Neither Sally nor I have had much interest in ancient Roman history. Truthfully, it kind of bothers both of us a bit. Why the lack of interest? Somehow, it just does not ignite a fire. Regardless, today we spent most of the day in the ruins of Ancient Rome. In 2009 I did not have much interest in European history, then I visited Versailles. Since then I have read scores of books about the time period from the 1600s to the present, all centered on European history. Could a visit to the Roman ruins help ignite a similar interest?
We were up at 5:30 am this morning, showered, breakfasted and out the door by 6:50, headed to the metro. The colosseum is across town from our B&B; a ride on the A line to Termini station, then onto the B line to the colosseum stop. The lines and crowds at this historic site are legendary. We wanted to get on the front side of the masses by being at the ticket booth when it opened. We should have purchased our tickets on line before we came, but somehow we missed that step. Our solution was to be there early, ahead of the crowd.
We stepped off the metro and across the street to the base of the colosseum at about 7:45. It felt like being at the base of Quest Field the morning before a game. The place is huge! Thankfully, we were the only ones there, except for machine gun toting Italian army dudes guarding the place. We walked around the colosseum once, inspected the Arch of Constatine, then settled behind three ladies forming the head of the line at the ticket booth. Soon, a man and his wife from Oregon joined me (Sally was seated in the shade of the Colosseum waiting). They were here as a president of a Crater Lake volunteer organization, headed to Slovania to teach communities there how to form groups to support their national parks. He was at the Vatican yesterday and was randomly interviewed by a Italian TV crew about the upcoming visit of Trump to visit the Pope. When asked what he thought of the visit he said he felt sorry for the Pope having to visit with Trump. When asked what advise he thought the Pope should give Trump, he told them he thought the Pope should tell Trump to resign! I liked this guy!
With tickets in hand, Sally and I cued up for the security check. When visiting the Vatican on Tuesday, I had tucked my Swiss Army pocket knife down at the bottom of my pack and somehow it made it through the x-rays at security. I tried the same thing here, but they caught it and gave me two options, throw it away, or go hide it outside the colosseum to be picked up by me after the visit. I backtracked through the light line building up and tucked it under one of the slanting leg supports holding up the fence barricades. Back through security and we were in. I wondered if anyone had seen me hiding my knife and would pick it up, but I doubted it.
We toured the colosseum, listening to Rick Steves audio tour. After an hour and a half, we exited, noticing that the colosseum, empty when we first arrived, was now filling up like game day in Seattle. Outside the crowds were growing, and it was only 9:45am. I made my way to my knife's hiding place and found it where I had hidden it. We walked up the hill to the adjacent Forum area, only to find another x-ray inspection station. Again, I found a hiding place for my knife, under a rock in the shrubbery just outside the inspection station, behind what I thought was a small restroom kiosk.
We spent over three hours touring the Forum. Neither of us had any idea what it was before we entered, but guided by Rick Steves' audio tour (I should be getting a commission for the free advertising) we soon came to see the Forum is like the capital grounds of Olympia, what with Senate buildings, public areas, governors mansions and the like. We spent some time walking around all of Palestine hill and over viewing the entire valley that contains the Forum.
It was now 12:30 and time to head for St. Peter's in Chains church nearby to see Michelangelo's Moses sculpture and get some lunch, but first I had to retrieve my knife. When I hid the knife, there were not very many people around, and no line. When I turned the corner to walk up the hill to the entrance/inspection station, I found a line 200 yards long. I walked to the front of the line, ducked under the ropes containing the line (luckily, the person guarding the lines had his back turned talking to a tourist at the moment) and "Scusi-ed" my way across the three lines to the alcove with the small building behind which I had hid my knife under a rock. It took me a minute to determine which rock I had hidden it under. As I found and grabbed it, I heard a rapping on glass and looked up from my bent over position to see that "restroom kiosk", vacant when I did my hiding, was a guard station and a uniformed guard was shooing me away. Rather than show him the object of my search, I stuffed my knife in my pocket and began ducking ropes and dodging people, passing back through the line perpendicular to its flow until I was in the open and moving back down the hill to where Sally was waiting 600 yards away near the colosseum. I was expecting to hear shouts of "Stop" or "Halt!" as I walked briskly away, but did not.
We walked the 3/4 mile to a recommended restaurant (Rick Steves, again) and had split a wonderful artichoke sauce lasagna and chicken legs. Earlier, as we had rested in the shade at the Palotine Hill, we realized we were as close as we were going to get to the Gelato shop that my ski patrol friend, Vicki had guided us to. What? Well, back in January, Vicki and her husband Scott were heading to Europe to ski for a couple weeks and were planning to visit Rome before heading home. I had told her she should hide something in Rome while there, then give me clues to see if I could find it, a sort of international Easter egg hunt. She forgot, but came up with a cool plan. She handed me an envelope with lat-long coordinates to 9 decimal places written on the outside and told me to figure out where it was and to open the envelope when I got to the coordinates. Using Google maps, I entered the coordinates, found the location in Rome, then dropped to street view and saw a business called "La Romana". I google it, and found it to be an exquisite Gelato shop. It was located clear across town from where we were staying and not near any of the places we were planning to visit. But, from the colosseum, a quick two stop ride on Metro B line would put us about a half a mile from it, from which we could walk.
We executed our plan and taking pictures as evidence to email to Vicki, were soon enjoying two delicious gelato cones. Back to the subway and back to where we had lunch, we navigated our way to St. Peter in Chains church, way up on a hill and soon were staring at Moses, a larger than life marble sculpture by Michelangelo. The church was cool, so we settled in on the steps next to the roped off sculpture and viewed it under the church's varying lighting conditions and used our SIM card connection on the iPad to do a little research into why he included horns on Moses' head.
We were both feeling the efforts of the day, being now about 4:30. We rode the B line back to Termini, switched to the A line and soon popped out at Ottaviano station, walked back to our room and were both asleep by 5:30. We woke about 7, cooked pasta and cheese for dinner, then headed out the door to catch a bus to the Travestere area, to repeat the walk through Rome we had done on Monday, only this time at night so we could see the city and its statues illuminated at night.
Using the GPS on my phone I watch our progress across town on the bus, pushing the "next stop" button as we approached our disembarkment point. We spent the next 3 hours walking back across town, visiting Compo de Flori piazza, Navora Piazza, the Pantheon, Trevi Fountain the Spanish Steps and all the restaurants, shops and people in between. It was beautiful. There were thousands of people out in the piazze and on the streets, eating and just enjoying the cool temperatures and glorious night. We had hoped to see the Trevi fountain a little less packed with people than on our day visit, but the square surrounding it was packed with hundreds of people, at 10:30 on a Thursday night. Before catching the metro home, we walked down the shopping district streets, sporting the high priced fashion clothes and accessories, looking in the windows.
We caught the subway at 11:20, probably the last train of the night as it closes at 11:30 and walked back to our B&B, very happy with our day. The iPhone showed we had walked 14.3 miles for the day, bringing our 4 day total to 41 miles. Our earlier nap kept us from falling asleep until about 1:00pm. We were planning to rise at 5:30 in the morning to return to Trevi fountain at 7:00, hoping to find it somewhat vacant for viewing and then walk to the Pantheon to be there for its opening at 8:30 so we could see it before the crowds arrived. We will see what happens when the alarm goes off in the morning.
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