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… do as the Romans do! It was our operation to find out what exactly do Romans do in our two day trip to Roma. I’m calling it Roma instead of Rome, because that is the name it was called over 2000 years ago and still is today by the Italian’s and most other languages. The English language loves to rename things, but I thought since we’re in Roma…

This city has to have more archaeological ruins in it then beggars/hustlers, and there are a lot of beggars here. It’s crazy, as soon as we arrived in from ‘Termini Station’ (the main train station) and started walking to our Hotel we found an ancient church falling apart and a statue both over 1500 years old.

It is truly amazing to imagine how the Romans lived their lives and to see pockets of their past scattered through-out the city. More-so from a Westerners perspective as we have so much in common with Roman culture. The Republic, organised buildings, entertainment, running water, taxes, and so much more. Sure they didn’t invent a lot of that, they copied bits from various cultures but they definitely showed the world how to bring it all together.

Cara and I were starting to feel the effects of sight seeing from our previous trips, but we were determined to see as many sights as we could see in our short stay here!

Here we are outside of the Trevi Fountain, which is actually quite a new area built only 300 years or so ago. It was commissioned by a Catholic Pope but it has very little to do with Christian’s at all and has a very distinct Roman look to it. The water flows from on of the oldest aqueducts in Roma and is so pure that people used to bottle it up and take it home to save for the best Tea and drink for longer life. It turned into a bit of a tradition to take a drink from the fountain to ensure your return back to Roma.
This happened until around 1960 when for some reason or another the Italian’s didn’t like everyone taking the water so they changed the myth to instead flip a coin into the fountain instead of drinking it. Then they wanted more money to maintain it so they changed it to two coins instead of just one.   

You’ve got to love Human decisions and Human motivations behind things. Most of the grandest things made by man in this world have very distinct Human flaws and most importantly humour hidden in the work.

One of the biggest ruins here in Roma has to be the Colosseum…

The scale of this place is pretty staggering, especially when you considered when this thing was built.

This photo was taken inside the Colosseum, and whilst off-centre you can see the tiny little pixels of people on the ground and first level. Over 70,000 spectators could watch the spectacles take place in the Arena. The very word Arena I learnt later comes from this place. Of course Roman’s didn’t call it ‘The Colosseum’ back then, they called it the Amphitheatre Flavio.

Cara and I were a bit shocked to see the hour or so line-up to get in. Luckily we found an English tour guide that was about to head in, and these guys get to take the express gate through. So we paid a little extra for the guide and went in as a group. This has been our first ‘tour guide’ experience since we arrived in Europe but I’m so glad we chose to do it as we both learnt so much more about Roma.

Did you know Roman’s invented cement? And had bricks to use them with! After travelling through old Castles in France that were built around the time Roma was created it’s crazy to see the precision in the Roman work. The Romans had standard size bricks instead of haphazard stones. Each brick was stamped with the Caesar at the time, and here is an example of some bricks from the Colosseum…

Today of course the Colosseum is not at all similar to its former self. I would say ‘former glory’, but the Jews might not consider that very nice as the Colosseum was built with the help of about 40,000 Jewish slaves and a lot of the raw materials were ransacked from the Jewish Revolt. And once they completed the Colosseum in less then Eight Years (!), they were we rewarded by being eaten inside of it by Lion’s and Tigers.

I love it how our Italian tour guide pointed out things in the Colosseum and how they were ‘recycled’ instead of ransacked. This place would have been monumental even in today’s standards. White marble was everywhere and now there is not a single piece. You can see pock marks all throughout the structure, we were wondering what they were for… turns out they’re holes made by people stealing the Iron that was used to support it. Now days there is not a single piece of original Iron in the Colosseum.

It is a bit sad to see all these old buildings deteriorate so much by the hand of man. I suppose that’s progress though.

On a taster note, using our Lonely Planet guidebook we found Roma’s supposedly best Gelati ice cream shop. Here’s Cara about to munch down on some Fig and Ginger Cinamon combo!

I ended up with Vanilla Bourbon and Honey infusion…. Mmmm it was sooo yummy!

We took an evening walking tour guide that went around most of Roma’s city. It was awesome because there weren’t that many people that came along, but they were all English speaking. At the end of the night we ended up at a restaurant and all had dinner together which was fantastic. There was an American couple who were on honeymoon as well us who were fantastic, two kiwi girls who were working in the UK on holiday and a handful of other American random’s.

After dinner was finished at around 22:00 our walking tour guide showed us as well as the Kiwi girls a bus to travel home. On the packed bus he offered a drink at his favourite pub to watch the end of a soccer match and we all agreed. Needless to say it was a great night with cheap Becks on tap and too many pints to count.

Cara was a bit miffed with me not being able to walk straight home through the strange streets of Roma at 3 in the morning but we managed to make it home safely without too many incidents.
I did wake up around 8 still very drunk though… Vertigo sucks!