Palatine, Roman Forum, churches, and more

Saturday I made my way to the Palatine [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palatine_Hill] and Roman Forum [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Forum], as the Colosseum line was insane. So, I being the very smart girl that I am, bought a ticket at the Palatine that gets you into all the archaeology sites including the Colosseum, only having to wait in line for 10 minutes. I spent quite a while, like 2 hours in there, and I am sure I could have been there longer if I did not have other things I wanted to see. I then had a salami panini for lunch in front of the Forum . I had booked a tour of the Capuchin Crypts [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capuchin_Crypt], Catacombs, and San Clemente Church, so I had to go to that before visiting the Colosseum. The tour was pretty good, minus a few rude people on the tour. Unfortunately, almost all the places I had wanted to take pictures, they were not allowed. Sorry! no pictures from these places! There are multiple catacombs, I visited the largest one at Domitilla. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catacombs_of_Rome]. Contrary to popular belief, the catacombs are NOT secret meeting places where early Christians used to meet. The Romans were well aware of their location. The purpose was for the Christians to have a place to bury their dead, especially the poor Christians. And since they ran out of room for the grounds they had...they just kept going down into the ground. This catacomb had 4 levels. Many of the burials had been looted much earlier by graverobbers, and then were forgotten for a number of years. Later they were discovered again.
San Clemente [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilica_di_San_Clemente] is a very interesting site, and has a long history. The first building here, was a pagan temple from the 1st century AD, then two basilicas (churches) were built on top one from the 4th century and another from the 12th century.

After the tour, I went to the Colosseum [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colosseum], went on another guided tour. I, was very hungry and tired, and it was threatening to rain, so I went to a restaurant and got some dinner. Not as good as the night before, as I was eating alone...which sucks by the way. I got gnocchi with tomato sauce, and some wine. No gelato, I went straight home and to bed and shower, as the next day I had to get up early for a 7:45 train to Naples. I included a bunch of links if you are interested in reading more about the placed I saw, because I do not want to spend most of my time here on the internet.

I only posted a fraction of the pictures I took, again, due to time, because it takes about a minute to load and upload each one on the site.

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