Europe 2012 – Rome (Colosseum and Forums)

I’ve been recounting my adventures while not on the road. After attending my cousin’s wedding in England we hop on a plane and arrive in Rome Italy.

Rome, Italy

We arrived in Rome in the evening, made our way to the hotel and turned in early. The next day would be a full day of exploring and we were eager to have enough energy for it. The next morning we set out to visit the area around the Colosseum. From our hotel it was about a half hour walk to the colosseum. On the way, you could already tell just how much history is embedded in this city. As we neared the Colosseum, there were ruins amongst the buildings and active archeological activities happening all over!

The Colosseum

Once we arrived at the Colosseum, you realize how large it actually is and you really start to appreciate how much effort it took to build. You also have to imagine just how magnificent it would have been while it was in its prime.

Once inside, you gain an even greater appreciation of the complexity and intricacy of what it took to build this thing. From the looks of it, it has all of the designs of a modern day sporting arena but built hundreds of years before modern construction technology. There was a whole system of “behind the scenes” staging for the gladiators, prisoners and animals. There was arena style seating with a view of the whole field of play. It’s really quite mesmerizing to appreciate how amazing this building was/is.

While we were exploring the Colosseum, some clouds rolled in and starting pouring, we took some shelter in the covered areas and thankfully the downpour was short. But it was neat to see how the soaking of rain changed the color of the stone in the Colosseum.

Roman Forum

After leaving the colosseum, we spent the afternoon exploring the Roman forum and the surrounding ruins. I really enjoyed walking through the “streets” continually thinking about what it would have looked like back then. Everything was so ornate and grand. I certainly gained a very strong appreciation for the height of the Roman empire. Cliches like “Rome wasn’t built in a day” all rang true! The amount of history in this place is something to behold!

One place in the vicinity was called the Palatine Hill. It’s a hill in the centre of most of the ruins and is one of the oldest parts of the city. It offers an elevated view of  the colosseum as well as the forum. To a Canadian, it truly is a hill, its not very high, and it’s a gradual incline/decline to get to the top. So it wasn’t hard to get up to at all.

Dinner in Rome

Before we knew it, the day had flown by. If you visit, you can easily spend multiple days just in this one area. We enjoyed every part of it, and even the relaxed walk back to our Hotel.

We weren’t super hungry so we retired to the hotel to rest a little before setting out again, we had looked up a restaurant nearby called Ristorante Berzitello. It seemed like a nice local restaurant and we checked it out! We shared a pizza and I had a baby squid pasta which was AMAZING!

With our first day in Rome a success we were looking forward to more of what Italy had to offer as we would visit the Vatican tomorrow.