Roma- Coliseum, San Callisto Catacombs

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December 8th 2018

Published: December 8th 2018

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moonman

Coliseum Roma

Kasie, Pedro, Sriracha and Lori

We had a busy day touring. It was 60+ and sunny all day. We started with breakfast again at the hotel. The Coliseum was next with a wait in the lines. We toured the Coliseum viewing some of the historical information first and then we went in to tour the inside. Amazing architecture. We took the train from there to San Giovani. After a lunch of pizza we went through Chapel of San Lorenzo. It is the Church with the holy stairs that are said to be originally from Jerusalem from the hall of Pontius Pilate's palace. The stairs were closed for renovation, but there was a window to view the stairs. Afterwards we went to a cafe' nearby as we needed to have a sweet treat while we used the WiFi to look up the bus we needed to take to the San Callisto Catacombs. We found our bus stop across the street and took bus 218 to the Catacombs. A group of nuns boarded the bus, and Sriracha posed for a picture with the group! We arrived at our destination of the catacombs. We had a short wait for our tour after purchasing our tickets for the guided tour.

Sriracha and the nuns on bus 218

They do not let people wander the 12 miles of passageways in the catacombs without a guide!. The tour was informative. There were no pictures allowed. We learned about the burials and the symbolic carvings and paintings in the catacombs. We had a short wait after the tour for our bus ride back. We took the train back into the central city. We did some walking and sightseeing and then it was another stop at a gelato shop. We stopped for a short time to listen to Christmas carols as there was another Christmas tree lighting. It was the official tree of the City. We did not actually stay to see the tree lighting. I looked it up on the internet tonight and it seems there was quite a bit of news about last year's tree as it lost all of the needles right away. It was nicknamed Spelacchio or "Mangy". This year's tree looked OK, but as it was not lit up when we were there, I didn't take any pictures. We headed back to our hotel and then it was dinner at Aquila Nera. Another round of sweet treats!

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