Colosseo

The Colosseum (Colosseo in Italian) was my only definite plan for today. I also wanted to try to visit St. Peter's Square in the Vatican if there was enough time.

My Flickr gallery for Rome is now complete:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645523086253/

After another huge self-service breakfast, I got the Metro to the Colosseum. It's on the same line as my stop, so it was a handy 15-minute ride from Tiburtina.

I flew through the queue because I'd already bought my ticket at the Roman Forum yesterday. The queue was separated into people that had already paid or had a Roma Pass, and people who hadn't paid. The queue for tickets was reaaaaally long, even though it was about 4 o'clock by this stage.

The Colosseum is divided into an upper and lower store. From the lower deck and most of the upper storey, you basically look over the gladiator pit, where all the fights used to take place before it became a multi-purpose arena for markets and stuff. Basically it was all just red bricks to me, but you could still almost hear the history bouncing off the walls:

A view over the Colosseum

The museum part on the upper storey was much more interesting. Sheltered away from the light, there were many different exhibits, ranging from stuff that had been kept from BC to new stuff that had been given meaning by the descriptions. I found the museum to be the most interesting part of the Colosseum - not that it stopped me from getting a photo of myself with the gladiator pit in the background.

After finishing at the Colosseum, I walked along the River Tiber to Vatican City. It was getting to be 7:00 when I got there, so most everything was closed. I managed to get my picture taken in front of Basilica di San Pietro, but only some of the photos turned out well, being into the sun:

A couple of photos in the Vatican

That's the last of my trip to Rome. Tomorrow night I meet up with dad after what will doubtless be an exhausting day of travelling, involving a train, a plane, and two buses. Until then!

Foro Romano

Today's job was to visit the Roman Forum. I was planning on a short visit, not realising how darn big it actually was.

Day two of Rome is now also up on Flickr:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645523086253/

Breakfast was the same again today. The lady that runs the B&B has a basket of self-service breakfast, with jams, bread, croissants, and biscuits. And there's milk, juice and yoghurt in the fridge. Plenty of food for everyone!

After arriving at the Roman Forum and paying for a two-day ticket, which also includes a visit to the Colosseum, I found that I had just over two hours there. It ended up being not nearly enough. The place was absolutely enormous. I managed to cover most of what was there, without seeing every little tidbit. The amount of stuff there was incredible, from stuff that has only fairly recently been discovered to stuff that is from earlier than 700 BC.

The forum's place is mainly as where the old 'kaisers' lived. They still have some of the parts of their houses way out the back. The forum also has several hills from which you can look out over the various parts of Old Rome:

 My favourites from the Roman Forum

I knew the forum closed at around 7:15, but as soon as it hit 7 o'clock we started getting ushered out. I thought this was one area the forum could improve on - the security people were very snappy and curt. Not only that, but we were directed to the nearest exit, which was not really the one I wanted to go out of. Added a bit of walking to my trip. Which, by the way, now totals about 200km in two weeks.

I headed back to the B&B and got the same pizza and gelato today - got a bit more pizza because I hadn't had lunch. Tomorrow will be a visit to the Colosseum! And maybe I'll get a chance to go the square in Vatican City. Ciao!

When in Rome...

Go see stuff. That's basically it. There is no 'experience' here like Vienna or Venice. I thought that there would be so much stuff to see that I would be struggling to fit it all in in three days. After my first day I came away with a very different impression of Rome.

My Rome set on Flickr is now available:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645523086253/

I started the day quite late, and headed towards Villa Borghese. The Metro here compared with all the other cities I've been to is just average - the frequency at the station at the apartment is 'only' every 12 minutes in peak times. The Villa has enormous grounds, with a museum/gallery in the actual villa. While I didn't go inside the gallery, I did have a bit of a wander of the grounds. It wasn't anything amazing, there were a few small flowerbeds but otherwise it was just lots of trees and dirt paths:

Villa Borghese

Still on the villa's grounds, above the Piazza del Popolo, there was an outlook over Rome, and the views were amazing. The weather wasn't the clearest, but you could still see for miles around:

The view from the outlook

After I was finished there I headed down to the Spanish Steps. I'd previously learned before I headed out that Trevi Fountain was being closed for up to 2 years while they did work on it. There was also some work going on above the Spanish Steps, so most of the photos had some form of scaffolding in them.

The walk to Piazza Navona was absolutely full of tourists. All the major attractions in Rome are centred around the Old Town area, and every street was the same. Piazza Navona was a major letdown - it was basically a black tile square with a couple of fountains and an obelisk, and surrounded on every side by overpriced tourist-trap restaurants.

The nearby Pantheon was much the same. There were so many people there that I struggled to take any nice photos, it was very much 'people everywhere'. I didn't even bother trying to go inside:

The Pantheon. Just a few people here.

Lunch today was pizza - my first pizza in Italy. Most places were really quite expensive, and luckily I found a place that was a bit cheaper in the expensive area of Old Rome. Pizza here is much different to Australia: you always buy it 'per etto' (per hundred grams). You tell them how much you want, and they cut some squares off the pizza:

Pizza in Old Rome

I walked past the Largo di Torre Argentina, a small section of old stuff similar to the Foro Romano, which also wasn't open, but was quite a nice little place in the middle of town. Here the number of pedestrians was considerably fewer, and I felt far less claustrophobic:

Largo di Torre Argentina

It was getting quite late by this stage, so I decided to not go through with my original plan of seeing both the Roman Forum and the Colosseum today, instead just taking a photo of the Colosseum before heading home. I walked past the Altare della Patria, which is a big white building of some description. I never found out what it was, and I was too lazy to Google it.

The weather was quite nice, and I would never have forgiven myself if I didn't get all the way to Rome without taking a picture of the Colosseum in the afternoon blue sky. I got quite a decent angle of it, but almost the entire half that you can just see in this picture was covered with scaffolding:

The 'hero shot' of the Colosseum

Because I'm staying in Tiburtina, which is where the locals live, there are several pizza and gelati places downstairs that are really quite cheap, compared with the rest of the city. You can feed yourself with a decent amount of pizza and a small gelati for under AU$10. Easily:

Pizza in Tiburtina

That's all from Rome today, tomorrow I'll visit the Roman Forum. Until then!