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Published: December 15th 2008
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Gorgeous Day!
S. Maria Maggiore Friday morning we were up early to get a jump on the day. My boots had somewhat dried with the help of the hairdryer overnight but I spent another 45 minutes with the dryer until they were at least walkable. Our hostel provided a free breakfast for us and I got so excited when they had cocoa pebbles. I sadly found out after an excessively large first bite that they were not in fact cocoa pebbles but some wheat flavored cocoa pebbles look alike and on top of that, it was not real milk. The muffin was baseball material and the orange juice was not orange juice but some thick medicine-like liquid. Yuck. It was a very light breakfast.
The day was GORGEOUS. A great change from the soaked day before. Our first plan of attack was the coliseum. The day before, the girls had found a park that overlooked it from a short distance. We walked through the streets and it was the Italy I had always imagined. The architecture of just random buildings and all the cathedrals were just gorgeous. Thankfully it was blue skies and sunny. I think the park they had found the night before was a
dog park, there were people walking the ugliest European dogs I’ve ever seen. The view over the coliseum was straight out of post card, it was beautiful. We took the necessary pictures and walked around the park to the main path headed straight to the Coliseum. For some reason, the girls have started a tradition in which they leap in every famous (and crowded) place possible. People think we are legit crazy. We stop in the most random places and start leaping around, and of course, we can never get the first 4 pictures right so we leap for quite awhile. After the photoshoot, we had to cross about 7 lanes of traffic in order to actually get to the coliseum. It’s literally just a place I’m sure people drive by everyday and forget its there. It’s surrounded by roads. Once we got to the actual sidewalk around it we were all in awe and so excited. I could not believe I was there. And it’s so massive! I was just walking, looking up, and smiling the whole time. I just kept repeating to myself that I was actually standing 15 feet from the coliseum. You hear about this place
for your entire life, see it in movies, and then all of a sudden it’s just there?! It was unreal.
After walking around and taking loads of pictures, we met up and decided what our next step should be. The book I had brought had a walking tour from the Coliseum through Palantine hill to the Roman Forum. We first took a path towards the Arco di Tito which lead us around a little path and up a hill behind houses and churches. We got to the top of the hill and found a dead end and a small chapel that looked as if no one is supposed to find it. My book had lied and taken us the wrong way. Apparently, I was born to be a tour guide. My friends followed me as I read out of the book what we were passing and what it was.
We made our way back around, passing the Coliseum again, and bought tickets for the Roman Forum and Palantine Hill. During this time, I took lots and lots of pictures and looking back, I have no idea what they are from! Palantine hill was the part of town where the wealthy
lived, including ceasar and some other famous roman dudes! Laying all around were just piles of collapsed marble and used-to-be walls. Jess and I broke off from the group due to the fact we were tired of being in pictures and wanted to look around a little. We wandered behind this building, which apparently is a mini museum amongst the ruins, and found an amazing view. There were a hole in the wall and through it was a gorgeous view overlooking Rome. You could see the domes and random ruins. We came back out from behind the building and the girls were gone. We figured it would take at least 4 more photo stops before they got to the point where we were. We took an abbreviated version of many of the ruins and found caesars house which was a pile of stones so we walked through that quickly. We didn't have phones on us and we had no set meet up point so losing the rest of the group was not in our best interest. Finally we found them wandering along. They wanted to see Caesars house and it had only taken us 30 seconds so we sat on
a rock and told them to meet us at the rock & when they were finished, we'd continue on. 15 minutes and a couple of letspassthetimeandtakedumbpictures later, they still had not come out! We started to get a little worried so we wandered around the fence to the house and didn't see the girls! Jess and I decided that possibly there had been a path we missed so we kept going around the house. This took us to a garden with mazes of short bushes and orange trees overlooking the Roman forum but no girls. I was starting to panic so Jess just told me we needed to go back to the rock. I popped my head around a bush and there was a path back to the rock and there were the girls walking past it! I was so relieved! Apparently, in Jess and my hurry to find the girls the first time, we had missed the actual segment of Caesars house that was still actually a house! They had gone in there, hence us not seeing them when we went back to find them.
All together again, we enjoyed the view of the Roman forum from above. The
forum was the main center of town. When we first entered the area from the coliseum (at the beginning of the blog), we entered through the marketplace. Now, we were entering from the residences of the wealthy straight into their assembly rooms and senate meeting centers. I somehow used the compass inside my brain to lead us through a tunnel and around a hill to get us down into the forum instead of backtracking the way we had already come. There were these massive archways that I couldn't figure out quite what they were from my book. I'm going to stay with the fact that they were meeting centers. I could not believe how large these were and I have no idea how they made them. Jess and I got a picture acting like we were having a meeting and some of the girls got some more jumping pictures...the arches were amazing.
From here we continued to wander through the ruins of the roman forum. It was overwhelming, especially to imagine what it used to look like! Our walk was focused to end at the famous Typewriter steps, aka Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele II which was a controversial monument raised
for the first King of Republic in 1911. When we finally made it to this monument, we noticed that there were gaurds everywhere! We had learned the day before with our awesome round and round bus trip that there had been a planned protest, however, we did not realize we would be walking right through it! The typewriter steps were closed off so of course we took pictures of the gaurds and WITH the gaurds instead! Of course, once the officer realized what was going on we were shooed away. We made it across the rapidly emptying square and decided to head towards the Pantheon. We NEEDED lunch first. A lot of bickering and whining and huffs and puffs were taking place by this point. We had to get through a line of gaurds to get down the street so 3 of us walked through and then the gaurds stopped the rest! They were saying it was too dangerous to get through the street due to the protest planned, but, the protest would be taking place in the square! We would be getting away from it! So we went back into the square and I found an alley that led
to the same street we wanted to be on and we walked right out behind the gaurds and pretty much stuck our tongues out in their general direction and headed down the street. The first decent place we found that served food we went in. After 5 busy and wonderful hours we settled down to eat.
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