Laugh Leeshamay: Day 39

Just arrived in Florence where there is working internet yay! So here's my posts for Roma : )

Day 39 - We started our day early because we knew there was so much to see and so little time!! So we tackled the metro and headed to the colosseum and upon walking just out of the metro station we were right in front of it! It’s an amazing figure and such an iconic one of Rome. We were warned about people trying to get you to take their tours so every person that asked us if we were interested we told them “nine!” which we learned in Paris to say to Gipsies because it’s the German word for no and apparently they leave the germans alone, or so our tour guide said. But we heard this one girl speaking American English and she looked our age so we decided to check it out. After becoming convinced, which I still am glad we did it because nothing was labeled inside, we headed on our tour of the Colosseum and the Palantine Hill which also includes the Forum.

These old ruins are AMAZING!! There’s seriously nothing like this back in the U.S. Some of these things date back to BC time…isn’t that’s crazy!? Our tour guide was even telling us how they are having a hard time building a third metro line because they keep finding ruins underground all across the city!

I could talk about each of these for days so here’s my favorite parts of each:

Colosseum – favorite part was learning about the gladiators! I’ve never seen the movie Gladiator, which apparently is historically false, but turns out gladiators were slaves, prisoners of war, young recruitments or men who really just wanted to be gladiators. It was neat though because our tour guide would show us pictures of what Rome would have looked like back in Ancient times compared to what it looks like now and the Colosseum used to have this huge statue of Nero, not sure why I found that so cool but just to imagine what Ancient Rome used to look like! Also it was neat to see the basement of the colosseum where they used to keep the animals with the little compartments and trap doors and good things like that!

Palantine Hill – My favorite part of this was the Domus Agustana and the area around it like the stadium, baths and the circus maxima (another stadium like thing where they’d have chariot races, of course) which all of this was where the Roman emperors would have chilled and hung out…man do I like their style! It ‘s mainly just the skeletal structure of it all but it’s just crazy that you can walk all throughout it and also it’s neat to think I was walking around where Julius Caesar and Cleopatra would have walked!

Forum – I have to say I think the Forum was my favorite part of all three of these! Mostly because they were all condensed into a small area, so it felt like you got ten for the price of one! Also I had my handy dandy Rome guide book (thanks Grandma J!) so I was in heaven figuring out which one was what and learning what they all were. But my favorite ruin was House of the Vestal Virgin…I mostly found this story more interesting than the ruin itself but anyways so there were these 6 chosen girls who had to keep the sacred flame burning and they were worshipped like goddesses but they had to remain virgins for 30 years, if they found to have broken this vow of chastity or let the flame burn out they were either beaten or buried alive (uh oh!) but if they kept it they had a ton of power and were seen as the most beautiful!

Afterwards Mary and I got sandwiches and relaxed in the shade next to the Colosseum. After getting motivation to hit the sites and heat again we ventured over to Trajan’s Market which is this huge ruin which used to be, as you probably have already guessed, a big market place ancient romans used!

We headed home for a little bit, changed and headed to the Vatican for mass. Afterwards Mary and walked around some other sites like Castle Sant’ Angelo, Palazzo Glustizia (which according to my map is about to collapse on itself due to the weight, yikes!), Ara Pacis and the Mausoleo Augusto. This was probably one of my favorite times in Rome so far because it was dusk so it was nice and cool out, we found a little marketplace with souveniers, a little fountain we could walk in (I thought my feet were dirty from the day but turns out I had a Tom tan!) and this neat artists who had his work (not sure I can call it that because it was different household items with sayings next to them) all along a fence. We kept walking and landed at the Piazza del Popolo which has these great big fountains and two twin churches and Michael Jackson, well not really but later that night there was a great impersonator!