Italy day 2

Day 2

August 2, 2011

Today we went to the Coliseum, the Roman Forum, and name of fountina/overlook I need to look up.

The Coliseum:

We started the morning by walking from our hotel to the Coliseum. When we arrived, there was a line of only a few people. As we were leaving, the line wound a quarter of the way around the Coliseum and wound back and forth for a part of that.

We went on a audiotour (one of those hand held things where you push the number corresponding to your location and it has information about that specific thing/place) around the entire thing. This worked out really well, because there were not many information panels to read along the way.

Our first stop was on the second level at one of the shorter sides. At this stop, we heard about how the Coliseum used to look, where people used to sit, and how there used to be tarps above the entire place. The Coliseum used to be covered in marble which was taken down and used to build other places after the Coliseum ceased to be used. It used to hold 40-70 thousand people at a time, each using their own entrance and having their own seat as indicated on their ticket. Special doors were used for certain people, such as the gladiators, and senators. There were 3 main sections of seats and within each section, people were segregated by social status. The higher the social statuses the closer to the bottom you were. (personally I find this crazy, If I were a senator, I would want more people between me and the exotic animals that want to kill you than trying to be as close as possible to their sharp teeth…) What was most interesting about this part was that each senator had their name carved into the marble in front of their seat.

The second stop was on one of the longer sides. . Here they explained about the games and how the floor used to be, showing a partial recreation over part of the under chambers. It was interesting to hear about the gladiators and how they trained in an adjacent area and lived in a barracks. It was also intresting to hear about the ancient Roman’s use of trap doors. Apparently, once they used the trap doors to make a life size dead whale appear on the floor of the Coliseum and had 60 bears come out of its mouth. This was in commemoration of a dead whale washing up on the Italian beach.

Last side talked about how a pope consecrated the Coliseum as sacred, not necessarily because of the Christians martyred there, but more as a deterrent to tearing it down for stone.

The Roman forums:

Ok, I found these mostly boring. It was cool to be in a place where you know people have been walking for thousands of years, but it was just a bunch of stones in the ground. Some of the pillars were still standing. We were also there at the heat of the day and hadn’t had lunch yet. Low blood sugar might have also been a reason for me not finding this place particularly interesting.

After this we went back to the room and took a lovely nap.

­­­­­_____ plaza and _____ fountain.

That evening, we went to fountain and walked around, exploring. On one of the cute side streets, we found an H&M and I got a larger purse that could accommodate a water bottle easily. Also, this expands the number of countries I have shopped at an H&M store in. We ate dinner at a little café. This food was better than Mondays but still not anything special. After this, we walked up the hill behind the fountain so that we were then on top of one of Rome’s five (?) hills. It was a beautiful skyline. You could see the tops of the basilicas, and as the sun started to set it was beautiful.

I just noticed my glasses are bent out of shape, which is better than I can say about mom’s glasses, which have completely broken in two. She thought ahead and brought an extra pair at least. I didn’t think that far :$