Rome Day 3

Today was our third day here in Rome and it was our Ancient Rome day!  I actually woke up at 4:30 am because our room stays way too hot.  Right now we have the patio doors open to let in cool air even though it is winter!  We had our breakfast at the hotel today again and I sampled the pastries.  Loo, so much better than the donuts at home!  They were sweet, but not over the top with sugar like I'm used to.  The breakfast area is really nice.  I'll have to try to remember to take pictures of the hotel.

We left for ancient Rome just after 7:30.  It's about a 30 minute walk to the colosseum, so not bad at all.  I really like how walkable this city is.  On our way there we found Trajan's Column and Trajan's market.  We took several pictures on the walk there as there was barely anyone around.  We continued to the Colosseum and were planning to go there first, but I had a bathroom emergency.  All the yummy juice caught up to me!  Anyway, the ones at the colosseum weren't open yet, so we ended up down by the Palatine.  After getting into the ground there were bathrooms open, hooray!  So, I haven't talked about bathrooms yet.  Maybe a little personal, but part of the trip. I was warned about toilet paper not always being available.  So far, this hasn't been a problem.  The problem is the lack of toilet seats!!  I don't want to sit on the big room so I have learned how to do a toilet squat quite well.  I'm not sure what the Romans typically do, but it seems the best choice.

The Palatine was really neat because you could really imagine the old buildings and the emperors and people who once lived there.  It also wasn't crowded, so after the Vatican, walking around outside with very few people was quite relaxing.

After the Palatine, we continued towards some gardens and the Roman forum.  It was ally crowded as it was now about noon, but the history of this place was really inspiring. One special part of the forum was seeing the spot where Julius Cesar was supposedly burned after his death.  Many people leave flowers and coins for him today. The spot still.

After the forum, we went back to the colosseum. The lines were long, but we had passes that let us skip the lines.  So worth it in my opinion!  We had a lot of fun exploring the colosseum.  Now we need to watch gladiator on the way home!

We were planning to go to a museum and Trajan's market today, but they closed early for Christmas Eve, so we are going to try to hit them up day after tomorrow.  We came back to the hotel around 5pm and were both pretty tired, so we took a nap.  We got up at 8 for dinner and found some sandwiches at a small shop. We brought those back to the hotel and ate o. The roof top overlooking the pantheon and square.  W even made a short Christmas movie and put it on Facebook for folks.  W tried to go to the Pantheon for Christmas Eve mass, but it was later than we thought and I'm not feeling the best, so we decided it would be more important to get ready for bed and to make sure we can see the Pope tomorrow instead.  The Pantheon would be really neat, but seeing the Pope would be way better!  He even says a blessing in English, the mass would be all in Italian.