Today we met outside the hotel at 9.30 and Morgan and I went
down the street to a caferria and got an espresso, which is the first one I
have ever had, and an apple fritter thing that was awesome. We left the hotel at about ten and we had a looonnnggg
day of walking today. We caught a train
to the Colisseo station, which of course is the station to go to the Coliseum. I imagined the coliseum being isolated to a
certain degree, it was not. We walked
out of the subway station and boom, there it was. There was a subway, McDonald’s, and shopping
boutiques surrounding it and they were separated by only a single street. The surroundings were not what I expected but
the coliseum was everything I expected, it was amazing. It is incredible that a structure as old as 86
AD is still standing today. I have many
pictures from the coliseum so you need to check them out. After the coliseum we took a tour of the
Palestine Palace which is located on the other side of the street from the
coliseum. Back in the day it was home to
the most powerful and wealthy families of Roma.
After visiting the palace ruins we walked down to where Caesar was
cremated and learned a few interesting facts surrounding his death. He actually was not murdered on the stairs of
the Senate; he was murdered outside of a theater that was about a mile away
from the Senate. Apparently someone, I
think it was Leonardo Da Vinci, fudged a story because it worked better for a
work of art they were creating, and it stuck.
Speaking of the Senate, we walked through the Senate, which is now a
small museum. After this we went to the
spot where Caesar was actually murdered.
The area is believed to have some sort of curse/spell/bad karma
surrounding it. There are apparently
hundreds of cats that live in the area, I’m not sure of any relevance to Caesar
but there were a plethora of cats. After
this we walked back down the main drag of Rome, I cannot remember the name of
it for some reason. We went to the
Pantheon and we were released for the day at this point. Kyle, Kendall, Drew, and I walked around and
found a really good pizza place that was cheap and delicious, my kind of
meal. I finally got some gelato, I had
been holding out for real gelato in Italy, and I had about three orders today,
can’t be doing that every day. We met
back up with some of the group and then Kyle, Brady, Sumner, Tucker, Jordan,
and I walked back down the main drag and I guess went window shopping… we went
in a bunch of stores and didn’t buy a thing.
We got a few bottles of wine, came back to the hotel, worked on our
blogs, and worked on figuring out what we are going to do for our upcoming free
days. I think the conclusion is that we
are going to Cinque Terre… not the whole group but most of us. A few of us went down to a type of straw
market and found a pizzeria that had kabobs.
Kabobs here are not like shishkabobs… it is a slab of meat vertically on
a spit that they shave off. It is the
best thing I have had since I have been in Europe. We just came back to the hotel and called it
an early night, so I got some good sleep.
Check back tomorrow.
T
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