Hello all, so now we're onto my second day in Roma, what an amazing day that was. If started out with us being really excited that we were clean, well fed and had slept! So naturally we took a picture of our new state of mind as we were on our way to the Colosseum. We had tickets to enter the Colosseum at 10A.M, which was a perfect time, because we got plenty of sleep and took our time getting over to the Colosseum. When we got there and saw the lines we were very happy that we booked our tickets ahead of time, we skipped probably about an hour's worth of waiting, which was excellent. So this is us inside the line waiting to get our ticket, happy, well fed and well rested. :)
The main floor of the Colosseum
After about 15 min of waiting and going through various lines we finally walked into the Colosseum and I was just like "woooow", it's just like the pictures, except way cooler. It really does look like all the pictures though, which I know is a weird thing to say, but sometimes things just look differently in real life. We got there fairly early so when we showed up there weren't quite as many tourists there to get in our way of taking photos. So we started walking around the Colosseum and admiring it from all sorts of different angles. Abby also was smart enough to print off of Wikipedia like 8 pages about the Colosseum so we could learn for free and didn't need a guide or anything! So we picked a nice spot to stop and read about the Colosseum together and look at the things they talked about. So here's my pictures and I'll write a little bit about them if I learned something cool.
This is just me at the Colosseum, ya know..No biggie...
This part is the main part of the Colosseum. There used to be a large floor covering all of it, some of which you can still on the far end of the picture. A lot of it fell in various earthquakes that occurred in Rome. But this are was where they kept all the people and animals. They had an incredible pulley system that allowed people and animals to rise onto the state at different times. As you all know, the Colosseum was where many fights were held. People who were POW's were often Gladiators, not many people chose that as a living, and if they did it was for a very, very short period of time. So there were Gladiator schools very close by, the biggest one even had a tunnel that lead straight to the Colosseum. There are two levels of these underground rooms, which you can only imagine the darkness of them. We also learned that they were able to flood the place to make underwater fights and bring in sea animals. How cool is that!? They had an aqueduct that was connected to hear to flood the place. So they held lots of fights, and it sounds like if you were into that sort of thing, it was pretty awesome to see.
We learned that they also had a really cool covering for the the Colosseum to keep the elements off the spectators. They got the sailors to create a awning over the whole thing (with the exception of covering the arena, of course) made from canvas and was shaped in a way to protect the awning and spectators from the wind and rain. I think that's pretty neat that they figured that out and did that.
The seating
There were also a number of entrances for the people to enter into the Colosseum so that they could enter and exit quickly in the case of an evacuation. Everyone had their own areas of entrance, based on class as well, and the Emperor of course had his own private entrance. Some of the entrances were decorated too with stucco reliefs.
And of course the upper tiers were for the poor and the lowest tiers were for the rich, the nobles and the Emperor. The highest tier was for the slaves and women, which was usually standing room only or had really bad steep benches that I'm sure weren't very comfortable. Wikipedia also said that some people were banned altogether from the arena, which I think is strange.
Old Columns and Rocks
These are just some parts of the exhibit they had inside the Colosseum also. They had parts of columns, rocks, parts of statues, all sorts of things displayed in one section. It was really cool to see that. There were also some bones found in the lower sections where they kept animals. They had chicken bones, boar heads, horse faces, tiger femurs, and all sorts of animals. Yup, they had lions, tigers and bears (oh my) in the arenas. They had a cool picture of what the Colosseum most likely looked like in all it's glory and other pictures and models of how their system most likely worked.
Me and Abby with an old mosaic
piece
They had pulleys all over the place and cages for the animals to stay in. The fights were held in all sorts of different settings, usually in sand (which is where the word arena comes from. Arena=area where they fought covered in sand and arena in Spanish means sand :) )
Me and Abby at Arc D' Constantine
We explored the Colosseum for about 2 hours I think and then by 12 we left the Colosseum to go to Palatine Hill, the Roman Forum and Arc d' Constantine. But we could also see the Arc d' Constantine from the Colosseum.
So the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill are all one admission, so once again we skipped all the lines and got in right away. But not before we made a little detour and got one of the BEST pictures of the trip. Yea know how everyone says there are people dressed as Gladiators all over the place near the Colosseum? Well it's true, and sometimes you just have to spring the money for the picture, because sometimes it's the best picture ever. We saw this group of Gladiators that were giving the best photos, granted it cost a bit more, but we managed to look disgusted by their price long enough to get it down for 10 euro for the three of us to be in a picture with them. And THIS is what we got. It was definitely some of the best 10 euro I spent that day.
So after our quick excursion with the awesome gladiators we went on our way to the Palatine Hill and Roman Forum where we got to look at ruins for another 3 hours. Basically, it was sick! The gardens were really pretty too, with pretty trees, and then to walk through the ruins and think that someone actually lived there, emperors lived there and so did slaves and a ton of other people. That was really neat to see. We spent a good two hours walking around. First we saw the arena where they held chariot races.
