Day 44

Sunday September 9

7:45amish - woke up. Realized I can hear everything in the lobby lol but I don't think it woke me up thankfully.

8:30amish - went out and asked for breakfast. Figured it would be a little ridiculous to call her when I would be able to hear the phone ring that's how close I am. Couple minutes later, she brings breakfast to my room (where there's a little marble table and chairs) on a tray - a fresh croissant with powdered sugar, basket of little fresh rolls and a couple packages of those damn biscuit cracker "toast" things, butter and several kinds of jellies/jams, yogurt, and a cappuccino out of a nescafe machine. And OJ was in my fridge. AND I figured out what the curious tasty pink beverage was at my Venice hotel! It is the same juice in my fridge here - in a blue bottle called orange "rossa" - it's a drink with 30% of this "red orange" juice. Anyway, the juice is pink and tastes the same so I guess it is the same as the one in venice. I'm glad to know what it was ;) Anyway, breakfast wasn't smashing, but it was enough to start the day.

9:30am - for some reason I was slow getting out today, but I made it to the Colosseum and was able to bypass the ticket line because of my RomaPass. Woohoo! So pretty much walked right in and started walking around. I mean wow, there's not much to see there, except the HUGEness of it. Unbelievable. You try to picture the place full of 250,000 people, watching cruelty to both humans and animals - it's difficult. So I walked around the lower and upper levels and just soaked it all up and stuff. Pretty amazing.

10:15am - walked across and down the street to the entrance of the Palatine Hill, which is included with the ticket to Colosseum, and is more ancient ruins right next to the Forum - it's the old imperial palaces. Whoa. This place is huge. You, of course, gotta walk up a hill, and then it's just a bunch of rubble. It's harder to imagine what used to happen there, and it's especially hard to imagine the opulence - apparently these palaces were obscenely gorgeous. Here and there you could see some of the mosaics that had survived - colorful little tiles and stuff. And that was pretty impressive. At one part you could look down upon the Circus Maximus, which is just a big open field filled with little white balls of some kind (those aren't ancient, obviously lol). I spent a long time here, simply because it took me quite some time to find my way OUT lol!

Noonish - Finally I weaved my way through and ended up in the Forum (they connect), where I left to find my way to a place for lunch. I was going to go over to the Circus Maximus and up the Aventine hill to try to find this little keyhole where if you look through you can see the dome of St. Peter's. But really, it seemed like a lot of walking (uphill) just to take a pretty picture. So I decided to skip it, and my feet thanked me.

12:45pm - Had no clue where to go for lunch so I turned to the Rick Steves book and found a place up the hill from the other side of the Colosseum called something dello Studente. It was a lot more expensive than I had been expecting, but whatever. I was here, I was hungry. So I got a "chicken cutlet with mixed salad" for 11 euros. Well, let me say. This is the only meal I've had on my ENTIRE Trip that was so bad I couldn't eat. The chicken "cutlet" was an oval-shaped fried chopped-and-formed THING that was GRAY inside. I mean. 11 euros!?!!?! I guess I figured for that price it would be an actual piece of chicken!! So I basically had an outrageously expensive salad and bread for lunch. Very disappointing. I guess in almost what, probably close to 100 meals over the last almost 6 weeks, I've been very lucky to have just one meal that was truly bad, but I was pretty surprised because it was in the Rick Steves book. And also the service was awful. People were getting up to get their own menus and the people behind me actually complained to the waitress about how long it took her to take their order. This place had 3 waiters/waitresses and maybe 15 tables - no excuse, especially considering the cost of the food. Ah well.

1:20pm - was now just a short way from the hotel so I went back, replenished my water, sat for a few minutes, and decided to give the Archeobus a roll - it goes down the ancient Appian Way and out to the Aqueducts. I got a discount with the RomaPass and I wasn't sure what to do this afternoon so I figured why not.

1:40pm - Took the subway a stop to the station and just made a bus leaving around 2pm. Because it was Sunday, their service would stop a little earlier, so we wouldn't be able to get off and back on. I had decided I wasn't going to try to walk the road or bother with the catacombs, so this didn't bother me. It was run by the same company that did the 110 tour I did the day I got here so I figured it'd be just as decent. It's an open-air bus just like the other and off we went. This road is just so old. Sometimes it was difficult to follow the commentary because it was not timed exactly to when we were passing things, but the stuff along the way was still cool to look at.

