Rome, Italy, Mon 30 Nov 09

Today we spent at the Colosseum and Roman Forum. The Colosseum turned out to be pretty close to our apartment so it was an easy walk down to it. We grabbed our tickets at the Palatine (cheeky trick to skip the queues at the Colosseum) and went to the Colosseum. An incredible place with so much history and amazing stories. It's incredible that there is still so much left and it's actually in quite a good preserved state.

After visiting the Colosseum we went back to the Palatine to do a walking tour of it and the Roman Forum. We got some audio guides too so we could learn some more about the place. It's the oldest part of Rome and is where Roman civilization was born. The Palatine hill is where the legend of Romulus & Remus (Roman Gods) being found and suckled by a she-wolf took place. The Forum is at the base of the hill and is where the ancient Palaces, Roman Parliament and Temples were.

You have to have a pretty good imagination at the Roman Forum ruins. Even with the audio guides it was quite tough to work out where everything had been. The guide would say something like, and see over to your left the remains of three columns.. that is where a large temple was housing this, this, and this.. and that sort of thing. But it was really interesting. Unfortunately it wasn't fantastic weather and we got rained out a bit.

Up the hill there were great views back over Rome and to the Colosseum. I think all the history of it fascinated me a bit more than the others, they seemed to get bored a bit quicker, or maybe it was the rain, either way they were really nice to stick it out so I could see it all. It really wasn't the nicest of days to be traipsing through old ruins but we got there in the end. But we ended off the day warming up in McDs so that was a good way to thaw out.

Since it's quite hard to make ruins interesting in a blog I have way more pictures than writing so I'll put the rest below :)