Fall Break - Off to the Colosseum

Monday

This was the really big day...I dragged them out of bed early so that we could avoid the lines to get in to see...

Hello Colosseum! Unfortunately for you, you don’t get to hear much about it or see many pictures until I visit it with my class. I can tell you that it was really a lot of fun though, and it was nice to be able to take as much time as we wanted inside :)

We found a nice fellow tourist who was willing to take a picture of the three of us inside the Colosseum. It’s a pretty spectacular place. (And Dad gave me a coffee mug with this picture on it for Christmas!)

Here I am, focusing on taking good pictures so that you, my dear readers, will have pictures of the Colosseum when I write that post. And Dad took a picture of me taking a picture—we seemed to go around and around doing that to each other all week.

And here I am taking another picture—note the ridiculous angle I’m leaning at. I was trying to get a picture through the bars of the gate, without standing on the brick stairs...I wish I could say it was because I’m always conscientious about not touching the ancient ruins, but the pictures of me in the tombs of Cerveteri will tell you that I’m really not consistent with that view. I was trying to be good here, though, and as a result you get this silly picture of me :)

While Mom and Dad were very kind to come cure my homesickness by visiting me in Rome, it was also a celebration for them. This year was their 25^th anniversary, and this was their present to each other. So here’s to my beloved parents being together for 25 years—may you have as many more together as you both want. I love you!

When we finally had seen as much of the Colosseum as we wanted to (and had started to get really hungry, which is probably the real reason we left), we headed out to find food. For obvious reasons, everything around the Colosseum is both absurdly overpriced and rather suspicious—there’s no cafes nearby, and we weren’t interested in paying 3 euro for a sandwich from one of the roadside vendors. So we hopped on a bus headed away from the Colosseum and found a small restaurant a little ways away, which was fairly good and more reasonably priced. We then took the bus back toward the Colosseum, and used our ticket to get into the Roman Forum. We breezed through, hitting most of the highlights (read: the things that I had either seen before in class, or remembered from when I was there with Magistra), and took entirely too many pictures. Mom and Dad especially liked the enormous Flavian Palace and the Basilica Nova, which you’ll hear about in a week or so when we go as a class.

This wasn’t something I had seen before, but there was a sign nearby, and between knowing Latin, bits of Italian, and general knowledge of history, I managed to “translate” that the buildings you can see to the right of us were a huge block of apartments built sometime in Augustus' time. Amusingly, the Italian sign was a translated quote from Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who originally wrote in Greek...so it went from Greek to Italian, through piecemeal knowledge of Latin and Italian, to finally be understood by us in English. Sort of a fun linguistic exercise.  

At some point in the history of the Palatine (in 1550, according to Wikipedia), a wealthy Cardinal by the name of Farnese bought up a lot of the land and built a villa and gardens here. Not much of it survives, but some of the garden structures do, and they’re quite lovely.  Here’s Mom standing in front of one of the fountains, which is covered in maidenhair ferns and has goldfish swimming in the pool.

And, of course, even during my break, I couldn’t avoid nerding out over random columns. I remembered this column from when I was here with Magistra—it’s a gorgeous pinkish-yellow, and I enjoyed getting to admire it again...so naturally Dad stood back and took pictures of me, rather than the sites.

We eventually had seen everything we wanted to of the Forum (and it was getting dark), so we headed back home to figure something out for dinner. The first night, when we went to Arco Antico, there was another restaurant next door, called Carpe Diem, which Mom and Dad were interested in trying. I was somewhat suspicious—it’s a rather touristy name, and from the outside it looks like it’s trying too hard to be a “traditional Roman restaurant”, but I was hungry and didn’t feel like running around Rome trying to find food. As it turns out, I was very happy we tried it—the food was fantastic, the lady taking our orders (who likely ran the place) was very sweet and attentive, and we enjoyed a leisurely dinner just sitting and talking. I was amused (and a little chagrined) when they gave me an English menu and I had to ask for an Italian one—I didn’t recognize any of the foods I liked when they were translated! We all enjoyed our food, and even managed to save enough room for dessert—we were so impressed by the food that when our server suggested the homemade pie but couldn’t tell us what the filling was, we got it anyway and it was also delicious. All in all, it was a very satisfying day.

And my dear guest blogger steps up to the plate again:

Monday was our first really full day of sightseeing (i.e. get up early to get started). Katie came over again for breakfast and we caught the bus to the Colosseum (we were getting pretty good at the bus thing by now and had purchased a week pass to make it easier to get on and off). I had been looking forward to the Colosseum, but nothing prepares you for when the bus comes around the corner and there it is! It is huge and oh so impressive. We were fortunate we got there early, so the lines weren't too bad. There were lots of tour guides wanting you to hire them. We said “no thanks, we brought our own”. Having Katie there to explain things to us was invaluable and so special. I think I could have stayed there all day, but we were getting hungry. We hopped on a bus for a couple of stops to get out of the touristy section and found a nice restaurant for lunch that was reasonably priced (Rome standards). Then back on the bus to hit the Forum and Palatine Hill. The price of one ticket let you see both the Colosseum and the Forum/Palatine Hill and they have separate entrances. Lunch was a nice break between the two sights. Forum/Palatine Hill area was so spread out, it was hard to see everything even if you spent multiple days there! We wandered to catch the major points and left when it was starting to get too dark to see everything. Near the hotel we found another restaurant, Carpe Diem, that was a casual dining room run by a family. They were so friendly and made you feel very welcomed. After a nice dinner and dessert, they brought out complimentary after-dinner drinks. I mean literally, an entire bottle of limoncello and licorice liqueur (Sambucca?) and glasses. The look on Katie's face after taking a swig of limoncello was priceless...we have it on tape and for a price, you can see it! 

 

(Note: No, no you can't. My 'oh crap bitter wtf alcohol' face is without price...unless they're going to share the bribes with me :P)