With the Rome Marathon on this morning we headed out to Ostia Antica to take in some more unimaginable history. The ruins of this city date back to a few hundred years AD. The normality of life is hard to appreciate. around the amphitheatre there are little offices where souvenirs stores would have been. The arcade of commercial stores has each stores purpose depicted in Mosaics on the floor in front of the store, no one could read. From Ostica we headed back into Vatican city to take watch the blessing of the pope. He emerged from his apartment right on time a few minutes after the red carpet was hung out to announce his impending arrival. Yet another surreal moment. Next we all had to literaly run in the Rome marathon, well for a few meters anyway, it was the only way to get over to the Colloseum, but luckily by this time of day the field had reduced to those who were there for fun. The engineering, scale and architectural thought that went into this building is daunting like everything else in Rome. I couldn't appreciate it, I mean really appreciate it. From the Colosseum we headed for the Trevi fountain. I had imagined the surroundings to be in proportion to the fountain. The kids had a ball throwing coins into the fountain, like most of this city it was beautiful. I dragged the family up the hill to the Spanish steps, I didn't realise we'd come the back way, but at least we got to walk down rather than up :) There must have been 3000 people at the steps. I've never seen a crowd like that without some equally impressive event pulling them together, for all these people they were meeting, hanging out or here to climb the steps themselves. We stopped for the kids to have some Pizza and Gelato and Gab and I to enjoy some suitably italian drinks - Espresso, Negroni, Menabrea, Amaro. By the time the kids were fighting over the Vanilla gelato sundae neither of us cared too much :) Max disappeared to the bathroom for long enough that I got worried he had flushed himself down. He'd found a computer and commandeered it to get himself onto the Pokemon site to ensure there hadn't been a new surprise generation or anything like that.
We shopped a little longer, I bought some Versace sunglasses, super cheap. Then we headed back to the hotel. In Bourdain's Rome Layover episode he went to a little pizza place, Pizzarium, about 20 minutes from our hotel. The family dropped me off there, or bought a mix of slices by sight (I couldn't understand a word on the menu) and walked home, of course it was cold by the time I got back to the hotel but still delicious! What an increadible day - ancient history, lectured by the Pope, ran in the Rome Marathon, the Coloseum, Trevi Fountian, Spanish steps. Eternal city!