The Wacky World of a Lazy Pig (AKA Simon)

Eurotrip Day 14 - The Colliseum is so huge!! More Museums?

I have to say that this was one of the most busiest days and hardest days on my nose of the entire trip. Before I being today's story, I have to say one thing. Sleeping in Rome is quite difficult with the mixture of heat and coldness at night. The hostel is quite alright giving sheets, blankets and pillows at no extra charge, but the blanket doesn't seem to help toooo much. From previous experience, one blanket wouldn't be enough for me as I am very sensitive to the cold. So when I first slept the night before, I felt quite chilly. Midway through the night, I found myself sweating my butt off so I took off the blanket. By the time I woke up, I was sniffling and was shriveled up wearing my jacket.

As we awoke to the sounds of the streets, I walked into the washroom to find out that it was quite the co-ed washrooms with guys and girls sharing the same toilets and even showers. Though some people think that this is a great place to check out chicks, I wouldn't recommend it as they usually aren't that good looking in the morning. It seems like the bossy girls are the ones out in the morning, just an obersvation of mine. The showers had hot water and plenty of space for you to change out of your clothes, unlike London and Paris. There was a shower door that separated the changing area and the actual shower (nice touch).

The day was great with the Sun up high already and a nice little breeze to keep us cool. Breakfast was the first stop. A small grocery store called Pam, was within 2 minutes walk from the Hostel. They had so much italian style meat and bread. Steve almost always bought italian ham and a baguette. Roger and I would just scrounge around for some cheap food and drinks as we weren't too keen on spending more than $4 CAD on breakfast. I picked up some croissants which had a thin layer of sugar icing on it. I wouldn't say it was bad, but it did fill me up until lunch.

As I said about Rome before, everything is quite walkable as long as you have the endurance and time. The colliseum was in fact not too far at all from the Hostel. Steve suggested that we just walk and not spend money on a bus pass that we wouldnt really use. As we started walking from the hostel, I had a hunch that I would stop at a few churches before actually reaching our intended destination, the colliseum. Walking is definitely a joy in Rome as you can see so many things and really get to spend time in random places that you see on the way. I wouldn't say that we didn't get lost on the way to the Colliseum, its more like we kept taking detours as we noticed church towers and nice structures as we went. And yes, we did bump into churchs. A lot of them. One of the churches we stopped by just started Mass and was celebrating while carrying a statue of Mary around. There was a procession with altar servers and priests outside with the statue singing and swining the insence, soooo european.

The colliseum is absolutely hard to miss and is amazing. As I saw the colliseum come closer and closer, my jaw would drop farther and farther. You know how you have always seen the Colliseum in pictures and wonder just how big it is right? Well..... dang!!!! It is huge and amazing. Its amazing because of the amount of work and engineering that had to go into the construction of the Colliseum. It was a Friday when we went and there were just so many people waiting in line. Then again, I wouldn't doubt that the place is packed during any other time in the year. Lucky for us, we had the Museum pass which allowed us to bypass a big waste of tiem in line.

Steve and I picked up an audio guide, Roger didn't. And for something as nice as the Colliseum, the audio guide was a must in order to enjoy it. They gave so much explanation of the place included carvings of gladiators or prisonors that were help in the colliseum before the were sent out for show. You can definitely tell that the colliseum is old if you look at the stone and stairs. None of the stone was smooth nore were they all shaped 100% correct. At times, the type of stone used to build the walls, pillars and stairs would differ. Half of a wall would be make of one type of material or stone while the second half, which is placed right on top of it, is of a totally different material. The difference is so noticeable as each have a different colour. They must have run out of a certain type of stone at the time and had to substitute.

The inner portion of the Colliseum resember a smaller Soccer Stadium. It can sit more than 15000 people, though I know no one would probably want to watch something here any more since all the seats were made of stone. One could only image the heat emitted by the stone during hot days in Rome (which were probably quite often). A lot of the ideas that existed in the days of the Colliseum have been adopted by sporting arenas and concert halls today. Seats are classified by social status and class. The rich would have very close seats and have their names carved on the seat that was already reserved for them. That means that if they weren't there, no one else would be sitting there. There are also mid seats which people sort of pay for and finally the poor seats or nosebleeders. Those would be the cheapest seats possible. And no, they didn't have suites for high executives or business men.

Most of the ground of the actual battlegrond area had been excavated and revealed to the public. From where we stand, we could see that under the regular flooring of the Colliseum was a maze for animal hunting events. And to think that people back before Christ thought about this was something to commend them for. Here they would hunt special and rare animals or just have people fight people to the deaths. And for those of you who also remember, Christians were made into Roman Candles here in the Colliseum. This for me was somewhat emotional, knowing that early Christians were persecuted here, burned alive and laughed at. I don't think I would have been able to do the same in those days. To remember those Christians that were persecuted, a cross was erected at the bottom of the Colliseum.

From the Colliseum, we could also see the Arch of Constantine and the Forum. This entire area is basically ruins and abandoned. Everything seems as if they have been just left there untouched ever since the earthquakes and abandonment. Half of the top section of the Colliseum is missing, I wonder where all the stone that used to be there is now. After walking around and closely analyzing most of the details we left the Colliseum and headed for the Forum. But before we got to the Forum (which is within 50 steps from the Colliseum) we stopped to see some of the Street performers that dressed themselves as Roman Centurions, Gladiators and Roman politicians. We didn't go near them in fear that would find a way to steal our stuff. We did see a bunch of girls huddle up to take pictures with them (you also have to pay those guys to take pictures with them).

