Roma - Day Two

For the second day we planned to tour some of the major sites in Rome: the Colosseum, Palatine Hill, and Roman Forum - a lot of walking, but conveniently located in the same area. After the horrible hop-on-hop-off bus experience, the Scaffolding of Trevi, and an apartment with no running water - almost anything would make for a better day.

Colosseum

Walkway towards stands

Animal Cages and inner workings of Colosseum below surface

View from surface/event area

Removed due to poor inscriptionmanship

Original travertine atop Colosseum

We took the Metro to the Colosseum stop where hordes of people had similar intentions - an expected occurrence. It was still relatively early in the morning, but the line for tickets appeared to be hours long - far too long to wait and be hounded by street rat peddlers. For a few extra Euro, we paid for a private guide, tickets (to the attractions mentioned above), and were able to skip all the lines. We had two guides for the day, the first walked us through the Colosseum while the second lead us through Palatine Hill and the Roman Forum. The convenience of never waiting in line, the detailed information provided, and the multitude of Catholic jokes from our second guide more than justified the additional cost.

As seen from Palatine Hill

Arch of Constantine

View towards Palatine Hill, seen from Colosseum

Roman Forum

Arch of Titus

Original door of Santi Cosma e Damiano

Temple of Antoninus and Faustina

Temple of Vesta

To recover from a morning and afternoon of walking, we gathered for a late lunch a few blocks away from the Roman Forum. Before we returned to the hotel, there was one more site to visit, Arcibasilica di San Giovani in Laterno. The basilica is one of the more impressive religious structures we have ever visited and is more impressive that Saint Peter's Basilica in Vatican City (a site we would visit the following day). We finished our day with a delightful dinner down the street from our Canadian Embassy. The night was young, but we had an early wake-up call to visit the tomb of Saint Peter in Vatican City.