Day Twelve: 5/4
Happy Anniversary to us! Ten years! Can you believe it? It sure
doesn’t seem like it was ten years ago today that we got married. Check out the
old newsletter
if you want to know what we did for that trip.
We
got up early. Today we decided to hit all of the sites we missed on the first
day. We took the Metro to the Coliseum. We grabbed some sandwiches at the Metro stop
and ate our breakfast outside the Coliseum. This food was quite delicious. It is amazing you can walk out of the Metro
and there is a food stand with very good food.
It was quite convenient. I doubt you would find this in the states. Can you imagine getting off the subway in
Los Angeles and eating a sandwich from the corner vendor? The stomach reels at
the possibilities.
While we ate at the Coliseum, we saw a number of
street performers. We saw a number of
men and women dressed up as Roman Gladiators and as Senate members. They would ask tourists if they wanted their
pictures taken with them, for tips.
Some of the pictures were quite hilarious. It was a trip to just sit and
watch them try to corral in the unsuspecting tourists.
We entered the Coliseum
and walked around the ruins. The floor of the arena is gone from age. This
surprised Angie. I guess it was because
she had never seen any pictures of the ruins or known anything about them,
other than from TV/Movies. With the
floor gone, it exposes the tunnels below.
It was cool to see how you could get from one section of the floor to
the other from underneath.
In the glory days of Rome, they had all sorts
of elevators and stairs to lift people up to the floor. We walked to the top of the ruins and got
quite a view. It was pretty easy to
imagine what the Coliseum
was like over two thousand years ago.
Outside of the Coliseum
we stood in front of the Arch of
Constantine. This arch is quite large and impressive, even with the large Coliseum in the background.
Neither Angie nor I knew what this was when we first saw it. We took a picture of it, as we figured we
could look it up when we got back to the room.
After the Arch, we walked through The Roman Forum. Both
Angie and I were very foot-tired.
We had to sit and rest for a little bit so that we could recover our
strength. This was a good place to sit and take in all the ruins. There were dozens. We saw a number of really
famous sites.
The Triumphal Arch of Septimius Severus
Temple
of Antoninus and Faustina
Temple of Saturn
Temple of Vesta
At night the forum looks really cool.
The sky was a deep blue. This picture is from a few days ago, but it
made sense to include it with the rest of the Forum pictures. It is amazing to
think there were so many famous buildings and monuments in this small area.
After The Roman
Forum, we walked to The Pantheon.
We stopped on the way to get some gelato.
We sat and ate, while we allowed our feet to recover. After we ate, we
continued on to The
Pantheon. Steve expected it to be more 'presented'. All the structures are
surrounded by buildings 
and hard to find. Once we
re-oriented our expectations, it was easy to figure out where things were.
Steve had expected them to be high up on hills. It was probably because he was thinking of Greece. We sat inside The Pantheon
and admired the dome, as well as the statues all around. It was nice and cool on the marble and we
got to relax and rest. Outside The Pantheon,
there was a really neat fountain. We took a picture of one of the waterspouts.
After
The Pantheon,
we walked to Piazza Novana. Here, there are three fountains. This is a very
large rectangular plaza. We think this is the largest piazza in Rome, but are
not positive. There is a fountain at either end and a large fountain in the
center. The center fountain is the Fontana dei Fiumi.
All over the plaza, there were street vendors
with paintings and temporary tattoos. The tattoos seem to be the most popular
item for sale here. We resisted buying any.
Perhaps when we get back to the states?
What a long day! After all this walking, we decided to walk back to the
hotel for a nap. We found that walking for the most part is the best way to get
around in Rome. The Metro was just too hard to find and way too crowded. On the
way back to the hotel we saw this really cool fountain in the side of a
building.
We got up and made a reservation for dinner. We decided to ask the hotel for a recommendation. The hotel recommended that we go to Cucinia
Italiane. We got here and there was only one other table occupied. I guess we really did not need a reservation
J
The restaurant’s atmosphere was nice. The
service was not that good and the food was just ok. Not really what we expected from such a nice looking restaurant.
This is the last time we take a recommendation from a Hotel.
After dinner we
walked back to the room and turned in for the night.