Where they held chariot races (seems a bit small huh?)
Cool ruins
That's a giant foot!
This was probably once someone's house
There were nooks all over the place that just had pieces
of columns in them
Part of the Roman Forum
So that was pretty much our time inside Palatine Hill and the Roman Forum. Basically everything we saw looked like that, but there were also lots of columns, and there was even a part of someone's house still intact that you could look through a window into. That was pretty neat.
So we left the Roman Forum (after I overheard someone saying they were sold out, haha suckers, should have bought your tickets online!) and grabbed some grub at a food stand and ate next to some more ruins!! After we ate we decided to head over to the Spanish steps, but not before we saw about 4 statues of Cesar! So naturally we took a picture with Cesar, I mean who wouldn't want to? Along the way we saw some more pretty foutains, stumbled upon more buildings and saw a really huge museum with more statues outside. I mean really, Rome is just full of old things. Everywhere you turn there's something else old, that was probably a ruin, or used about 2000 years ago. Which was pretty neat. We got a bit lost on our way to the Spanish Steps but not enough for us to be concerned. The streets are pretty narrow and windy so we just would look at our map and go in a different direction, or find a new route. And finally we found the Spanish Steps!! When we found them we had decided that we wanted to eat gelato on the steps, so we went and found gelato and returned to the steps. We even felt oddly at home, haha seeing the Spanish flag and hearing all the people speaking Spanish around us. It was a fun feeling. So we took our pictures together and just relaxed on the steps for a good hour or more and just people watched and listened to the crazy groups of Spaniards with their flags and singing their songs. From there we headed back to the hostel, after stopping by the Hard Rock Cafe for me to get my souvenir for my dad and getting lost once again in the streets of Rome.
We took a wonderful break at our hostel, got a 3 euro dinner from our hostel of delicious pasta and decided that we wanted to spend our last night in Rome at the Trevi Fountain. So we headed down to the fountain at around 8:30. We relaxed at the fountain for about 2 hours I'd say and just talked with various people and people watched. While we were there we're pretty sure someone proposed because we heard lots of shouting and clapping and when we looked over there seemed to be a circle of people surrounding some other people, so we can only assume that's what happened, which is adorable. We helped a little girl take a picture and then met 3 people that were on an educational tour following the route of the Protestant Reformation. So that was neat to talk to them, they had some interesting facts about places they had been to and had interesting stories. We talked with them for about an hour I'd say and then wished them luck on the rest of their tour. By then it was late and we decided to head to bed as well because our train out of Rome was at 6:45 in the morning. So we went back and it the sack. Overall it was a great two days in Rome. I wish I had more time, but I'm so glad I went. It was my favorite part of the whole trip. :)
Oh, I almost forgot to put my video in here! I took a video of us at the Colosseum. Here it is!
Hello all, so now we're onto my second day in Roma, what an amazing day that was. If started out with us being really excited that we were clean, well fed and had slept! So naturally we took a picture of our new state of mind as we were on our way to the Colosseum. We had tickets to enter the Colosseum at 10A.M, which was a perfect time, because we got plenty of sleep and took our time getting over to the Colosseum. When we got there and saw the lines we were very happy that we booked our tickets ahead of time, we skipped probably about an hour's worth of waiting, which was excellent. So this is us inside the line waiting to get our ticket, happy, well fed and well rested. :)
So we left the Roman Forum (after I overheard someone saying they were sold out, haha suckers, should have bought your tickets online!) and grabbed some grub at a food stand and ate next to some more ruins!! After we ate we decided to head over to the Spanish steps, but not before we saw about 4 statues of Cesar! So naturally we took a picture with Cesar, I mean who wouldn't want to? Along the way we saw some more pretty foutains, stumbled upon more buildings and saw a really huge museum with more statues outside. I mean really, Rome is just full of old things. Everywhere you turn there's something else old, that was probably a ruin, or used about 2000 years ago. Which was pretty neat. We got a bit lost on our way to the Spanish Steps but not enough for us to be concerned. The streets are pretty narrow and windy so we just would look at our map and go in a different direction, or find a new route. And finally we found the Spanish Steps!! When we found them we had decided that we wanted to eat gelato on the steps, so we went and found gelato and returned to the steps. We even felt oddly at home, haha seeing the Spanish flag and hearing all the people speaking Spanish around us. It was a fun feeling. So we took our pictures together and just relaxed on the steps for a good hour or more and just people watched and listened to the crazy groups of Spaniards with their flags and singing their songs. From there we headed back to the hostel, after stopping by the Hard Rock Cafe for me to get my souvenir for my dad and getting lost once again in the streets of Rome. 
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