Ancient Rome

Started off our day walking again, our hotel seems to be 5 km from everything, we figure we are averaging 15 to 20 Kms a day.  Now I know why they can eat so much pasta and red wine. Lol

The streets of Rome themselves are just so beautiful, here are a few pictures that hopefully will give you a feel for the city

Vendors everywhere selling souvenirs, scarfs and bags, fresh fruit including coconut and water.  There are also drinkable water fountains all over Rome that you can fill your bottle up or even just bend over and drink right out of the tap.

Stairs everywhere, go up walk a few 100 yards and go back down.

All around the city there is still excavation going on, they figure they have only uncovered about 30% of the sites.  Now they have to accept that some will never be uncovered because of the city being built on top of so many.  One interesting fact they have now found is that the city was founded by Romulus and Remus, if Romulus hadn't killed Remus, the town would have been called Rema. They were actually real people not just a myth.  

We took Fodors advice and went to the forum first.  12 euos each gets you into both the forum and the colosseum.  Hollywood did a pretty good job of interpreting and bringing  to life the way it was 2000 years ago.  

These were real places with real people living real lives.  There were huge class distinctions, the rich and everyone else and then the slaves.  

The colosseum was so large it just dwarfed you.  

The day started with the beast fights.  It ran with the efficiency of a play.  100s of rooms to keep the beasts, criminals and gladiators in.  They used cages and pulleys to get the beasts up to the floor.  The choreographer was expected to make the hunting and killing into a historical story with props and everything.  Then they stopped for lunch.  The next act was the killing of the criminals and then the gladiators came out.  One figure you hear bandied about is that 30000 gladiators were killed over its history.

Our first subway ride

As we were walking around yesterday I remarked to Jim, "why are there so many cars and vespas when they have such a great public transport system, buses, subways, streetcars", then we took our 1st subway ride.  Wow, felt like I was in Japan at rush hour.  Push shove to get in, don't breath and then push shove to get out.  But everyone was very good natured about it.  Yes, even Jim.  :)

Back for a quick change of clothes and off to piazza del Popolo and a lovely restaurant on the square called Rosati.  

Ciao