Monday, April 2, 2007

Day 9


We woke up late, 9am, went down to breakfast, again it was great, even omelet and crepes this time. By the time we left the hotel to go to the metro station it was already 10:30am, this would normally be an issue, but with the kids it really does not matter as we only have so many hours of "quality sightseeing time" with the kids and there is no way we can be on the move from 8am until 10pm, so a few hours late or early actually helps. We made it down to line A of the metro and purchased a biglietto that was valid all day on all of their city transport for 4 euros and the kids were free, so a pretty good deal. We headed to the main station to transfer to the line B that would take us to the coliseum. The lines were all very well marked and it was very easy to navigate even with 2 kids in tow and a ton of people around.

Made it to the coliseum, again much like the Duomo in Firenze, you exit the metro station and blam the coliseum is right in front of you. Like many of the things we have seen, you have seen it before from almost every angle, but there is something really special about seeing it in person. We immediately got in line for the coliseum, got suckered into doing the hand held tour (they get you by giving you a shorter line, so basically you are paying 8 euro extra to take cuts and get some recorded info on the site) and then we were in the coliseum. Again very cool and we spent a good hour or so walking thru the lower deck and upper deck, you have a real good birds eye view of the large triumphal arch that is just west of the coliseum and of the rest of the area from second floor. Not really too much to say, other than it was pretty amazing to imagine what that thing was like 2000 years ago and how difficult it must have been to construct...however I did not see any luxury boxes...

Once out of the coliseum we ventured over to one of the many food carts and got some not so cheap, not so good food... but it hit the spot and we were on the move to the amazing areas around the coliseum. We went over to the palatine area, the girls had to go to the bathroom and this literally took a half an hour, I went off to explore the Palatine by myself, it was pretty cool to see everything, but it made me wish I would have paid more attention to my history of civilization and history or art classes.

After the Palatine we went off to the Roman forum and saw what is left of original Rome, I really had no idea how vast of an area this was and how many buildings and areas are still left. Again it left us all floored and we walked up the hill back towards the metro to go back to the hotel as my wife started feeling a bit ill and the kids had had enough for now. We really only scratched the surface of the area that we were in so now I know how everyone says you need a week in Roma to do it justice, probably 2 with kids, but we were happy to see what we saw and even more happy to find our way back to the hotel room, where unfortunately my wife became more ill and it looks like we may have our first major hiccup with our trip. We had the vatican planned for tomorrow, we will see....

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