Jones Family: Rome Day 1

On March 14th we left for Rome at some ridiculously early hour in the morning. We arrived in Rome and caught a bus to Termini, the main subway, train and bus station.

Rome here we come!!!(the bus)

the countryside

Once we reached Termini we broke out the map and Rick Steve's book(thank you Flemings) and planned our day. We were all starving so the first and second things on our agenda were food and Gelato! We found a yummy snack bar on a little side street and got some pastries filled with.......Yup of course Nutella!

pastries for breakfast

Then straight on to Gelato. You don't have to look very hard to find this stuff. It is on every corner and so yummy. Our goal was to eat it 4 times a day and try all the flavors.

Gelateria #1

We walked as we ate and headed to the Coliseum. I had heard that it wasn't worth it to go in, so I was skeptical, but we had bought the Roma Pass and it was included, so in we went. We downloaded Rick Steves guided tour onto mine and Blake's phone and it was awesome. The architecture of the Coliseum was amazing and to hear about what they used it for was interesting, morbid but interesting. I have a hard time with violence, especially as a sport. Killing for fun and other people's entertainment seems so wrong to me. This was what it was used for though. It was a big sports arena. There were even all these little hallways underneath they could use to let animals out through trap doors in the ground of the arena. So crazy!

Outside the Coliseum

It seems like so many things change through the generations, especially technology. I think one thing that remains similar is the "natural man's" desire to see people killed. I think this is so tragic but look at the world today. People love watching the news, reading articles, watching movies etc. So many of these things are filled with stories of murders, violence, killing. If you look back in the days of these Roman soldiers. They would come to the coliseum and watch people fight to the death. It was their entertainment. I guess these are the kind of people it would take to kill Christ. I wonder how different we are now. At least what people watch now is in movies and pretend instead of people actually killing eachother. I still think either way is so wrong.

Inside the Coliseum(halls under the Arena)

Looking across from one side to the other

View of Roman Forum from Coliseum

Another view of passageways under arena

Outside the Coliseum

Eric at the Roman Forum

After we left the Coliseum we headed to the Roman Forum. Again we had Rick Steve's as a guide. It is still crazy to me how these people built things so big with none of the big machines we have now. They just had people, slaves.

Wherever you walk in Rome there are fountains and water. You can actually drink it and fill up water bottles. There is even a little hole in the spout so you can cover the main spout and it will squirt out the whole like a drinking fountain. Genius!

These three arches were half of a big building that was like a courthouse. The 3 little things on top would have arched over the main hallway and connected to another 3 arches to mirror the ones seen here. It was massive!

Walking through all these areas of huge historical importance made me wish I had paid more attention in History. We were there on March 14th, which is the day before the Ides of March. The temple of Caesar was here and people would go in and put flowers in it. Very interesting.

Something that surprised us about Rome was that it was kind of tropical. There were palm trees and when we were walking around what used to be a palace they had orange trees. Eric may have picked some for him and Blake to eat.

view of Roman Forum

After the furum we took a little walking tour and went over capital hill to the Pantheon. The Pantheon was built in 126 AD and is still the worlds largest unreinforced concrete dome. The height to the center of the dome and the diameter of the interior circle are the same. Again these architects amazed me.

Roman Forum

More Roman Forum

We got some lunch and another Gelato on our walk to the Pantheon. Don't remember what we all ate for lunch, but at least one of us got pizza. It was so good and different. The way they give it to you to go is like a little pizza sandwich. Kind of like 2 rectangle pieces of pizza stacked with the cheese sides together and wrapped in paper. Yummy!

The Pantheon and 2nd Gelato

From the Pantheon we headed to Trevi fountain. You know the one where if you throw in all your money all your dreams, hopes and wishes will come true. J/k Some people say that if you throw 3 coins over your left shoulder you will find true love. Eric tried it out, so we are still waiting:) It was a pretty fountain, but SOOOO busy. Definitely someplace we held on tight to our bags(we still had all our stuff because we hadn't been to our hotel yet).

After checking in to our hotel we headed back out for dinner and some Gelato, then to bed. Our hotel was a little ways outside the city, and more like a little camping village that had little rooms. Our room was perfect for us. It had 3 little beds, 2 down low and one like a top bunk with a desk underneath. I slept on the one up high. It was pretty little for the men:) All we needed was a cheap place to sleep and shower.

We found the perfect place to eat. It seemed like a nicer restaurant, it was outside of town a little ways, the prices were great and the food was AMAZING!!!! One of Eric's friends sent us a whole writeup of what to do and see and eat. So we followed her advice and Eric got Ragu on some potato type noodle things. Blake got Arrabiata sauce on some noodles and I got noodles with Carbanara and it was awesome. I need to learn how to make that. My mouth waters just thinking about it.