A Push Through Rome

OK, where were we?  Oh yes, the Roman Forums, the political, artistic, and religious center of civilization for over 1400 years.  We trudged along to buy tickets to see the ruins (which was quite a feat, since we got a little lost and the forums are HUGE! so we had to walk around nearly half of them to try and buy tickets).  Finally getting into the Forums, we began meandering around, directed by the audioguide that we bought.  I'm not a big believer in the audioguides or the tour guides, but I am so happy that I bought the audioguide. 

The Forums from the outside.

The Forums, also from the outside/the old entrance.

 The forums without an audio guide:  "Oh cool look at those columns.  I wonder what this was.  Man this place is pretty dusty.  I wonder how old these things are.  Do we have to walk all around this?  OK that was fun.  Colosseum?"  

The Forums with an audio guide:  "NO WAY!  This was a temple to Saturn.  And this used to be a platform where orators would entertain crowds.  Oh, this was the house of the Vestel Virgins that watched over religious ceremonies for the city.  They apparently buried some urns when the Guals were invading Rome. etc."  Definitely worth the investment.  Granted, this audiotour only covered about 1/4th of the Forums.  We were left on our own to explore the rest (and typically make up what they were ruins of).  But, we managed to find ourselves in a gardeny area overlooking the Forums, while still being in the Forums, I think... Here, we heard English.  And, as is now customary for us to do, we immediately walked towards it.  Some British lady was giving a tour, and we decided to tag along to learn some new things about the forums.  She was sitting on a wall at the edge of the gardens, on top of a cliff above the Forums.  She was so excited about what she was saying that she kept bouncing around, I was sure she was going to fall over and die in the Forums.  She didn't, and in fact, she was just finishing up her tour.  When she finished, she gave a shameless plug for her tour at the Vatican tomorrow and invited all of us, even the ones that jumped on at the very end.  She also reassured us that it was a free tour anyways so it was no big deal.  We took her card and promised to let her know by 10 that evening if we were going to do it.

The sun was beginning to go down, and we had to get to the metro station and get home.  We walked to what we thought was the metro station, in fact it was just a bus station.  We stood around for about ten minutes re-reading the signs and trying to figure out why our stop wasn't mentioned.  Then we looked across the street to the the giant entrance to the metro station.  Oh.  We headed down, purchased three-day passes for 11 dollars and found where our train would be coming in.  We realized that this whole strike thing was really going to mess with us getting on the train, when there was already a crowd of people lining the entire stop about 4 or 5 people deep.  Fortunately, we have training.  There's a bus that carries students home from parties at our school, and getting on is generally much worse of an experience than this metro stop was shaping up to be.  What we didn't expect, however, was for the train to come screeching to a halt in the station literally packed with people.  No one was getting off and even more people were squeezing on.  People talk about how bad the buses are in India, I feel like this was probably worse.  Two of the seven of us got on.  The rest of us had to wait for the next one, and develop a game plan.  When the next train came into the station, a few people actually got off and we bustled on.  Some old lady who was getting off threw an elbow into the face of one of the girls in the group as she was getting on.  Other than that, no casualties and we all made it on with literally no room to spare.  I kept expecting people to get off at the next stop, but they never did.  At one point, I was stuck on one foot.  Everyone was sweating since the car didn't have air conditioning (everything they say about Italians not believing in deodorant is true).  We eventually got off the train at the very last stop to find our two friends who had a similar experience on their train.  Laughing about it, we searched for our hotel which was theoretically only 3 minutes away.  We eventually found it and my only prayer was that it was clean and had beds.  I was held in a limbo for quite some time worrying about what it was going to look like because splitting a bill into 6 parts for seven people in his second language proved to be a bit too much for the guy at the front desk. But, after about 20 minutes we figured it all out, got the keys to our rooms and found that the rooms were, in fact, clean and also had beds!  Success!

We showered off the grease and sweat from the days events (in an incredibly powerful jet of water that also flooded the bathroom...) and headed down to dinner in the hotel.  We were the only customers and the chef/server/manager treated us very well.  So well, in fact, that she earned family status as grandma.  The matriarch of our Italian family gave us free appetizers and desserts and laughed when we tried to eat a salad with our hands because 1) they didn't give us utensils and 2) we were delirious from exhaustion. 

The next morning, we headed out, back into Rome on the no-longer-on-strike metro.  We had a plan, and stuck to it pretty well.  First, we headed to Palantine hill.  The ancient home of the Who's Who of Rome.  It over looks the Forums and Circus Maximus.  It was interesting but without an audioguide, a little lack-lustre.  Then, on to the Colosseum (thank God for spellcheck, I haven't spelled that right once).  I was so excited, I could barely contain myself.  This WAS Rome.  Of all of the famous things things in the world, the Colosseum was right up there, and I was about to walk inside.  Not to mention, it was HUGE and really old.  We breezed the line (since, following the tour book's suggestions, we already had our tickets and instead of waiting an hour and change, we waited maybe 30 seconds).  Then we were there!  Inside an ancient stadium.  I felt like I was inside Invesco Field at Mile High all over again.  I could totally see an ancient Roman high school hosting prom here.  Walking into the stands of the Colosseum was an amazing experience.  I could just feel the history, how many gladiators had fought there, the staged naval battles, etc.  It was also sad, though, to think that such an amazing piece of architecture fell to such ruin.  Though, fortunately, it still stands because some theory says "Rome stands as long as the Colosseum stands.  And when Rome falls, so does the world."

This is poorly stitched together, but it gets the idea across.  This place is huge!

After the Colosseum, we headed to The Vatican City, capitol of the Catholic world.  But, that is a story for tomorrow.  Cheers to the daily adventure.