June 24th
Today we were sad when we had to check out of our hotel. It was a decent hotel. Although small compared to what we are use to in the states I thought it was pretty roomy for a European hotel. We had great service and a delicious breakfast every morning. We were also very sad to know that we were spending our last few hours in Rome that morning.
We really LOVED all the time we spent in Rome and it was hard to leave. After we check out of the hotel we took a cab to the Colosseum for our tour. We discovered that on Sunday cabs cost more money, good to know! When we arrived at the meeting spot for our tour we were put into our group with a guide. Guess what? It was the same guide we had at the Vatican. Her name was Angela and she was a great tour guide so we were excited to be in her group again.
We set off into the Colosseum and by passes a huge line of people who were waiting, it was so worth if for us to do the guided tour. We learned so much that we probably wouldn't have learned on our own. She also allowed us plenty of time to take pictures and showed us were the best angles were for the pictures. I learned a lot about the colosseum and ancient times
- the colosseum use to be white, but after all the years of pollution and the fires it has turned gray. They city hopes to clean it and make it bright and white again. (I am guessing that might not happen for a while since the Italian economy is close to where our economy was in fall of 2008.)
- Animals and gladiators were lifted into the area by elevators (that were pulled by slaves.)
- People who attended were sent home with free meat from the animals that were killed. Having free food and entertainment was the Empires way of keeping his people happy. More recently Italian Presidents have kept their people happy with soccer and pizza... food and entertainment.
- The Emperor was the one who would decide if a defeated gladiator would live or die.
- 9,000 Gladiators died in the years of the first emperor and 11,000 under the next... just to get a feel for how many gladiators were killed.
- The great fire of Rome (rumored to have been started by Nero) was started in the middle of the colosseum.
After we saw all there was to see at the Colosseum we headed across the street to the Roman Forum. It is basically all the ruins left over from ancient Rome.
It includes the place were Julius Caesar was cremated (he was actually killed in St. Angelica Square because the government building he usually used was under construction.)
We also walked up to Palistine Hill which was really neat. They have the remains of the palace were the Emperor of Rome lived. It was all really cool to see and think that all of it was thousands of years old. The Romans have done a really good job preserving history and when it needs to be refurbished to keep it from falling apart they only do what is needed so they can keep as much of the original building as possible. It was a lot of fun to see but as Angela said we paid for a 3 hour tour and we got a 3 hours tour.... in the 95 degree heat with the sun beating down on us. It was very hot so we were read when our tour ended.
We walked back towards the Trevi Fountain area. For lunch we decided to go pizza hopping. We stopped in at all the places that served pizza and if it looked good we would try a small piece of it. We had A LOT of good pizza! We were stuffed, but of course there was room for one final gelato cone. After lunch I sat by the Trevi fount for a while and almost got a little weepy that we had to leave Rome, it was the perfect start to our vacation.
We had a driver pick us up and take us to the airport. Unfortunately he didn't speak english. That was a big bummer, because 2 min after we left the hotel Mike remembered he forgot the souvenir tie he just bought on the table in the lobby. Had the driver spoke english he would have known that we were asking him to take us back. So the tie was lost :( sad day. But the bad events didn't end there. The Rome airport was not a fun one, we had to do a lot of walking. Then our flight was delayed, they changed our fight gate (but we didn't know right away because we don't speak Italian.) Once we got on the plane we had to wait in the tarmac for close to an hour. This meant we got to the London airport at 10pm instead of 8:00. Then when we got to the UK boarder control the line was HUGE!! We had to wait to have our passport stamped for an hour... so now it is 11pm. Then we couldn't find our luggage, turns out it was on a different carousel then the one they had listed.
After we cleared customs we found the office were our transfer to the hotel was to be... and they were closed (seeing as we were 3 hours late for our transfer.) Luckily there was a note for us with a phone and a number to call to get a driver to come pick us up. At midnight we were on our way to the hotel. When we finally got to our hotel it was close to 1am. When we went to check in they told us we hadn't paid yet, which I was pretty sure we had paid for something... but to look at my bank statement online it was going to cost 5 pounds for 1 hour.... thats like $7.50 so we decided to just pay and figure it out later.
Our room is about as big as the ones on our cruise ships have been. It's alright but not nearly like the one in Rome, they only nice thing is we can see big ben (from a distance) out our window.
Unfortunately we both fell asleep wishing we were still in Italy and kind of bitter about the way out trip to London started. Not a great way to start off. Luckily we got over it pretty quick!
No comments:
Post a Comment