Yay - the Coliseum!

We walked down the hill after breakfast and it only took about 10 minutes to have our first view of the Coliseum.  It’s impressive from any angle and daunting as you approach and see the hordes of tourists in line to buy entrance tickets.  Good thing for pre-purchase tickets on the internet!  We ended up on a tour for 8 Euros for the Coliseum and the Forum in English.  Not a bad deal and it was a warm and sunny day – which is lucky for the end of October.

The Coliseum is more amazing in person than pictures and we were all suitably impressed.   We didn’t have long to sit and absorb the atmosphere since our tour to the Forum was leaving 30mins after our guide set us free.  Just as well, you’d never soak up all the historical details and again, the place was so busy with tourists that it was tricky moving around and avoiding being the doofus walking right in front of someone about to take a picture.

The Forum is more in ruins that I realized.  It is also an amazingly photogenic place.  At this point, several hours into our day, we were hot, tired and getting hungry.  I’ve discovered that I don’t have ‘tourist-stamina’.  I have to do my visits in several short bursts otherwise I just go on autopilot and stop caring about anything other than the nearest seat or cafe or loo.

We hopped on a bus and headed back into town to grab lunch.  Kari and I split yet another pizza.  Mom tried again for her Panini but she was still on the hunt for a good one!  We wandered around, stopped for a coffee at this funky bar and were surprised to learn that our bill was only 5 Euros for 3 cappuccinos and one piece of cake (3 forks obviously).  Amazing!

We headed back to the hotel for a snooze – which was a nice luxury.  I remember our hotel was on a completely different island in Venice.  No napping there.  I crashed hard and my legs felt paralyzed!  I think all the walking and standing was taking its toll.  I guess I’m an old lady already!

For dinner we tried to hop on the 64 bus but several passed by stuffed to the brim.  We walked.  The Campo di Fiori was about 20-30 mins by foot but along the way were several shops.  I was getting the hangries so I had to ask Mom and Kari if they could please hold off shopping until after dinner!  We found a cute restaurant (or make that cute waiter!) just off the square for dinner.  Heineken, bruschetta and lasagne for Kari and me.  Mom had her usual soup and salad. 

Then we wandered over to the Piazza Novano for gelato.  Yum.  It’s beautiful there and the moon, one day past full, was gorgeous.  I wanted to do a geocache and so I plugged the numbers in to my GPS sitting outside the Pantheon.  The hints weren’t great and the signal was poor in the alleys so we gave up once we were supposedly 15m, no 20m, no 3m (!) away from the destination.  Instead we managed to find a cute wooden bench with a Pinnocchio to pose with that we wouldn’t have found otherwise.

[note – It was only a few days later that I clued in that the geocache was probably at Pinnocchio’s bench.  My suspicions were confirmed as I checked out the logged comments for the cache once home.  Grrr....how frustrating.  Well, maybe I’ll just have to go back!]