Rome Ramblings--Thursday July 7
Up, showered, and fed a large breakfast of cereal, croissant, blood red OJ and a caramel cappuccino, my traveling companion is finally ready to hit the road into the city at 12:30pm! Maybe he is saving his energy for the club scene??! We have decided to take turns picking things to do, and today Danny has chosen the coliseum.
The metro is about 50 steps away from our building, right at the bottom of the street! It is 1eu, and quite nice, not as crowded as Athens, that’s for sure! We get off at the coloseo stop and when we emerge we are staring right at one of the most identifiable landmarks in the world! It is huge and looks so cool! We cross the vendor filled street and look for the ticket booth by Palatine Hill, which our guidebook advised up has shorter lines. As we are walking we see really large excavations of ruins all over the area on our right, the government seems to be doing a lot of archaeological discovery/renovation. We find the booth, and wait about 25 minutes on line. I told Danny he would wait longer at Cedar Point on 7/7 to get on a roller coaster! We are disappointed to find out that since we are not members of the EU, Danny is not free, but has to pay full adult fare(see if we save you again in a war,Italy,humph!) Really a small thing, we’re in! And as we enter, we decide to explore the Palatine Hill area first, then head to the coliseum. I had no idea about this and it turns out to be one of the seven hills of Rome, the one where all the rich folk built their “domus”, and where Nero had originally constructed his palace and grounds. The fire that burned much of Rome in 64AD was rumored to have been started by Nero so he could clear more land for himself(Nero fiddled while Rome burned!) and the site that the coliseum is set on is exactly where one of Nero’s reflecting ponds was(built there to try to erase the memory of Nero). It is a huge site, filled with ruins of homes and baths and shops, a museum with artifacts from the excavations, a cool tunnel like walk way that Nero used so he could walk around in safety, in which they had statues and paintings of him along with speakers blasting facts about his life in Italian and English. We spent hours here! Danny directed us all over, and we climbed and sweated happily. We took advantage of the Roman faucets that are everywhere in the city and inside this site, to refill our water bottle from the original springs that have been used since the aqueducts were built, and have some of the best water in the world. That was cool. We decide to go to the coliseum, which, according to our guidebook, has a tearoom inside, and we are starving and I need a coffee! We had heard about the lines at the coliseum itself, but with our ticket from the hill we walk right past the 2 hours long line and into the coliseum(feeling quite smug, I might add!) What a disappointment the coliseum is. There is really nothing to see or do there except look at the structure, which is exactly like you see in any photo. No info handy, no signs, no museum…we eavesdrop on a few tour guides as they tell a few facts, but after a couple of photos and a cursory glance through the gift shop(coliseum t-shirt? Only 27eu!!) we head out. We talk about how some things are not as exciting as you think they will be, and how other things turn out to be fabulous, unexpectedly, and how that is part of traveling. I must feed this child! We wander down a side street to get away from the high prices of the Café Coloseo’s, and end up at a little stand with a small indoor counter where Danny is thrilled to eat a deep fried spaghetti ball with cheese, meat and spices inside(Davanzo’s-take note!) and some kind of bread like thing with basil and mozzarella on top, that turns out to contain ham and cheese too! He is in heaven. I am still hoping to see a coffee place and/or a bakery, so I’m still waiting! While Danny eats we read in the book a bit more about the hill and the coliseum to continue our education. Cool fact we learn, through the coliseums 8 entrance doors they could fill the place up with 50,000 people in 10 minutes!! No one checked backpacks back then! We headed down the Via dei Fori Imperiali and view Trajans forum, all kinds of columns, circles,squares,piazzas,churches,etc. You would have to have a guide or keep your head stuck in your book(which I tried, it didn’t work, so we just do the best we can and enjoy the spectacular scene. Danny really enjoys the street painters, his favourites are the ones doing pictures with spray paint, layering with stencils and making pictures of the coliseum which they then sell to the amazed crowds. I spot a fruit cart and so we happily eat a nectarine and banana and watch the painters. Many times the small things are best! We head into the Forum, and it is about an hour until closing, so we have no crowds and follow our guidebook around, finding lots of cool things,. One spot is the place where they decided was the city center(Rome’s bellybutton!) and all distances to other cities should be measured from that spot, where the “all roads lead to Rome” came from. At the time of the forum, they constructed over 60,000 miles of roads-unreal! We scramble around the forum until 15 minutes past closing, “Prego,Prego,CLOSED NOW” the guards are yelling, and it is neat to be in there alone! We stroll a bit more, then decide to hop on the metro again and return to our ‘hood, the line stops running at 9pm while they do work on the line, expanding it, and we have WALKED our feet off already! After a pit stop to unload our pack, we walk half a block to the shops on our busy road, where Danny tries a frozen espresso shot, and we get a couple of hunks of pizza. They don’t speak English, so we point and hope for the best, and end up with margaretti and eggplant, we think! We go back to the B&B and sit at our little table and I finally get my coffee, from the slick espresso machine! I don’t care that it is after 9pm, I need it! It is great!
We talk and laugh, and then change into pj’s and watch a couple of episodes of The Andy Griffith Show, which is our new favourite(Barney tries to buy a used car, Aunt Bee swindled by the elixir man-nothing better!). One other bit of good luck for me, I notice in the dining room that there is a book shelf with guidebooks and on closer examination find some paperbacks in English! I turn in my book that I didn’t like but was forced to read for lack of anything else and pull out a brand new Kate Atkinson (case histories? Go read it!) called Left Early, Took The Dog I am so happy!! Lights out at 11:30pm, hope to get Danny up at a reasonable time, tomorrow night is our Vatican under the Stars, so may let him lie in a bit.
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