Finally - Coliseum Success!

Day Five - Our plan for today was to try to get into the Coliseum one more time.  The tickets for the Coliseum was a combined ticket with the Forum - for 12 Euro.  The ticket was good for two consecutive days - though our second day was in Tuscany.  However, the Coliseum was closed anyhow, so I was determined that we were going to be able to reuse the tickets instead of paying an additional 48 Euro.  We started out and had three things to accomplish - go to the Diocletian baths, get our train tickets for the next day, and go back to the Coliseum with victory in mind.  We went to the train station to try and get a taxi and while we were there decided to nip the tickets in the bud and get those.  It was a tricky process because the machine wouldn’t take our cards for some reason.  So we had exited the line to talk to real people in favor of the “fast ticket machine” - fail.  We returned to the line, tails between our legs and talked to a guy in person, secured our tickets and were off to the bath.  When I hear “we’re going to the bath” I automatically think of Budapest, and actually getting in the water.  This was not that case.  This was one of the earliest Roman Baths in existence, and at some point, Michaelangelo got involved and helped construct parts of it.  Go figure - immense structure with incredible beauty inside, Michaelangelo had to be involved :)

the awkward statue of the Pope outside the Rome train station

the Diocletian baths

doorway

Inside the magnificent baths

the clock - there was a slit in the wall and the date has been accurate for hundreds of years

the hole in the wall to reflect the light on the correct date of the timeline

gives the exact time the sunlight is going to cross the meridian on the floor

dad pointing out the hole in the wall to a stranger

After the bath, we headed back to the Coliseum.  They say the third time is the charm right?  We were confident that this time we were going to be successful and get in to see the building.  As we approached in our taxi, we saw the crowded streets with many a peddler of scarfs, paper weights, tripods and other wares.  We craned our necks and finally as we were walking, Mike saw that the doors were in fact open.  The other crowd that is prevalent are tourguides offering to give you a tour of the Coliseum so you can avoid the line.  “English tour madam?”  “Would you like an English guided tour?”  Nope - I have Rick Steves.  I don’t need you.  They all promised to get us inside faster than if we waited in line... I wasn’t waiting in line.  The lines were for people without tickets -and we had a ticket.  It was expired, but we had a ticket - it wasn’t our fault that (we were in Tuscany and couldn’t have come to the Coliseum anyway) the Coliseum was closed... they were going to honor our ticket.  So, we pushed through with the “groups” in the shorter line, as in fact we were a group, and moved into the inner circle of lines.  We avoided people counting group members and walked with confidence to the front of the line where I asked if we could use our ticket since the Coliseum was closed.  She hesitated ever so slightly and said it was okay for us to go in.  Not only were we ahead of all the other suckers out in line, we didn’t have to pay again!!!!!!  Score one for me!  

The Coliseum

Inside was breath taking - imagining 50,000 spectators hoping for someones death.  Though, I didn’t know that there were many animals that they had fight there just with eachother.  Dogs against porcupines, dogs against dogs... in the first 100 days, there were 9,000 animals killed.  They were raised up through the wooden floor that was covered with 9 inches of sand- through trap door type things to be brought out onto the arena (arena is ‘sand’ in Latin).  It was quite a spectacle and I think my dad could have spent all day there reading each and every single plaque they had posted about the construction, fire, squatters following the collapse of Rome, etc.  His final consensus of the Coliseum was that it was ‘Awesome.’ 

We had a wonderful lunch where I had the “pasta of the day” and some meatballs which came with completely mashed potatoes - like liquid mashed potatoes, but they were delicious.  I have loved the food here and I’d be shocked if the Atkins diet ever took off in this country.  

At the mouth of truth - I have my hand still, so I  must not have lied :)

On our way back home, I stopped at the Victor Emmanual monument (which we saw every three seconds it seemed like) and I went up 170 stairs to the elevator which then took me up seven additional stories to the top of the monument for a breathtaking view of the city.