Unfortunately, Liam was sick today and had to stay home. With him not feeling weak, we started the morning slowly. Willow, River and I went out to a bakery to get breakfast pastries. One really cool thing here is their extensive use of pistachios in cooking. They have something that’s kind of like Nutella, but it’s made with pistachios instead of hazelnuts and chocolate. I kind of want to eat it on everything.
After breakfast, we walked to the bus stop to head for our tour of the Colosseum. Just walking through the streets in our neighborhood was an adventure.
The Colosseum is so huge, it’s hard to take it all in. We watched the movie Gladiator before coming to Rome, so it felt very real.
From one spot, we could see into the underground area where the gladiators waited for their turn, and up into what used to be the seats. Apparently the seats were all stolen because they were made of marble.
It was built in only 8 years, which seems unbelievable considering the tools they had to work with back then. But they did have an almost limitless number of enslaved people to do the work.
There were lots of random bits of the structure just laying around. This was once the pinnacle of a column.
We booked our tour months in advance so we could go underground at the Colosseum, but our tour company switched it last minute to include Palatine Hill and the forum instead. We were bummed not to get to walk where the ancient gladiators did, but it was interesting to learn about the vestal virgins, who had to keep a fire going around the clock or be buried alive. We walked through the remains of their home and saw the statues with the names of the women who filled the role carved into the base.
We are really enjoying the food here. This photo was taken by Willow, who really wanted to capture the incredible bruschetta we had with dinner.
We have learned that restaurants don’t really cut pizza here, unless you ask. The street vendors cut a piece for you to buy, but restaurants bring it whole. River is totally happy to have enormous slabs of pizza.
I feel like at some point we might get tired of gelato, but so far we haven’t.
There was a busker performing in the piazza near our place. We stopped for a few on our way home.
Leave a Reply