And for our final day in Rome, we really lived it up. We hit up the rest of the major tourist sights in the city...all by walking. I think we easily walked 8-10 miles (that one day - we probably went close to 40 over the course of the whole trip).
First stop: the Colosseum
Ancient Roman architecture at it's best. I'll let the pictures do all the talking.
Again with the frisbee...
The tour we signed up for included special access to the underground and the upper (3rd) level. Here are some of the underground pictures:
The Colosseum was build before the Romans learned about the curved arch and here is a good example of what they did before. I would live in constant terror of it collapsing on me I think.
The place where the loser was taken out. Not a place anyone wants to go through.
Side note: as they were describing what the games were and a little bit of the gladiator history I kept making Hunger Games comparisons. It's a little eerie how similar they are. I kept finding myself thinking "May the odds be ever in your favor" and "Let the games begin."
This is where they would attach pulleys so that they could pull people up on stage to make their grand entrances.
Rome randomly has cats that hang out throughout the city. This one seemed content to chill at the Colloseum even though there were throngs of people trying to touch and take pictures of it.
These are the heads of the statues that lined the upper level of the Coloseum in it's prime. They were the heads of senators and they were switched out when a new one was elected. It was an easier practice to use the same body and change the heads out than make whole new sculptures for each new senator.
Hello steep stairs.
View of the Roman Forum from the top level of the Colosseum.
And then we enter the Roman Forum:
One of the main buildings in modern day Rome, which just happens to be on the other side of the Forum.
Next Stop: Trevi Fountain
This is where the tragic loss of our amazing map occurred. Luckily, we had acquired a few extra maps of Rome from our tours but none of them were as good as the one I bought from Barnes and Noble.
It took us a little while to regroup after the loss of our map. After a quick trip back to the apartment we were staying at (which happens to be very close to the Trevi Fountain) we were able to google the places not marked on the new map, mark them ourselves, and find exactly where we wanted to go.
Our first experience feeding pigeons. Oh, how naive we were at this point.
Some random monument on our way to the next stop.
Next on the list: The Church of Maria Della Vittoria (or something like that). It is the home of Hunter's favorite Bernini Sculpture, pictured below.
It is also home of some pretty incredible paintings.
Next stop: Spanish Steps
Right at the top was this clock. We tried with all our might to interpret it, but couldn't figure it out. Obviously it has something to do with the sun but that was about as far as we got. At the time we took this picture it was 5 pm. If anyone has any insight, please enlighten us. I am completely serious.
At the Spanish Steps we were conned for the first and only time (not that other attempts weren't made because they certainly were). There were quite a few people handing out roses, for a price of course. When one of them tried to hand me a couple I tried to refuse. But, he insisted saying beautiful roses for a beautiful lady, at which point I accepted because it seemed he would just give them to us. Then he made a whole song and dance about taking picture of us with his whole boquet of roses (which I do not have access to so they aren't incuded here). When he finished he said 5 euro. To which I countered 4 because along the way we realized we were going to have to pay at least a little bit. After giving the 4 euro he wouldn't leave us alone so I grabbed the only coin I had left, which was 2 euro, and he took it and hurried away. So, we paid 6 euro for 3 dinky roses. I told Hunter we needed to make a big production of the roses and make them worth their price by taking pictures of them everywhere we went for the rest of the day, but Hunter didn't seem to think that was as good an idea as I did so we only got the one below. Lesson learned and the same trick was not fallen for again.
On our walk to our next destination, this was the sight. It is one of the bigger roads in Rome and happened to be right around 6 pm. This is definitely not what rush hour looks like in Salt Lake.
Final stop: Piazza de Novana
These last couple pictures are the view of the Parliament building, complete with obelisk, from our apartment. We couldn't have asked for a much better view.
No comments:
Post a Comment