Making Memories: A Mum & Son on Tour

I was told to watch out for fake Gladiators wanting to take a picture with you….for a price, pickpockets and people forcing “gifts” on to your wrist and then demanding money. Also, there was a bloody big building somewhere amongst all that.

Well, we found the big building. We really had two big ticket items for Italy, Pompeii and The Colosseum. And we have not been disappointed in either.

We started our day setting off to The Colosseum, we are getting so good at buses now we didn’t even have to look it up. I mean, its a little bit hard to forget which bus took us directly past it the other day. We got there about 1.5 hours early, just to wander around before it got too crowded.

It is a little bit impressive.

Of course, given we had only eaten breakfast an hour earlier, Jacob was hungry so we went in search of pizza for second breakfast.

We found it directly across the road. The waiter we had was kind enough to take this picture of Jacob for us. This waiter, coincidentally, lived in Coogee for 4 years. It really is a small world. This pizza was delicious. So good, in fact, the hungry caterpillar decided we had to go back there after our tour for some pasta. More on that later.

Our tour started under the Arch of Constantine.

Its a bit big. Everything is a bit big.

We headed off to Palatine Hill and the Forum. These were both facinating. Did you know that Julius Ceaser was not killed at The Forum but actually a different forum just around the corner. He was cremated at The Forum though and there is a shrine there. It looks like a few rocks now though.

The Forum was amazing. Just full of ruins.

All that stuff just lying around. Emporers walked around this stuff. Dictators, Senators. It’s incredible to think about.

We moved on from there to the main event…The Colosseum.

What an incredible place. There is no longer any floor in the arena and there is no seating left but just the size of it, the logistics. It was able to hold 65,000 people and the place could be emptied in 15 minutes. They were able to flood the arena floor to have mock naval battles. They had people and animals pop out of the middle of the floor. It must have seemed like magic to some. They had a retractable roof. Insane to think that that was a thing.

I could go on but it would be rambling.

After our tour we wandered for about half an hour before the boy decided more food was required. Pasta, to be precise, and we needed to go back to the place he had pizza this morning. Spaghetti Cabonara was the choice for Jacob while I had a Ceaser salad.

And it was amazing. Those tomatoes were delicious.

After our late lunch (linner? It was around 4:30 by then) we went around the corner and got gelati. Which I forgot to take photos of. You will just have to believe me when I say it was as delicious as it looked.

A few days ago we had noticed a fancy looking building with fancy bridges leading off of it. We decided to find out what it was and go and have a look. Turns out it was the Castel Sant’Angelo. And it was an interesting place to end our day. It is small but has a few surprises in it.

And by the end of that it was 6:30, it was pouring with rain and leg day had reached its absolute limit. The stairs were plentiful. And big. And seemingly never ending. And now, it’s bedtime.