August 5 - Rome, Italy

St. Andrew the Apostle church

Weather is actually a bit cooler, and cooler means not in the 40s…likely it was 37/38 and there was a bit of a breeze

We have a tour of the Coliseum and the Forum today at 4, so until then our day is unstructured. After breakfast we decide to wander a bit and go into St. Andrew the Apostle church that is at the end of the street our hotel is on. It still amazes me at how many of these ‘random’ churches there are, that in any other city would be the entire focus of a tour. This place had a audio-guide for a donation…it was really well done for something that could be free.

St. Andrew the Apostle

Then we headed back to the hotel to cool off – the breeze is nice, but it’s still a sweat-box.

Palazzo Venezia

We booked a tour for this afternoon, so we thought it a good idea to find where we needed to meet ahead. We found it no problem, and also found the Irish pub we thought might be in the area. After an indoor pint (Strongbow again!) and a snack we were back in to the heat and met our tour guide and the rest of the group of about 15 – nice small group.

Coliseum

We first visited the Coliseum. This place is huge and I’m glad we booked a tour – we intentionally booked this tour as it included parts of the Coliseum that aren’t normally accessible with or without a tour. First we visited the dungeons, this was where the gladiators and animals hung out prior to their battles – not man on animal (this we learned didn’t happen), but animal on

Coliseum, inside

animal, or man on man. We saw the reconstructed pulleys that would

have been used to get the animals and gladiators to the stadium floor. One thing that

fascinated me about this bit was that this would have been the first time the spectators would have even seen the animals fighting here – tigers, panthers, snakes, crocodiles etc. This idea of these battles was pure entertainment which the unique animals added to – wild. I have to say I didn’t really know much if anything at all about all of this and it’s really crazy to me. For example, I’d like to know how exactly they got these not exactly native to Italy animals here.

Next we spent some time (pretty much 100% more than we should have) on the stadium

floor. There was NO shade and we were there for about 15 minutes in the blazing sun. The guide was great and the info was interesting, but, come on!!

Finally, we visited what they describe as the ‘third tier’. This area only accessible by appointment, is the highest level of the Coliseum. Here we had a fantastic view of not only the Coliseum, but also the surrounding area, with ancient buildings as far as the eye can see.

Our visit continued to the Palatine Hill which is where Rome was apparently founded by Remus and Romulus.

Basically, it’s an archeological site on the centre hill of the seven hills of Rome.

Lastly, we visited the Forum. This is another

Roman Forum

archeological site, where we see the ruins of ancient Roman government buildings.

building with story column

Once the tour was over and we were thoroughly beat and drenched we headed for home. We were torn between bee-lining straight or stopping for a drink…we knew there was a pub on our way, so we stopped. We could have eaten here, but we were in desperate need of a shower so a quick shower before dinner and we were back for bed.

While we at the pub prior to the tour we heard a song that brought me back…waaaaaay back. “Flowers on the Wall” by the Statler Brothers. I started singing (it’s amazing what you can remember as if it was yesterday and then remember nothing this morning) and asked Chris when the last time he heard that song "Smokin' cigarettes and watchin' captain kangaroo" hearing that was pretty awesome.

was. He looked at me like I was crazy…I guess not everyone grew up "

ard that song was. He looked at me like I was crazy…I guess not everyone grew up ‘

triumphal arch