The second we stepped in to the Forum, my nose alarm went off. It was really loud and quite lethal. I would sneeze atleast 5 times, tears coming from my eyes and tissues running out. Thank goodness didn't lose my sight because the Forum is as interesting as was the Colliseum. There are so many ruins and also Archs that have faced the test of time and weather. Though the only real structures that were still left were the arches and one church. And if you just think about and look at the size of the forum, this means that less than 5% of the structures were left standing. Now I don't know history, but my guess is that they were destroyed by barbarians and wars. Our search for the Basillica of Constantine was a failure, why? it was destroyed. Only 20% of the original outside shell still exists, everything else was gone.

Unfortunately, I missed the main highlight of the day. I was probably somewhere trying to tend to my stupid nose. Anyway, the story is with Roger and Steve. Roger and Steve were standing together and taking pictures. A couple came by and walked up to Roger (with their heads down) and asked if Roger could help them take a picture. Then the couple looked up to see Roger's face (and skin) and said "Oh, nevermind.". They then turned to Steve, who was standing right beside Roger, and asked him to take the picture. WOW!!! Talk about racism and discrimination. Roger was once again a good sport (like that time in Switzerland and the laundry detergent). But I think this time, Roger was a little pissed. I know I would be.

We also visited the Forum gardens, also know as the Palatine section, to see gardens and more ruins of houses and what looked like a some sort of sports center. From here, we could also see the Vatican from afar. Actually, I think you could probably see the Vatican from anywhere in rome. It is just so big that it is hard to miss. Anyway, back to the Forum. If we had spend just 2 hours in the Colliseum, we also spent 2 hours in the Forum, which is atleast 3-4 times larger than the Collisuem. We had to rush it if we wanted to go see the other things around town. Just outside the Forum was, yes, you guessed it, MORE churches.

But there was a someting that I couldn't miss, it was the prison of St Paul and Peter. It is an underground stone room that had small altar like area and a prison cage on the ceiling. There was no sunlight nor was there any place for going to the washroom. Once again. It feels really weird being in a historic place. It was here where St. Peter was held and possible where St. Paul was when he wrote all those letters to spread Christianity.

Shortly after taking a short peak and prayers in the churches, we kept walking more or less aimlessly looking for a Museum. Within 10 minutes, we were at the steps of the Capitol Hill Museum. You are probably thinking that we were really fed up with museums. Yes and no. I don't want to go to one that only has headless statues and had very little descriptions, but if the sculptures had heads and there were other things other than stone sculptures then I want to go. Roger on the other hand was not interested in walking. Actually, I don't think I can say that because his legs must have been killing him from the early part of the trip. Steve and I were not going to allow Roger to prevent us from checking out the Museum so Roger was really nice to volunteer to just wait for us outside. Luckily, Roger brought his novel, because turns out that he had to wait around 2.5 hours outside for us. If it were me, I would have probably left =).

The museum was different from the Museum Nazionale that we went to on the first day. Here the sculptures all had heads and they were very elaborate. They had a gigantic scupture of Hercules. I always though hercules was clean shaven, but most of the statues of him had really scruffy beards on them. They had a hall showing the translations of tombstones (also called headstones) of people back in the day. Some would talk about their occupation, their rank in politics, where they were from and also their dying words or statements of wisdom.

Capitol hill museum we found out, from the museum, is actually the hill which the museum sits on. It existed during the day of Marcus Aurelius (I think the same emperor in the Movie Gladiator). It was a quarry where they got stone and also farming. unluckily, they all died, but I don't really remember since that would have required that I read a lot more. A lot of the regular day utensials and home essentials were found and displayed. Talk about a lot of pots and bowls. trust me, after you see 5-10 of them, they all look pretty much the same. I think it would be very different if you were allowed to touch them. So instead of looking at a lot of pots, we did what Steve and I do best, mimic statues or funny poses with sculptures. Once again, of all the sculptures and busts, not a single image of Julius caesar.

When we were done looking at the museum, it was almost 5pm. I was even better Steve that Roger would have just walked home beucase he wouldn't have wanted to wait for us. Thank goodness I didn't actually anything of monetary because surprisingly, roger was sitting outside reading his novel, sorta pissed off. Who wouldn't be pissed? He would go one asking us what we saw and if there was anything interesting. I think he was asking us to try to reassure himself that his choice for not going was worth it. I sorta sensed something like that so I just said that it wasn't really all that interesting. But personally, I really liked it.

We walked to an Italian or Roman government building which was right beside the museum. It looked really nice and was white all over. It made the white house look plane and bland. The statues and stairs were well laid out. The bad news about this was that you were not allowed on the premise. There were tall gates at the front and guards waiting on the other side with guns. And if you had seen these guards, you would have not wanted to mess with them. We took out pictures and left. There was nothing planned for the day so we headed home.

There wasn't anything really planned so we took the opportunity to catch up on some internet and laundry. It was when we came back that we met Nortje, Marina and Petty, 3 holland girls that were staying in the same room as ours. They were really nice people and spoke relaly good english. It was also the first time I sensed some excitement and happiness in Roger's voice. We talked about a lot of things like Holland and Canada. We even talked about Harry Potter and Dan Brown's books like Da Vinci code and Angels & Demons. They were just coming to Rome for the weekend while still in school. One thing is for sure, if there was any group of people we liked so far in the trip, these 3 would be at the top.

Oh by the way, gelato had become a tradition for us while we stayed. We would have to have Gelato atleast one everyday. Today was not an exception.

Labels: eurotrip

posted by lazypig @ 12:15 PM