Staffination Strikes Again: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

Day Three - the next morning we started out a little later as a result of the late night imbibing. We headed directly for the Coliseum to try and nip the lines in the bud - but again, it was closed due to the flooding that had occurred. We did the Rick Steves audio tour of the outside as best we could, but we headed over to the Roman forum instead. As a result of the Coliseum being closed, everybody and their mother was in line for the Forum. What a buzzkill. We waited in line for over an hour, which stunk except for the brilliant Brits we met in line. There were four ladies who had traveled together from Ireland and England to Rome for the weekend. They were snarky, had awful teeth, told raunchy jokes - it was as if they were right out of Absolutely Fabulous. Of course my mom and dad entertained them with stories of their travels, and their kids. And they countered with similarly engaging stories of their mainland Europe travel.

Once we finally got in, my Rick Steves Forum audio guide was of no use because the door we entered through was to Palatine Hill. This is the less thrilling part of the forum, yet part of the forum none the less. I had the audio guide, but it was only correct if you entered through a different door which wasn’t possible for us. We walked aimlessly around, looking at ruins, not knowing what the ruins were of, and just hoping that we would come across some sort of indicators as to what we were looking at. After about 45 minutes of this bust, I had to use the bathroom, and it was a 30 minute wait in the bathroom. I was miffed. I had no idea what we were looking at, I had had to pee, and wait for an eternity, and I was being dumped out into more of who knows what. Thankfully, we turned a corner and headed into the part of the Forum that people would recognize - the pillars and the senate building - it was feeling a bit better after that. Though by this point, I was tired and hungry, but we forged on through the freaking forum. By the way, did I mention that there was boxwood in the Forum? On top of all the other things I chose to be cranky about, there was boxwood planted in there. I HATE the smell of boxwood.

We cranked through the last parts, and finally were in sync with the Rick Steves audio tour (though by not renting the Forum’s own audio guides, we missed getting a map - though the guides were 5 Euro each. Give me a break.

On our way back home, we came across some more churches, go figure, and at one point, mom and dad decided to stop in one and go to Mass. Mom was disappointed that it was in Italian and not in Latin, because she couldn’t understand what was happening other than the signals from the peanut gallery.

We retired early on account of an early rising the next day.