The Colosseum and Roman Forum

To start off our final excursion in Italy we stopped at the Irish Pub on the main street. If you remember, I am doing an Irish Pub Experiment... looking for an Irish Pub in every city. We did see several in Rome (one was even on our street), but chose this one as it was on our walk to the Colosseum.

We opted to eat inside because we knew we would be out in the sun for a long time this afternoon. This pub was called the "Scholar's Lounge" and we all thought the food was pretty good.

After lunch we headed to the Colosseum. We had pre-bought our tickets at one of the museums next to Piazza Navona (I can't remember the name of it). You pay 2 Euros extra per person, but trust me, it was worth it to skip the very long line! Apparently, you can also buy them at Palantine Hill which is near the Colosseum, but I didn't see the ticket office, so can't tell you where to do that.

Before we went in we stopped for a photo outside. This was my favourite!

After moving through the security check, our line (The "You already have your tickets" line) moved very quickly and we were inside in no time.

Jessica was super excited about seeing the Colosseum, which made it even more fun for the rest of us. It's always refreshing to see something through new eyes 💖 Steve and Jess later agreed that the Colosseum was their very favourite thing in Rome.

The Colosseum is the largest amphitheatre ever built. It was constructed out of concrete and sand. Building started in 72 A.D. and was completed in 80 A.D. It is obviously in an incomplete state now because of earthquakes, stone robbers, and of course 2000 years of time!

Here are a few shots from inside the Colosseum.

Jessica was quite enthralled with the age of the building, and kept touching the wall and saying, 

"I'm touching something old!"

Side note: She, very cleverly, did not say that when she posed for a photo with her Uncle Steve 😀

After leaving the Colosseum we headed over to the Roman Forum. This is my favourite thing in Rome! Your ticket to the Colosseum also includes entry to the Roman Forum.

The Roman Forum was for centuries an important place in Roman life. Now, it contains the ruins of many ancient important buildings. It is amazing to look and imagine that 2000 years ago people were going about their lives in these very buildings. You need a pretty active imagination, because some buildings have barely anything left. To help this along, Jessica bought a book that showed photos of how the ruins look now, with overlay transparencies that showed how the buildings originally looked. It was so interesting to look at the book when we were right in the Roman Forum!

Over centuries the ground rose around the forum and the Roman people just simply paved over the debris. Excavations in the 19th century revealed one layer after another of beautiful ruins!

Here are a few photos from inside (Steve took over 100 today... it's so hard to choose the ones to post!)

Jessica continued with her mission to "touch something old" all the way through the forum. I thought I'd join her 😀

At this point, things might have gotten slightly carried away... here is Jess touching as many old things as she can at once!

Next we headed home for a little rest. It was quite hot out today. You may have noticed several photos where we are sitting down in a nice shady spot. We found places wherever we could to get relief from the heat while we patiently waited for Steve to take all of his photos!

On the way home, we came across a little dress store and headed inside to do some shopping. Jessica was quite successful and came out with three cute dresses for a grand total of 95 Euros! I'm a little jealous...3 Italian dresses! I wish I had a photo to show you, but I wasn't thinking obviously!

After our rest, we headed out for dinner and a little more shopping. We tried to get into the pizza place on the corner that always has a big line... but alas... it still had a big line. We went to another restaurant on our street where the waiter has been trying to draw us in all week. Every time he asked us to come in and we said no thank you, he high fived Jessica. Since, we were friends after all the high-fiving, he decided he wanted to be in our group photo.

We had an excellent dinner. I can't recall the name of the restaurant, but if you see this guy trying to convince you to come in, and high-fiving cute young ladies, rest assured the food is delicious!

We did a bit of shopping, and then headed home to pack. So ends our wonderful trip to Italy with Mom, Gary and Jessica.

Tomorrow we are off to Greece.