Day 9 - June 22 - Ancient Rome in the Rain

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This morning, I woke with a sore throat, a clear indication that I was about to get sick. Sam’s sickness had bloomed into full stuffyness, but since we had hit the sack around ten and slept until 11am, the worst was over for him. I knew it was just starting for me. I did not know I would be sick practically for the rest of the trip.

The sickness was the first thing I registered. The next thing was the beautiful piano music coming from outside the window. Not having enough strength to bounce out of bed, I listened to that beautiful music a full fifteen minutes before stirring and thought how very “Italy” it felt to wake up to that.

We ate a big breakfast, downed a couple of decongestants from our emergency kit, and headed out around noon. We were going to the Forum and Palentine today, to use the second part of our Roma Pass that accompanied the Coliseum ticket. We passed the Colesseum from a distance on our way, then decided to walk around the outside of the forum and the “free” ruins first.

Surprisingly, you can get a pretty good view of most of the forum from outside its gates. This was not something I expected, and I think if you only had a day or two in Rome, this might be the best way to go about seeing it. There are also a surprising number of old Rome ruins around, but not in, the Forum. In particular, a patch of monuments consisting of Trajan’s Market and monuments to Trajan, Augustus and Ceasar is like a mini-Forum itself. We were both pretty excited; this is what we had come to Rome to see!

Once we got the lay of the land, we wandered down to the entrance. Sam wanted to get audio guides this time, so we sprung for them - and they were well worth it. It’s hard to navigate your way around the forum but the audio guides keep you on track. Two tips for the Forum before I describe our experience: first, bring snacks; second, bring rain gear, just in case. Ironically we had ditched our rain coats as part of the last-minute packing purge, with the comment “how often is it going to rain, anyway?” Well, now we’d been in Italy eight days and it had rained on six of them.

We saw the temple of the Vestile Virgins, the Senate House, Romulus’ Temple (but, we learned, not “the” Romulus), the Arch of Titus and the Arch of Severus, and our favourite the Temple of Saturnia. We were intrigued by the celebration of Saturnia, a big feast where class was forgotten and everybody ate, drank, and played games. We were fascinated by the idea of nuts as prizes for the winners, to symbolize prosperity and fortune. And we were amused by one author’s description of the festivals around Saturnia as “a standard office Christmas party”.

Somewhere around the temple of Saturnia, it began to rain. We ducked under a tree and sat out of the rain until it eased. Then we carried on. Somewhere around the temple of the Vestial Virgins, I looked over and said to Sam, “Hey isn’t that the Canadian family we toured City Hall with in Florence?”. Indeed it was! Four of them had rain jackets and mom and dad had umbrellas, though Mr. Rock Star had neither. The rain had started up again and they were standing by the exit having a discussion. We were about to go say hi when they turned and left. Many others followed them; with little cover, lots of mud and no umbrella sellers, the Forum is not the idea place to spend a rainy day in Rome.

But that did not deter us. We finished the entire Forum audio guide, then stopped for a view over the Forum from the Palentine, imagining all of the activity that must have taken place there in Ancient Rome. After hearing the audio tour, we could almost see Senators heading to the Senate House, the hustle and bustle of merchants on the streets, slaves building some new temple or monument.

We started in on the Palentine tour, but had to stop part way due to the rain again. I was exhausted, stuffy, and my feet were aching from all the walking we had already done. I was perfectly happy to sit under a tree for half an hour looking out over the Palentine, leaning on Sam, and just enjoying being together. Sam said he would be more perfectly happy if we’d packed sandwhiches. The tree actually protected us from the rain, unlike trees in Nova Scotia which are useless against its blowing downpours. We watched other couples do the same thing, and listened a bit to a tour guide discussing life in the Forum with her group.

When the rain eased again, we agreed there was no way we had the energy to finish the Palentine audio tour. We decided to hit the Emperor’s House and the Stadium as our last stops. We passed through some beautiful gardens, then walked, and walked, and walked some more to get to and then through the stadium. We started to get annoyed with the audio guide in the Stadium because we couldn’t figure out where we were or what we were looking at. Eventually we both decided we were done and headed for the exit.

We had figured we were three, maybe four hours in the Forum and the Palentine. But when we reached the exit, the bathrooms were closed, there was only one staff member on duty to return our id in exchange for the audio tours. And the clock read a quarter past seven! We had entered the Forum before two. We spent five and a half hours there without even knowing it!

That was all the excuse we needed to call it a day. We had a quick salad on our terrace, then ate again at “our” pizzeria near our hotel, but this time we had a pasta each, and a pizza, a full litre of wine and two deserts. We were introduced this evening to Panna Cotta - a scrumptious new favourite! When my head hit the pillow after a long day of walking and a big meal, I was asleep instantly.

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