Scoooorchhhh. Another hot day as everyone wakes with what
feels like a fever. Not quite, it’s just
so hot. Europe heralded the arrival of
accommodation without air-conditioning or swimming pools and a constant
temperature 7 degrees over the average so instead of 30 degrees, this year it’s
37 plus each day. We have actually all
laid around with heat stroke in the afternoon, though today we are heading to
the Colesseum.
Breakfast is a delicious mix of fruit, yoghurt and bread and
cheese. Wow those Glovers are going all
continental. That rice soup in China was
enough to finish them off as far as Asian food went. Toni is happy having her coffee black and
un-sweetened as well as natural yoghurt without all the sugar.
So, the Colesseum - John has reserved online to prevent
having to wait in the kilometre long queue to get to the ticket office for a
free ticket.
We set out on our warm walk across the Tiber towards the Colesseum
past lots of pillars. “Squark Squark –
you kids are ‘ruining my day’ ha ha.
Quite literally Rome is an incredible mix of buildings and streets in
various states of preservation and decline making for an amazing
atmosphere. Take away the stench of
urine, the rubbish and turn the heat down and this city is magic. The water fountain serving ice cold water on
every corner is a treat that every city would love. Not least, to get rid of all these awful
plastic bottles humans insist on. I
don’t want tiny pieces of plastic in my food chain thank you.
The Colesseum is huge, seating a mere 50,000 people. Still an example in todays engineering world
with it’s crowd controlling design with optimal people flow systems and
staircases. In its day one in every four
people had a free ticket to attend the events at the Colesseum. These included everything from historical
re-inactments, to Gladiator matches with beasts from the four corners of the
earth, to the half time executions whilst the emperor and party were having
their interval feasts. Tiered seating
left the best seats down the bottom for the emperor and the senate whilst the
ladies, children and slaves occupied the top tiers. Ladies were able to spin and knit quietly
whilst the gore was left far away in the centre. 
After the Colesseum we headed across to the Forum. Just a wee small place – haha. One of the things that Sammy insisted Toni
did was to start reading the Heroes of Olympus.
Now Toni reckons this is just a great way to learn Greek and Roman
history. The children were all so
looking forward to seeing Rome and were alive with information as we walked
past the Temple of Jupiter and Vulcan.
John couldn’t catch them out with a single question.
The forum is a layered history dating back to the 7th
century. It is an archaeologists play ground
with 1200 years of ancient ruins.
By this time it was nearing the middle of the day and it was
becoming very hot. Time to walk back to
the apartment then to lunch. Rather than
trust our gut as we had previously to find a restaurant we checked out Trip
Advisor and found a place locally top-ranked on Trip Advisor.
This was a lesson in how you shouldn’t always trust
Trip Advisor. The food was fine, though twice the price of
where we had been eating on our few meals out, the atmosphere was not very good
and altogether it was a disappointment.
You still get what you pay for when you find a savvy marketeer to help
your business. I prefer the ‘word from
the birds’ and using ones own bird brain to check out where the locals are.
Back to the apartment for a rest whilst the temperature
stayed above 35 degrees. Not that you
can rest in an apartment without air-conditioning in those temperatures.
Global Roming. Great
for blue skies, though not much fun for a feather covered giant parrot. Maverick over and out.
No comments:
Post a Comment