Gosh!  We still have so many sights to see!

We had no change of clothes or toiletries. But! Buying a packet of Excel chewing gum meant that we could “Excel..erate our breath!” (we do listen to TV adverts after all).
Next morning we made our way to the Palazzo Venezia, the Roman Forum and the Colosseum. You have to make slow progress walking through the streets of Rome because every turn puts you in front of yet another spectacle.

Thumbs up!  Thumbs down!  ..and a myth destroyed

The Colosseum. The vastness is the first thing that hits you. 

We took the tour. We had an excellent tour guide, who his enthusiasm to “tell us all”, “the truth – and only the truth” destroyed all our long held childhood truths about the Games and ‘gladiators!’.

The Colosseum wasn’t called “The Colosseum”.

There is no record of anyone ever raising or turning down their thumbs!

Gladiators rarely fought to the death (they were too expensive to train!)

And Caesar only had time to attend just a few times a year!

Aaaaw!   I prefer Hollywood’s truth.

Although a lot of the inside has decayed, we now know that most of the marble and mosaic floors were taken away to build St Peter’s Basilica.   Hmmm..
Originally the Colosseum was magnificently ornate. You can now only imagine what a truly remarkable building this was.

I like to think that the Toronto Skydome (now called the “Rogers” Centre ..yuck!) with it’s retractable roof, was based upon the Colosseum.  When ‘the games’ were ON, slaves would pull huge cloth sunshades across the area to keep the combatants and citizens nice and cosy.

The tour gives you a good insight into the way the gladiators were trained to put on performances and how the promoters would depict parts of the Empire with scenery also brought in for the event. They used to bring wild animals of all descriptions from other parts of the world to show to the citizens of Rome how powerful their armies were.

Slaves would also watch the games from the highest level (like the Skydome again) but they didn’t have the best seats of course (like the Skydome again). Your status determined where you sat. Entry was free to everyone. One interesting fact was that they used the arena for public executions of local criminals - none of the execution methods were nice if not at least original!
We spent three hours here and never scraped the surface.

The famous “Trevi” Fountain is huge and seems to be tucked away down side streets! So many visitors there. This fountain is so intricate and beautiful you just have to sit and admire for ages. It was also here we came across Pinocchio's workshop.

We hung out for awhile at the ‘so called’ Spanish Steps. This is  where all the other beautiful people used to hang out in the 50’s and 60’s in the hope of being discovered by film directors, artists and fashion photographers.  This is also where we discovered the most expensive piece of apple tart ever. It was probably no more than 5 cm square!
Still the view was great.

At 6pm being very tired and having completed our day’s checklist of ‘sights to see’ we headed back to the station.
It was at Piramide Station that we found the most miserable station staffers.  
At the station we were confused as to which train to take and from which platform (it would be unrealistic to think that they might match the name on the train with the name on the platform with the name on the stations used).
The workers (who had been on strike during the day) were very rude when Les asked for help and waved here on to her own devices. After another 15 minutes of trying to work out where to go Les asked another official. Reluctantly the official condescended to show her where to go – it was at least 3 strides out of her little box. Oh well, a side of tourism you don’t like to see after everyone else had been so helpful.

Monday (two days time) we meet up with Bob and Cathy from Toronto for another sightseeing day.