What a banner day. We drove into and out of Rome, like we know what we’re doing, I mean not even a hitch...perfecto. Parking was a hassle, but it is in any big city. Stopped for a quick cappuccino then joined our tour group at 11am. The tour has 2 parts...it starts at the Colosseum...about 1 hour and then you can join another group and tour the Palatino and Forum. The Colosseum guide sucked and I wasn’t very happy throwing away so many euros, she was hard to understand (thick accent), and wasn’t very good at making sure everyone could hear. Sometimes she’d start talking before the whole group had even assembled. Bad, bad, bad. However, the second guide was awesome. We had this young guy from Romania (of all places), he spoke almost perfect english and was in love with his subject. He made the whole area come alive with the story of Rome’s greatness, intrigue and eventual fall. There were 30 -35 tourist that were spellbound for 2 hours. The stories of Rome from it’s beginning to end cover a 1000 years, it would be hard for me to bring it to life in such a short blog, but I highly recommend picking up a well written book about the history of the Romans and their conquests.
The buildings that have been resurrected are just as amazing...just look at the Colosseum, it was built between 70 and 80 BC...I walked in it, it is still solid and it is massive. Just like stadiums of today there were different sections of seating for different classes. They even had some private boxes for the rich business class...and as always, the politicians had the very best seats for themselves. It’s really hard to picture all these people getting together to witness such barbaric acts...men fighting to the death, Christians being killed in every conceivable way, and it goes on and on. I’m pretty sure I heard this right...at the height of the empire there were 1.5 million people in Rome and at it’s fall it had dwindled down to 20,000. Many believe the reason Rome failed was because of infighting and the lack of strong leaders at the end. They seemed to assassinate leaders as quickly as they came to power...without someone to provide guidance, Rome was doomed.
Nancy and I were both excited to have this history lesson right where it happened. The tour guide was obviously passionate about his subject and it gave all of us a very rich experience. I can’t remember the you guys name but I thank him greatly.
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| One of the three Arches in the area...you needed an arch to be cool, this one was built by and for Constantine. |
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| The ruins of the Forum area. |
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| CircusMaximus |
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| The Big House. |
Rome still has a lot to offer us...now that I know the way, we can come regularly. Vatican City is next.
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