Day 17 - Thursday 28 September - Rome

Up bright and early so that we could beat the crowds at the Colosseum. We were at the gates by 8.25am! Sophie would have been proud of us! There was a very small number of people lined up already so we went straight through after our bags went through the xray machine and we went through the detecting arches. Brilliant! For a split second it felt like there were only a few dozen people in there with us and we got some great photos. It didn't take long for hundreds to flow in.  They have a limit of 3,000 people in there at one time! It's just a continuous crowd entering. WOW! What a magnificent place! It's far bigger than one imagines and it takes quite a bit of imagination to think what it would have looked like in a completed state. Luckily John has a book at home that shows what it actually looked like.  We went to each level and around each way as far as we could go. Some of the steps were extremely high which was a challenge for my poor painful feet, but I had to grin and bear it and soldier on. We (I ) couldn't stop taking photos from every level, every angle. I'm not sure how long we walked around but when I had gotten so slow we weren't moving very far, it was time to go home so I could put my foot up, put my bag of frozen minestrone mix on it and have a rest. We had a bite to eat for lunch and then headed out again as our colosseum tickets got us into the Palatine Hill and The Forum as well. The tickets are for 48 hours so people usually do them in two days. Not us! We wait for the warmest day of our visit to trudge all three in one day. So first the Palatine Hill which is where all the emperors built their palaces. What a massive area this is with remnants of buildings as far as the eye can see. In the blazing sun we wandered along the dusty paths through what were once palatial dwellings with gardens, servants quarters, reception rooms. I'm hoping John's book covers this area too. After a while we no longer wandered but trudged along with all the other tourists until we both decided we'd seen enough because it all started to look the same. So we eventually found the steps that led down to The Forum which was the maket place and again trudged, but in this area we were walking on stone paths that were very uneven which wasn't great. Took lots more photos of the many wonderful ruins from Roman times and then made our way out. Both thoroughly exhausted we headed home for rest and recuperation and a bit of packing before going out to dinner. We looked at the menus of a few places a few doors from us and find a little Trattoria called 4 + 4 fa Otto which had homemade Roman dishes. We both had the Melanzane alla Parmigiana with yummy bread which were delicious and we shared a Tiramisu.