....then we woke up and decided to skip Greece all together!! Apparently the rail workers are on strike, so travel by train is completely undependable. We couldn't find a sure way to even get to Athens. So, dad woke up with the genius idea to just skip our first flight, from Athens to Frankfurt, and just jump on our flight in Frankfurt for home! I knew I got my smarts from somewhere ;)
We looked at the map.... Hmmm.... Should we go to France? Prague? Austria? Istanbul? It was a great 'problem' to have :) We decided we want to have a relaxing day on the Mediterranean in Marseille, then go somewhere where I actually know the language (!!!!!) in Barcelona. Then, as a bonus, we'll get to see Dave Greder in Mainz, Germany before catching our flight. It's gonna be a good time!
Knowing it would be our last day in Rome, we headed back to the coliseum/forum area. We jumped the gigantic lines with our Roma Pass, and headed inside the Coliseum. What a sight. It's times like these where I wish I had an Amy Goldsmith-type imagination, so I could actually picture what it used to look like when gladiators and lions were fighting in the middle, emperors were being splashed with blood in the front row, and the peons were in the top row getting drunk and cheering. Now, instead of the stage, you look down into what were the inner workings underneath the main arena. They had trap doors and 'elevators' big enough that they could use elephants. This place was unreal.
We have awesome timing... We went to the same place as the day before for lunch, right before it started dumping rain. It ended up shutting down part of the metro there was so much of it. But we just sat in our nice restaurant, drank our wine, and ate our pizza and lasagna while staying (almost) dry.
We then headed over to the forum. As incredible as the coliseum was, the forum was basically viewing the history of the Roman Empire, all in one place. Dad and I wandered through for hours, listening to an audio guide which walked us through the rise and fall of Rome and everything in between. When it started raining again, dad tried to escape getting soaked under where Julius Caesar was burned. This place is crazy!
Don't yell at us when we get home.... We thought we were going to have an extra day here..... So we didn't see the Sistine chapel! *hides*
We headed to the Piazza del Popolo and strolled down the Via del Corso. I love the sign at the beginning of the street.... This way to the piazza venezia, trevi fountain, pantheon, coliseum, spanish steps.... is there a more epic sign anywhere? I'd love to see it!
After strolling through the streets, down the super fancy street in front of the Spanish steps, then all the way back to the hotel (since the metro was still down because of the rain), we had our last taste of gelato before heading to the hotel. FRANCE tomorrow!!! :)