Rome, Part 3

As previously mentioned, our Roman apartment was only 2 blocks away from the Colisseum. Going there was THE ONE thing that Liam reeeeeeeeeeally wanted to do, so we were there for the opening the next morning before it got really busy.

It's pretty darn cool. And big. It is seriously mind-boggling to think of how they built it (and everything else!) before modern machinery.

Our first look inside

 

 

 

 

 

We got one of the self-guided audio tours for Liam to listen to and tell us about the more interesting things that he heard, but he lost interest after awhile, so we mostly just walked around. It's pretty impressive.

 

 

 

 

 

Looking out of the Colisseum.

The "floor" - you can see at the back where they added part of the wooden floor so you could get a sense of what it would be like with the floor.

Liam was in heaven! The "basement" part under the floor (shown here) was a lot taller than it looked from the upper level

on one of the many massive pillars lying around

 

Yup! We paid for the picture with the Roman soldiers. It was worth it!

Classic Colisseum picture.

Part of the original and none to flat Roman road outside the Colisseum.

Our entrance to the Colisseum also included entrance to the Forum Ruins and the Palatine Hill, which is all a LARGE collection of ruins adjacent to the Colisseum, but frankly, we were about ruined out. I totally believe in Stendahl Syndrome now.

We decided to head back to Florence a bit early, so we grabbed our stuff form the apartment and headed to the nearby taxi stand to go back to the train station. The taxi driver told us he couldn't get us near the train station because of the Strike.

Some sort of strike that shut down the streets!

So, we decided to walk to the station and mapped out our route. Unfortunately, the strike parade route used the same street we needed! We discovered another way, though. It was very loud what with the helicopter hovering overhead to make sure everything was ok and all the honking...the Roman drivers were TICKED about the stop in traffic and they made sure they let everyone know about it! It was rather entertaining. 

We made it to the station and boarded our train and so ended our Roman adventure. Here are some random thoughts about Rome:

- Rome is incredibly beautiful, but crowded, loud and busy. Seeing modern life happen amongst these old, ancient ruins and buildings is an interesting dichotomy.

- I wish we had got a hotel room in room. The apartment was nice, but it was more alienating in Rome than it is in Florence. It would have been a nice treat for the kids, too. They deserve it, they've been so good!

- We saw a Maserati police car go screaming by one afternoon. Cool!

- It's quite possible that the sound of an Italian ambulance is the most annoying sound on the face of the planet.

- Florence seemed so quiet and not crowded when we got back.

Chris' thoughts - It's the European New York. It's a big city with well-known monuments just like NY, although nothing is over 6 stories tall.

Liam's thoughts - The best of the entire trip so far has been seeing the Colisseum. Rome is more modern than Florence, more "open" - streets aren't so narrow. It was a nice place to visit.

Grace's thoughts - The Colisseum was really cool. I didn't like how crowded everything was. I liked that it had more green than Florence.

Katie's thoughts - It was exciting seeing the old buildings, but it got boring after awhile. My favourite was the Colisseum.

Abby's thoughts - I didn't like not riding the horses (Mom's note - There were horse drawn wagon rides at the colisseum that we didn't go on)

Hannah's thoughts - I liked the ladybugs on the train.