Day 3 - Italy

These purses were for sale on the sidewalk every day outside our hotel door! I did not buy one though. Not here anyway!

Journal Entry, May 12, 2012

Today we went to the Coliseum and the Roman ruins. Again I could not stop taking pictures. Theresa and I walked all over the ruins. Mom & Dad walked on part of them, then waited on us. They are actually doing very well for 76 & 77 yeas old. Anyway the whole gladiator stuff and mid-evil times are just that. EVIL.
They had no regard for other peoples human life. Very sad.


We came home after that tour, or back to the hotel, had a glass of wine and a snack. Then Theresa and I headed back to the Vatican. They were closing soon, but I talked the security guy into letting us in. We wanted to mail a couple of post cards and get something Mom asked us to pick up at the gift shop.

We stopped at a gift shop on the way to the Vatican and I bought some crosses.

(continued in next post)


These pictures need very few words.

Inside the coliseum.

A reconstructed stage to show the public what it would have looked like above the holding cells. The audience would not have seen below the stage area.

Seats

Where people and animals were kept in rooms below the stage. According to our guide, the animals came from Asia and Africa and were sometimes held without food or sunlight for a week.

This is the urinal back in the day. No separation of men and women either.

Very steep steps.

Next we went to the ruins....and there were just so many steps. Steep steps,

that Mom & Dad said they would wait on us here. We found out later that after they took a break, they got back up and went upstairs and walked around the ruins. They were told to stay put and we'd come back for them. Apparently they made it back right before us, afraid they might have missed us and would be in trouble for not staying put!

This would have been the "basilica" back in the day. And, back in the day, basilica meant meeting place, not necessarily a church, as it does today. This was the central meeting place in the village.

Look at that stain on the wall...Kind of looks like a person (sideways) I didn't notice that at the time I was there. I noticed it when I was looking through my pictures.

We were so happy to find a fountain for drinking water. I was holding the camera up in these pics.

I think we walked an average of 10-12 hours a day while in Rome. But we took a taxi to the Coliseum from our hotel. It was $10.00. When we went to take the taxi back to the hotel, the driver said it would $25.00! We said forget it, although we were all too hot and tired to walk back. We had just walked up and down steps and across gravel for about four hours. But we took off walking....

And when we did we found this area. We have no idea what it is, there were no people in it. Probably more ruins. We would never have found it had we not started walking.

(snicker - I thought the back of this statue was kinda funny-I know - immature of me!)

We also found this church, and not far from it, a Taxi stand. And it only cost us $10.00 to get back to our hotel!

My advice....If you go to the coliseum and ruins while in Rome, wear enclosed shoes. Not sandals. I wore sandals almost every day because I had a very comfortable, arch-supporting, pair that I bought before we left. There is a lot of loose gravel in these areas, so sandals are not advisable. Also, if you cannot climb stairs, forget the ruins. The coliseum did have an elevator in part of it. And don't forget your water bottle.

Cindy

PS - Please keep Italy in your prayers right now. As most of you probably know, they had an earthquake last week, and yesterday, they had another one. There are 16 deaths so far. I heard they felt it as far as Milan, which is where we stayed on our last night in Italy. We got out of there just in time.