Anniversary Trip to Italy: Rome Day 1

In celebration of our 20th Wedding Anniversary (which actually takes place December 18), Melissa and I took a trip to Italy. Since we both are very busy with work and training, we did not want to have to spend too much time planning. Fortunately, we got a good recommendation for a travel agent. We discussed the types of things we wanted to see in Italy and left it up to the travel agent to plan the trip. And she delivered! We had an absolutely wonderful trip and I would like to share some of the highlights with you. Mostly, this blog post will just be lots and lots of pictures. We took over 1300 pictures. Don't worry, I did not upload them all. But I did post a fair amount. If you like a particular picture, you can click on it to see a bigger version. Just use your browser's "back" button to come back to the blog.

Day 1:Rome

After a short flight to Atlanta from Richmond, we flew to Rome. The 9 hour flight was mentally hard. I was too tired to read and found it hard to sleep. Plus my personal video screen did not work so I could not watch any movies. But when we arrived in Rome, I was very excited to be there and the fact that I had been up for so many hours did not deter me from having a good time soaking up all the sites.

After getting dropped off at our hotel, we set out on foot to find the location of our first tour. We had an Ancient Rome Walking Tour that Karen (our travel agent) had booked. We had similar tours in each city that we visited. I highly recommend the group tours because you get to skip the lines at all the sites that have an admission. Pus the tour guides are extremely knowledgeable. Their presentations are professional and of the highest quality.

After walking around Rome a little, following our map from the hotel, we suddenly saw this in front of us.

Me in on the approach to the Coliseum

A look up at the Coliseum

The holes you see are leftover from where the steel supports that protected against earthquakes were removed by future generations to build other structures.

Original marble seating

Original Flooring (and my shadow)

Inside the Coliseum. You can see where they restored part of the flooring of the arena and the two stories of corridors that were under the flooring. The underground passages and storage area were used to store all kind of things from food, to weapons, tools, and animals.

Original seating that has been restored. The people with the highest socioeconomic status sat in these seats which were of course the best in the house.

Another shot of the corridors and rooms under the stage. Sometimes a human powered elevator would be used to lift animals up onto the stage. Often the gladiators who were criminals were forced to fight animals. The tour guide pointed out that the criminals fought the animals, not Christians as is often portrayed. Sure the criminals could have been Christians but they were criminals first and there were plenty of other criminals who were not Christians who also had to fight the animals.

Arch of Titus

More Ancient Roman Ruins

A funny thing happened on the way to the Forum

This is where Saint Peter and Saint Paul were imprisoned

Trevi Fountain- Very Busy Place

This guy sat like this, unmoving, all day. I think there is a trick to it but, trick or not, it still takes a great deal of physical and mental strength to perch all day like this.

 

We learned a lot about Ancient Roman life and saw the places where they publicly met to discuss politics, play, and otherwise socialize. It was very interesting and informative. There is a lot more to tell but for these next couple of blog postings, I will let the pictures do the talking.