Rome Day 2

Our second day in Rome started badly, as we spent 40 minutes wandering around Termini Station trying to find the people that sold tickets for the shuttle to the airport. During that period, I had the time to ponder some of the negatives of Italy, like the damned smoking and the inadequate signage. After a long search, we finally found the tourist information people (surprisingly difficult given the fact that this was the train station), who directed us to what we were looking for. It was, of course, on the exact opposite side of the train station. Happily, the day was about the get better.

We next headed off to the Colosseum area to see the sights of ancient Rome. Of course, it was pretty crowded.



It was getting near lunchtime, so we decided to save the Colosseum for later and instead to walk through the Roman Forum (which is free) and look for some food on the other side. The Forum was pretty great - like the Agora in Athens, but better preserved.





The other side of the Forum has one really enormous monument that I unfortunately don't remember the name of.



It was a hot day and it looked like a lot of stairs, so we skipped the climb. We did take a break to get panini from a street vendor. It was at this point that we saw the single awesomest thing we saw on the whole trip, which is so awesome that it deserves its own post.

After lunch, we walked down the main road to the Colosseum. It was Sunday, so the road was closed to traffic.



There was still a sizable line for the Colosseum so we tried a trick from the guidebooks and went to the Palatine first, because they use a combined ticket. The Palatine is supposed to be where Rome was founded and was the site of the palaces of several Roman emperors. As a lucky bonus, tickets were free because that day was a "European Day of Patrimony" (or something to that effect).

There was a pretty cool fountain halfway up the hill.



And ruins at the top.



There was also a tunnel that Nero built under his palace. Unfortunately, I didn't get a good picture of it. After that, we went to the Colosseum.







Apparently they used the arches in ancient times to store really large beach balls.



In the evening, we went to the Centro Storico for dinner. That area was the center of Rome around the 1500s and 1600s. (Possibly later, too. Sorry to be so vague, but we shipped the guidebook back with some of our other stuff. It's somewhere between here and Italy right now.) We took the bus down to the Piazza Navona at twilight.





Then we had the best pizza of our trip. Sadly, that was the only time we made it to that area. On our next visit, we're going to have to spend more time there.

We walked back to the hotel after dinner and took some pictures of St. Peter's Basilica as we crossed the river.