Rome - Day Two

Sunshine! Our second full day of Rome brought the first periods of extended Sunshine we have seen since the beginning of our trip. Excited to not have to hide under an umbrella, we headed towards Rome’s ancient sites of the Coliseum and the Roman Forum. We got there to find that the lines were ENORMOUS. Whatever, at least it was a nice day. We got in line and started to wait. Just a few minutes in, a person walks by the line asking if anyone would like to take a tour of the Coliseum and Roman Forum for just 8Euro extra over the cost of admission. In addition to having a guide, we also got to skip the lines. That was a no-brainer for us, so Em and I signed up and were soon in the Coliseum.

The Coliseum is an amazing site – perhaps our favorite of the trip so far. The guide was great and explained all of the usages of each part of the building. The stage of the Coliseum is now missing, so you can look down and see all of the rooms and buildings that were directly underneath. These rooms were used to store the animals that they fought as well as where the Gladiators waited.

Next, we headed over to the Roman forum and Palatine hill. These are the sites of more ancient ruins, including what was once an enormous palace for an emperor named Domission. Very little of it remains today. An interesting rule of thumb is that if a building was a church, it is very well maintained today. Otherwise, all of the other buildings were gradually dismantled over the years to provide either marble or bronze to build churches, or to provide brass and metal to build cannons.

In the roman forum we saw all sorts of cool ruins and such. However, two favorites of mine were the spot of Julius Ceasar’s funeral and also a column that was called, in Latin, the “center of the world”. In ancient times, every Roman road had a marker that told you how far away you were from this column. This column is the reason we have the saying “All roads lead to Rome”. At one point, all roads did.

After sightseeing we got lunch at a restaurant and sat outside and people watched. We then headed back to the hotel to grab our Kindles and read outside a bit at Trastaverte Square, which is right around the corner from us. We also had our first taste of gelato, Italian style ice cream. It was really tasty, but I couldn’t tell much of a difference from regular ice cream. For dinner we actually headed back to the restaurant we went to the first night since it was so good. Em wanted what I got the first night and I wanted to try some true Italian style pizza. The pizza was very good and had a very thin crust. After a couple of bottles of wine, we called it a night and headed back to the hotel.