Monday, October 16, 2023

The Colosseum

Where do we start today?  With me trying to kill Shannon 3 times???  With the hop on hop off tour?  Seeing a scrumptious hot chocolate that I couldn’t get because I wasn’t ordering food?

Let’s start with the killing of Shannon…

1. We had a tour of the forum and Palatine Hill.  It’s called “hill” for a reason.   So after walking to the entry point with our guide - she was great by the way - and our group was only 10 people.  We were doing normal walking but we had to get to the top of a very unforgiving hill - Shannon was bringing up the rear and had her “ I can’t breathe” face on.  By the time she made it to the top of this hill the little break was over - so on she trudged all the while saying “I didn’t sign up for this”  

2.  The tiny, narrow, steep stairs we had to climb to get out of the underground portion of the colosseum.  Shan was bringing up the rear again! But there was another couple keeping pace with us. Shannon said they should have told us we needed to be in peak shape 🤣

3. Climbing to extra long stair section to get to the first level of the colosseum - I was right there with Shan bring up the rear and when we both got to the landing - we were both hunched over hands on knees  our tour guide knew we have pacemakers and gave us the most sympathetic look. 

At this point the tour was basically over but wait!  More stairs awaited us - had to climb up to street level

Shannon blames me for trying to kill her with stairs today

Ok - now let’s start back at the beginning - we had a Hop On/Hop Off bus tour - we like those because you get the lay of the land and can see just about everything.  Except for this tour - every attraction they talked about - you know - the biggies - we didn’t see - they are 2-3 blocks away   We finally realized that we only were doing a big outer circle of Rome as the busses likely aren’t allowed in closer - so that was a bummer.

After this we had some time to spare which meant PIZZA!  

We took too many pictures of the Palatine, Forum, and Colosseum but it was a dream come true for me - I have spent years reading about Ancient Rome and mid evil England and I was like a kid in a candy store!  Here are some highlights.

This is where Julius Caesar was cremated   He wasn’t  killed in the Forum but a mile or so away.



Undgerground at the colosseum 




These next pictures are from Palatine Hill and the Forum


And that my dear people was our day - we have a fun golf cart tour tomorrow and plan to just walk around/hang out after that.





1 comment:

  1. And y'all wonder why I don't go on "vacation" with y'all....

    ReplyDelete

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