Rome - Day Two.

We sleep in. For a looong time. Eventually we wake up and Viber our respective Fathers for Fathers Day, it's nice to hear from home, but also nice to hear our accents. Mid-Late morning we make our way down to the Colosseum where we meet our group to tour Palatine Hill and the Roman Forum - a continuation from yesterdays tour. We have a different tour guide today, his name is Greg, he wears football jerseys, and he's from Romania although he was lived in Rome for about twelve years. He informs us of many things, the main one that stuns me is that (while abandoned) both Palatine Hill and the Roman Forum were intact less than 600 years ago. Why did they suddenly turn to ruin then? The Catholics came back from France, found Rome almost deserted, and set about making it great again, with beautiful buildings, churches, and the like. Guess where they found the material to make all of these wonderful things? That's right. Palatine Hill, the Roman Forum, and the Colosseum were all stripped of their marble and precious metals. ARGH. Seriously?! Humans are pretty ridiculous. Over a thousand years of fantastic history destroyed just so the church could build (beautiful) new stuff.

Sigh.

Despite the frustration, I really enjoy both sights. I had no idea how big the palace on Palatine Hill was - five stories high and approximately one hundred meters in height from lowest to highest point, I can't remember the square meterage, but it included an indoor chariot racing arena. Just casually. Go hard or go home right? It also housed an indoor swimming pool, was covered in marble from all over the world, and had around one thousand rooms. I guess if you were the ruler of Rome then why not - right?!

The Roman Forum included one original set of doors (huge weighty things) that still open and close, plus (get this) their lock and key STILL function. Nuts eh, apparently they weren't good enough to steal for the Vatican - of course this is where the key is now kept. Go figure.

Once Willy had managed to drag me out of the Forum, we snuck a peek at the Wedding Cake (not ours) aka Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele II, then headed up the main street to Piazza del Popolo - on the way Willy bought me the most beautiful Vonvon Dress, it's really cool but way too long so I will get it taken up when we get home. We ended up looking out over Rome from the Medici Gardens. It was pretty great, very busy (it was a Sunday after all), and it was weird to see hieroglyphics on the monument in the square at Piazza del Popolo. It makes sense, but it was still weird.

We managed to eat gelato by the Trevi Fountain - I had Peach, Willy had Mango. It was neat, but sadly the fountain was mostly covered by scaff. Waited in a huge line for the bathroom - apparently the Italians (like the British) have evolved beyond this stage, which explains the total lack of facilities. Crossing fingers that the Turks might still believe in bathrooms...

Finished off the evening watching Gladiator - because how can you not?!