Overdue: Colossium and the Roman Forum

On Monday Steph and I went down into the center of ancient Rome. This is the area that contains the Forum, the Colosseum and Palatine hill. I learned more history just by walking around that small 2 square mile patch than I ever did in high school. We started our day, as all good vacations should, by getting up eating breakfast and then lying down again! Steph took a “power nap” and I browsed the internet.

After we got our act together we packed the backpack and headed down into ancient Rome. We decided against metroing down as our brief walk to dinner the night before had emboldend us to try it again. Rome on foot really does get you to appreciate the city. Granted the walk from our hotel to the Colosseum wasn’t more complicated than my drive to work, we still got to walk through the “trendy” district of Rome. Steph wanted to go to H&M – thankfully, for my wallet, she didn’t.

We when arrived down at the Colosseum we were besieged by tour guides offering tours of the place for thirteen euro. Luckily, our good buddy Rick Steves told us about these boorish con-artists. Boring to the point of sleep inducing, we smartly said no thank you (to five different guides) and went in ourselves. While Steph napped I had downloaded a podcast from Mr. Steves which served as our tour guide. I would detail the awe inspiring structure that the Colosseum is, but I’ll just let some of Steph’s best photographs do that for me.

After the Colosseum we took a lunch break at a pizza cart. Italians eat pizza like we eat hot dogs: they buy it from street carts or little hole-in-the-wall shops. The food we’ve had at these little holes in the wall, have been soooo much better than anything we could have had at the nicer restaurants that charge twice as much. We literally ate in the shadow of the Arch of Titus (hey, it was hot)

From there, we rubbed our feet, strapped on packs and “Soldiered on” into the Forum (oh yes, pun intended). Again we had an audio guide from Ricky, and again I won’t bore you with a history lesson, but I will show you some awesome pictures.

The forum was more spectacular than expected with the highlight being our tour of the sight at which Cesaer was burned and memorialized. Yet even amongst all that history we still managed to get our chuckle of the day from the crazy Italian woman who went from tour group to tour group announcing how “wrong and stupid” the tour guide was. Even in Italy Steph can’t escape the crazies!

At this point it was 6pm and we were just done. We didn’t even have the strength to walk the mile back to our hotel. Luckily we packed a change of clothes for dinner and we stumbled over to The Hotel Forum where Steph had made roof top reservations for my 30th birthday. A beatuiful meal with a fantastic view restored a little bit of our strength and we headed home in time to go to bed and at least get a little bit of sleep for the next day’s early morning Vatican tour.