But the best part was when we were turning onto another part of the Way and there was a couple who had just gotten married and their photographer. And the photographer starts waving around and screaming and I thought he was mad at the bus for getting into his way or something. But no!!!1 He wanted the bride and groom to get ON the bus to take pictures! LOL!!! Okay then. So the bus stops and they get on and take pictures from off the edge, borrowing one of the umbrellas of this lady up front and everything LOL. Then they get off and he has all of us on the bus go over to the side and wave for a picture. It was absolutely hilarious; the whole scene LOL. Anyway, continued on out to the aqueducts, which just kept going and going and were so well-preserved. The thingy may have even said that they're still being used today. If so, wow.

3:45pm - Anyway, made it back into town and I got off at the Piazza Venezia stop, which is closer to my hotel and right at the base of the Capitol Hill. Climbed Michelangelo's staircase and went into the square he designed with lots of statues and whatnot - it has 2 museums and also apparently the mayor of the city still lives right on this hill. Couple of nice views of the city on one side and the Forum on the other. Went into the church near it and then up a side entrance to the huge white Victor Emmanuel monument, which I thought was a castle the first day when the bus tour drove by. I mean it's huge white marble, made in the early 1900s. Mussolini used part of it to give some of his speeches. Walked through it (it has an inside, and a café, and a bookstore - yes this is a MONUMENT). Went outside to the front where they have this huge statue and found a nice little integrated bench in the shade to people-watch and rest. Funniest thing (to me) was there were multiple guards (who appeared to be actual police or something) blowing a whistle at people. Finally I realized it was to stop people from sitting on the steps (of which there are hundreds, if you come up the monument on its front, which I didn't do). One girl sitting on the bench a few yards away from me had taken off her shoes and he told her to put them on. Later she and her friends asked why and I couldn't understand the italian obviously but I guessed at some words and think it basically boiled down to, this is an important monument and you have to respect it. I mean that's fine and I can understand no eating or no smoking, but really, sitting down for a few minutes on the steps? Sliding your shoes off? Multiple guards for this but nothing about the graffiti and pickpockets and dishonest cabbies and all the other (in my opinion) much more serious problems this city has? Interesting. I'm not meaning to complain about it, just noting that I find it interesting where their priorities are lol.

4:30pmish - anyway, descended the statue and made it back to the hotel. Was getting hungry so I went to this little pizza place/deli/market that was open right across from my hotel and tried to get "pizza bianca" which I think is just like bread with some stuff on top and supposed to be a roman specialty. Well they didn't have any. So I just came back to the hotel and snacked on what I had here.

5:45pm - wandered around the neighborhood a bit and went to the internet café for 45 minutes. Wandered around a bit more and found a little teeny pizza place off a little side alley/street right near the bottom of the street near the forum that had supposedly good pizza and cheap. In my wanders, I looked at a few places and honestly, there were things I'd eat - pastas, etc. But I am afraid to order chicken in this city again after 2 questionable experiences the past 2 days at lunch LOL didn't really feel like a steak, and I like pizza way more than pasta. So really what is the point LOL

7:20pn - so I just went to this little pizza place which had nice little tables outside, etc. called Alle Carrette

Was next to this guy who, when he heard me tell the waiter I was american (he asked if I was spanish? LOL) he asks where I'm from. So he's American too, from Idaho, but we talk throughout our meals and I find that he works for the UN doing public resource projects and he's lived all over the world - in East Timor, and currently Mongolia since March and is here for a week for a conference about forestry. He lived in Rome for over 3 months last summer and blahblah. Was quite interesting all around. He gave me a tip about a little square nearby that's a good place to have an afternoon coffee or drink - I'll have to try to check it out before I leave. Anyway I had a margherita pizza which was made the ultra-thin crust Roman way and it was indeed quite good. I also had a bruschetta with olive paste yummy. Total was 9:50, just left a 10. By the time I left, people were starting to wait!

8:30pmish - stopped at the little gelato place a few doors down from the hotel and got a lemon granita - figured I'd try something different. She squirted some lemon syrup at the bottom, yummy.

9:00pm - back at the hotel, gonna wash out a couple pairs of pants just to make sure I have enough to get home. Not too much!