Rome, Day 1

We got into Rome late on Thursday evening. It was wonderful flying over a very lit up Rome.
The next morning we were up and ready to go by 7:30 in the morning, downed breakfast while going over our game plan, then tackled Rome. We started out at the Colosseum. It was spectacular! You can walk a lot of the ruins. There are multiple levels of walkways to explore and there is even a mini-museum with all sorts of columns, fountains, and other artwork from the building. There are also tons of columns, and slabs with old writing on them that you can actually touch! They are re-constructing a bit of the floor and some of the stands so that you can try to better imagine what it looked like way back when. The ruins themselves are impressive, so it must have been something back then with all its stands, underground tunnels, and the such.


On the plane, we were sitting next to this Priest who is from South Bend but has lived in Rome for about 14 years. He gave us all sorts of wonderful tips, one of them being to visit Basilica San Clemente. This church was amazing. The artwork was incredible and there were ancient frescoes on the walls that were beautiful. Like many of the Churches in Rome, the current church was built on top of another church, which was built on top of a pagan worship center. We were able to go underneath the current church and explore. There are lots of tombs, pagan images, frescoes, and other interesting things.


Next, was Palatine Hill. It was mostly in ruins, but the ruins were interesting. Lots of beautiful columns and detail work. And the gardens were beautiful. It was not very well marked as to what anything was though, and there were no maps provided. Therefore, it was hard to imagine what it all once looked like. There is a museum at the top of the hill that you can poke through that explains it all in GREAT detail, but we were not all that interested in reading loads in a museum.

Right in front of the Palatine Hill is the Roman Forum. Since its free, there are no maps either, but our crappy guide book (I will explain that later) at least gave us a little map and explanation of what some of the ruins were so it was easier to imagine what it all looked like. That and there are loads of posters that the vendors are selling that show you what it all looked like in its glory. One of the reasons that it is so destroyed is that when the buildings were not in use any more, all of Rome came here to get marble for the buildings that they were constructing.



The next big site we went to was the Pantheon. It was amazing! We were able to listen to an audio clip to learn all about the different chapels. It was incredibly beautiful, but Mike and I were both a little shocked at how nice it was. It was built during Roman times as a temple to the different Gods and at height of Christianity was converted into a Church. So everything is newer and quite shiny. I have no idea why, but it was different than we expected yet still great.
We saw loads more of Rome this day and walked for about 13 hours. I would love to explain it all, but it would probably take all day and bore you to tears. So, look at our Flickr pictures and there are stories there of all our adventures. I took about 750 pictures, so the are not all uploaded yet... maybe by next week... maybe