Gladiators and ensuring our return

We arrived in Rome with me sick from getting caught in the rain in Venice so we spent one whole day doing nothing. Rather, I spent one whole day doing nothing but sleeping and resting while CS went round the neighbourhood, ran a few errands and made friends at the market.

After I recovered, we spent the next day on a walking tour. We had signed up for walking tours with Roman Candle Tours and they very nicely allowed us to postpone our tour for one day since I was sick. We did Ancient Rome on the first day and Vatican City on the second day. Our guide, Brian, was absolutely fabulous and both CS and I totally loved him. He was very knowledgeable and shared many tidbits and information with us. Ancient Rome really came alive because of all his explanations and since we had been to Greece and Turkey where there were a lot of Greek and Roman remains, it just added to what we already knew. We were both a little underwhelmed by the Colosseum though cos while it is indeed rather huge, we were just not taken by it for some reason. I must say the ancient Romans were rather clever though, with the whole seating system, trapdoors to bring gladiators/ animals up into the arena etc. The engineering was really quite amazing and of course to construct such a huge buiding is just unimaginable then. Oh they had people dressed up as gladiators walking around, if you take a photo of them they will demand money from you. We didn't take any photos of them but I thought it must be quite cold to walk around like that in this weather, brh...

Colosseum

After the tour, we went to the Vittoriano (aka Wedding Cake) as you are supposed to get a great view of Rome from there. However I think they closed the upper levels since it rained and the floor was rather slippery. We then headed to the Trevi Fountain and again for some strange reason we weren’t taken by it. We did do the cliché thing of throwing a coin in the Trevi Fountain, so let’s see if we go back to Rome, haha… According to Lonely Planet, an average of 3000 euros get chucked into the fountain on an average day! And there was a homeless man who apparently was making up to 1000 euros a day for 34 years! Apparently throwing the coins in the fountain was as legal as taking coins, lol… It is however illegal to enter the fountain, so maybe you should use a net or something, haha… We ended the day with the Spanish Steps with no sights of any supermodels :p

Vittoriano

Trevi Fountain