I wake up in Florence and now it's on to Rome. We catch the train at 9:14; first class and they serve me cookies and water at my seat! Awesome, I love traveling first class.
We didn't get our reservation for this train until 10 mins before our train was leaving. We forgot we were supposed to make reservations for Italian trains when we got to Nice. No wifi at Montorossa or Florence; supposed to have it in Florence. We have 90 mins to catch up on journals and nap in nice reclining seats. We are seated across the table, facing each other but not at the window because of making the late reservations.
Off the train and on to our hotel, we took a 1/2 mile walk in 70 degree sunshine and it seems hotter than that because of the luggage. It is noon and the room isn't ready so we drop off our luggage and have lunch down the street at a bar overlooking the Colosseum; good pizza, nice view.
If we go out onto the street in front of our motel you can see the Colosseum. We head off to the Roman Forum and get tickets for the Forum and the Colosseum. We have down loaded Rick's tours of both so we start listening. It's hot. We went from cold to rainy and now on to hot. What happen to spring??
We finish at the Forum at 2:20p (it's just a bunch of ruins) and head over to the Colosseum. Wait a minute, is that a gelato stand? The Colosseum can wait a couple minutes, after all it's been there hundreds of years already.
The Forum was, to me, just a bunch of really old ruins. Not much there, still a little interesting considering they made buildings that big without cranes and heavy machinery. But the Colosseum, because there's so much still standing and it's so big and you can actually walk around in it, is awesome.
What they did with the wood floor and trap doors and pulleys is amazing considering it was centuries ago. Raising live animals up through the floor to pop up in any one of 80 different locations. Didn't know they raised scenes up also. Why they did any of the things they did I don't understand. Men could be mean and cruel back then too. Today we make movies about mean and cruel things. They had people they didn't like act out stories for real and enjoyed watching people die. Sad. I enjoyed seeing this place even though....
Was also amazed they had a roof over it. I did not know that. Not all the way across, just part way to shade the audience.
We finished here at 4pm and came back to the motel to get our room and find an ATM for more cash. Boy is our room small. Seems like the rooms just keep getting smaller and smaller. Next room we get we might just have to store our suitcases ON the bed!
Back out on the streets of Rome for dinner and we made a bad choice for dinner; bad, dry pizza. It was called Caesar's Pizza. We head over to the Pantheon. Need to hurry only open 30 more min. WOW WOW what a place! Listened to Rick's tour on our iPhones walking around the huge round building with a whole in the middle of the ceiling. Glad we didn't miss this. I've got a lot of pictures to show how much I love it. The outside of the building is not impressive. The front looks nice, all the tall columns but the sides are boring. When you walk inside, wow it's big, very tall, and round: cool. Oh, and Raphael is buried inside (because he asked, if you must know).
Our next walk (yes we are doing an lot of walking and yes my feet hurt) led us to the Trevi Fountain. Could you sing "Three Coins in the Fountain" for me? And, yes, we each threw a coin in the fountain. Then, just because the song was in my head, I threw in a third coin.
Close to here is the Spanish Steps. They had all these beautifully azaleas all over. What a pretty setting. We walked up the steps and then down, then found gelato and sat down on the steps and enjoyed our ice cream before walking the mile back to our hotel, Hotel Anfifeatro Flavio (the original name of the Colosseum) .
What a great experience! Thank you for sharing. Kathy Beck
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