Now for Part 2 (Day 2) of our trip to Rome. We started of the day by having a free breakfast at the hostel, and then heading out to the Colosseum. It was pretty cool when we first got there, because basically we were just walking down a street, came to the corner to turn on, and BAM, there was the Colosseum in all of it's huge glory. |  |
| From Colosseum - Rome |
We made our way around to the entrance, and lines were already getting pretty long, so we jumped in. Similar to the Vatican Museum, there were tour group recruiters all over the place, walking up and down the line trying to grab people to get in a tour group. Of course, the biggest incentive for this was to skip the line, but we figured we could wait in order to save ~€15 a piece.
A short 40 minutes later or so we got our tickets and mad our way into the Colosseum, and it was quite a site to behold. Were it all together today, I'd think it'd rival some of the large football stadiums that we have (although some of today's are certainly bigger, but that's nearly 2000 years later!). Apparently the Colosseum has had a storied history, first of all being used for entertainment as we all know, but also at other times being used as a fortress and as a source of building materials! As I understand it, that seems to be why a lot of the outer layer of the Colosseum is missing, and why so much is missing inside.
Another interesting note about the Colosseum is that supposedly much of it was covered in marble. And actually, they have begun to reconstruct a small part of the stadium "field" to what it would have looked like with marble.
| Having finished our visit to the Colosseum, we went and grabbed some lunch, and made our way to Palatine Hill, where our ticket for the Colosseum was also valid (a nice deal). Palatine Hill is one of the main hills of Rome, which is important in particular because it was both a place where Roman rulers lived and also where supposedly the original people who founded Rome lived. There were many interesting ruins to see here, most of which belonged to the residence of Augustine, who took over after Julius Caesar. Remnants of huge houses, fountains, massive gardens.. it was impressive. There also happened to be a small museum with other artifacts, and remnants of mud huts that were found, which predate the ruins. |  From Paletine Hill - Rome |
 | It was now time to finish off our sight-seeing day with the Roman Forum, which is practically connected to Palatine Hill. Which.. a funny thing happened on the way to the forum... and yes, something actually did. I picked an olive from a tree on Palatine Hill and attempted to eat it.. and it was terrible. Apparently not an olive meant for eating. |
| From Palatine Hill - Rome |
| Anyways, so we made our way through the Roman Forum, which was massive. The forum was essentially a city center, marketplace, or whatever it needed to be where lots of people came through. There was certainly plenty to see here.. the best I can suggest for the reader is to look at the pictures. Suffice it to say that it would have been pretty amazing to see completely intact. |  |
| From The Roman Forum - Rome |
So that finished off our day.. except for one little stop on our way back to the hostel. There was an art museum on the way, which happened to have a free exhibit there on Luciano Pavarotti! It only made sense, then, to go take a look. Inside were album covers, costumes, awards, all sorts of things from Pavarotti's history, including a large biography on the wall, although it was all in Italian, so our ability to read it was limited. However, inside another room were screens all over the place showing performances of his, along with one large screen playing various performances (with audio). We were there long enough to hear some fantastic stuff, including him performing Puccini's Nessun Dorma.
That's it for Part 2, keep your eyes open for the final, Part 3!
Photos from The Colosseum
Photos from Palatine Hill
Photos from The Roman Forum
Photos from The Pavarotti Exhibit
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