Roma!

We arrived tired and hot to our apartment in Rome in the Trastavere area.  It is on the "wrong side" of the river but is a fun, bohemian neighborhood with lots of restaurants and nightlife.  Giorgio met us and, though the Homeaway site says he speaks Italian, English, and French, he really just speaks Italian.  He had his Dad or some other older man with him for company but it was really just him using Google Translate on his phone.  Took a little bit to get checked in but it finally worked out.  This apartment is quite small - especially the kitchen and it is my least favorite place that we have stayed.  2 bedrooms (kids are sharing a large bed which makes for fights over space when they are awake) and one bathroom.  I love how in Italy having a waterproof shower seems to be a luxury.  Both here and Pompei there is a little lake outside the shower when you are finished.  Here you also have to step over the toilet to get out of the shower.  It is a little acrobatic.

Friday we met our guide, Vincenzo (?sp) at 830 for our tour of Ancient Rome.  Getting there was a bit of an adventure because we wanted to buy a 72 hour bus pass but you have to buy it from a shop that doesn't open until 800 and we needed to catch the bus at 805.  The shop still hadn't opened by 805 so we took a taxi.  This was a tour operated by Rome4Kids and it was fabulous.  We toured the Colosseum, Palatine Hill, and the Forum with him.  The problem with Ancient Rome is that not much of it really exists in total today which makes it really hard for a kid (or even an adult sometimes) to use the imagination to figure out what in the heck they are looking at.  Also, compared to the wonder of Renaissance architecture, ancient architecture is a little drab and boring.  Vincenzo did a great job of engaging the children right away.  He brought books and postcards to help explain things to them and to show them pictures of how things would have looked.  He spent most of his time talking to them and it was as if Ryan and I were just tagging along which was perfect.

What is a trip to the Colosseum without a family photo?

The kids are hunting for ancient graffiti that was carved in stones.

The thing that amazed me was that the Roman Colosseum was really in pretty bad shape and most of what you can see today has been restored.  Compare this to the amphitheatre that Ryan and I saw in Nimes (or Arles I can't remember which city we were in) in France where much of the structure was still standing.  What was made very clear to us today was that when Constantine moved the capitol of the Roman Empire from Rome to Turkey (Istanbul was Constantinople, now its Istanbul not Constantinople, if you have a date in Constantinople she'll be waiting in Istanbul - sorry had to work in a little They Might Be Giants) he really decimated the local economy and Rome went through some really hard times.  As a result, many/most of the awesome ancient buildings were used as a sort of quarry for building materials.  Some things managed to survive if they were deemed important by the Catholic Church but even those things were completely redone and don't really represent what they originally looked like - they have been all Catholic fancied up.

On thing that was really interesting was the labyrinth of rooms they had under the floor of the colosseum.  Animals and fighters would be loaded into these boxes and then raised up, like an elevator, to a trap door in the floor so that they seemed to "appear" out of nowhere.  These trap doors were mostly used for animals or minor gladiators.  The famous gladiators would come out through an arched tunnel to music and fanfare (like our modern football teams but without the gauntlet of scantily-clad cheerleaders).

Photo rendering of the floor

The actual floor

Another family photo

 Then we headed to Palatine Hill - the highest of Rome's 7 hills and supposedly where Romulus founded the city.  It was home to an extensive palace for the Roman Emperors but there isn't much left standing.  We cured the "hangry" with some Pringles prior to coming inside but Drew was still sullen.  It was hot and she just couldn't get what we were looking at.

This is the Emperor's gymnasium.

Then it was on to the Roman Forum which is really in ruins.  It was so hard to see anything that made sense - even for me it was a total blur.

I think this is the most intact building of the whole place.  I'm not even sure what temple it was.  It is currently a church like every other ancient thing that has been spared destruction.

Here is a postcard of what it would have looked like.

After we split up from Vincenzo, the kids were really tired and crabby.  He had given us some ideas of places to go.  First we hit the Pantheon.  Again, it has survived because they made it a Catholic Church on the inside.  Trevor was fascinated with the oculus in the roof and how the sun moved as time went by.

Drew and I checked out the cool tombs inside.

This is not a good picture but the famous painter, Raphael, is buried inside here is an ancient sarcophagus that some pope or other donated to the cause.

The we headed to Piazza Navona which is just a lovely square that is filled with three fountains and artists and street performers.  We all got some souvenirs - animals woven from reeds by Asian guys - so Roman! 

Then we headed back to the apartment.  I did some research for our tour the next day (Vatican) so I could prep the kiddos.  Everyone else had screen time and then we headed out to Grazie and Graziella for a good meal.  Drew bought an Italian wallet from her own money (I'm afraid I didn't haggle enough with the vendor - well really I didn't haggle at all because it makes me extremely uncomfortable and for that I will feel forever guilty.  We found some good gelato after dinner in the neighborhood.