So today was the first day in Italy that was t-shirt and pants weather. And a great day for it, as today it was coliseum day.
We were up bright and early and headed off to breakfast. We saw a little Asian man doing what we do: take food from the hotel breakfast to eat for lunch. But instead of making sandwiches like we do, he just shoved a whole bunch of meat in his pocket. Well, I guess if that's what floats his boat.
So we arrived on time at the coliseum to redeem our 8:30 am pre-paid vouchers. I was all for metroing there, but mom decided to go all naturalist on me. We walked.
The coliseum was from ancient roman times and many shows were staged there. They would have full day events: gladiators killing exotic animals in the morning, exotic animals killing naked criminals at mid day, and gladiators killing each other in the evening. It pleased the emperor, though there were some who boycotted the events seeing as they were barbaric.
The coliseum itself is fantastic. It's a massive stone oval and we got to walk all around it on different levels. Most of it has crumbled into disrepair, but from the size you can imagine how it must have once looked. We spent about 2 hours there, but then people began pouring in, and we decided to move on. We've decided we hate tourists. We don't count ourselves as tourists.
We then headed to the roman forum next door. It had just as many people as the coliseum but due to the forum's massive size, we didn't feel as much of the crowding.
The roman forum is a huge site with ruins from the ancient roman city centre that surrounded the coliseum. There is evidence of houses, palaces, basilicas, just about anything and everything. It took us about 3 hours to walk through, and all the ruins were remarkable.
Once we had finished up there, we went on the hunt for one Italian delicacy we hadn't yet sampled: gelato, of course. And we wanted the best of the best gelato in Rome, which led us to the acclaimed San crispino.
Of course it was fantastic, and we brought it to Trevi fountain to eat it.
The legend is if you throw a coin into Trevi fountain, you will return someday. Seeing as we had returned from when we last threw in a coin, logic says we had to throw in another one to return once more. So this fountain is huge, right? Hundreds of feet in diameter, hard to miss. Well, mom apparently did because she missed the fountain when she tried to throw her coin in. Someone will never return to Rome ever again.
We finished up our day on the searching for souvenirs, and I began to get OCD about finding a long-sleeved Rome shirt. We must have checked about 25 stores. The hunt continues.