We started the day off at the Colosseum. Contrary to everything we already heard about buying Colosseum tickets ahead of time to avoid the long line (or at least buying the combo tickets at the shorter Forum line), we decided to stand in the Colosseum line and wait for tickets. I still don't know why. I think from the outside it looked short, but looks were definitely deceiving. To make matters worse, temperatures were approaching 100 degrees. Not fun. An hour and a half later, we were finally going through security.
The long wait was worth it. I've seen the movie Gladiator, but now I want to see it again (the scenes where they first enter into the arena take on a new meaning). We had another Rick Steve's podcast that toured us around inside. . . his podcasts are much more tolerable than audioguides (we did the same for the Forum and Pantheon later). The Colosseum is a super impressive structure, especially when you take into account it was built in 80AD. You can see the intricate system of rooms and elevators underneath the floor, where prisoners and animals would be lifted up into the arena. Games were to the death, and the packed houses loved watching it. Over 9,000 animals were killed in the inaugural games of the amphitheatre. Gladiators that were good carried rock-star status in Rome.
Following the Colosseum, we ate lunch, then moved next door to the Forum, which was the hub and economic center of ancient Rome. Lots of cool temples and sights in here. Boy was it hot. Kim and I kept looking for shade as we listened to our podcast.
Once we finished, we strolled through Capitoline Hill, by the Victor Emmanuel II Monument, then we cooled off with some tasty gelato!
In the evening we visited the Pantheon. This was another huge engineering feat for its time. Almost 2000 years after it was built, it is still the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome. Originally it was a temple for the Roman gods. Now it is a Catholic Church.
Before dinner, we decided to try pre-dinner Apertivo, which is something many restaurants do in Rome. This is almost equivalent to a Happy Hour (i.e. cheap drinks) except that the restaurant also gives you lots of free finger foods to eat. I'm a big fan. We sat outside in Campo de' Fiori, sipped on some cocktails, and ate lots of finger foods. Food and drinks for both of us totaled only 10 Euros (a bargain for this hip area). . . we were almost full and we still had dinner coming up! We ate a late dinner at another restaurant in the same area, then called it a night.
Additional thoughts/notes:
- Picture this: You are in Rome, Italy enjoying a romantic outdoor dinner for two. A man approaches. He plops a stuffed animal dog dressed in a Christmas outfit on your table. He presses a button, and the dog starts gyrating and singing some random Shania Twain song. What do you do? What can you even say to this? You can't leave your table and you can't just ignore it. Mind you, it is the middle of August (not Christmas time), and in addition, the song is not holiday music. Well, this happened to us tonight. I kept telling the guy we didn't want the dog, but the guy was super persistent. At one point he even tried the Jedi mind trick on me, "You WANT this dog." But I didn't fall for it. The whole time Kim was doing everything she could to keep from laughing. We loved the guy's last ditch effort. He said, "But look at his ears." He gets the dog dancing again and points out that the dog's ears are moving up and down with the music. So to sum up, I previously didn't want the dancing dog dressed in a Christmas outfit singing a Shania song I had never heard of, but the ears almost pushed me over the edge. I wish I could convey in words the absurdity of the whole situation.
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