro/Musei Vaticani is for the Vatican area
This is the map: http://www.rome.info/metro. Circo Massimo on the blue line is indeed for Circus Maximus, but now it’s just a giant field. There isn’t really anything “to see”.
