In search of gelato

Tuesday June 5^th

Today we spent a lot of time touring around the ancient sites of Rome, mainly the Colosseum and the Forum.  We headed first to the Colosseum, not early, around 10am, but we already had our tickets in hand.  The tickets are two day passes with one entrance each to Palantine Hill, the Forum and the Colosseum.  We ordered them online, and today we breezed into the Colosseum bypassing a ticket line that had to be between 60 and 90 minutes long.  Yeah for advanced planning!!!  The funny thing is that there was no line at either the Forum or Palantine Hill so we didn’t any of the people in line buy their tickets at either of the other sites which are only about 100 yards away???  But lucky for us, within two minutes of hopping off the metro at the Colosseum stop we were inside the ancient stadium staring around in wonder.

The Colosseum is simply an incredible sight to see and it was so cool to see Katie’s reaction to it.  She was just wide-eyed looking around and saying “THIS IS SO COOL!”  Paul and I have been before, but it is still so interesting to wander around.  It feels just like you are walking into a modern football stadium except that it is 200 years old, and crumbling in a few spots. You still totally get the stadium feel though.  The best thing to do is simply to stay put and let your mind wander to the days of the gladiators. It is easy to picture the stadium full, people cheering, elaborate sets on display on the arena floor and gladiators dueling to the death.  The views of the area that was under the main floor gives you the feeling of a huge production being managed, “gladiators here, lions there, ready go!”

We stayed there for a while, enjoying the light rain and moderate temperature which unfortunately evaporated as the day went on leaving us once again in Rome’s oppressive heat.  After the Colosseum, we walked through the Forum, which is a bigger site and takes longer to see.  The forum was the nerve center of ancient Rome, home to the marketplace, a ton of temples and the Roman senate.  We walked slowly through the forum, along the Via Sacra, treading the same stones that Julius Caesar trod upon, looking for specific sights, like the home of the vestal virgins. The vestal virgins joined the “team” at age 10 to serve a 30 year “term”. If they were found to violate the chastity pledge anytime during these 30 years they were buried alive!!! That’s pretty harsh punishment. However, their home and gardens were nice, and they got a private box at the Colosseum, fair trade-off or not?

After the Forum we headed up Capitoline Hill to the square designed by Michelanglo and the Capitoline museums.  This was a fun set of small museum that took about an hour for us to wander through.  They were packed full of all kinds of Roman statues, both full and in pieces.  We saw some large feet, hands, and even just a bicep.  We saw the famous Roman she-wolf statue and got a great view out over the Roman Forum.   I particularly liked a statue of a satyr and some centaurs.

We finished our day by wandering across Rome in search of Giolitti’s, Rome’s most famous gelato place.  En route we passed the Pantheon and took a look inside – the dome of the Pantheon is huge in relationship to the building itself.  But our search for amazing gelato could not be slowed and we kept moving towards our destination.  A few blocks from the Pantheon we had found our holy grail – Giolitti’s.  We paid first and headed right for the gelato counter marveling at the beautiful colors in front of us.  I decided to pick my flavors based on color and chose a deep rich red-purple, and a light pink with chocolate chips in it.  The light pink turned out to be watermelon and the dark purple some kind of unidentifiable berry which was oh so delicious.

We wandered past the Trevi fountain (kind of marred by some VERY loud construction nearby) and the spanish steps before catching the metro back to rest and relax ( and blog) before dinner out tonight.