Day 19- The Roman Forum

We got up early the next morning and dragged our bags through the dark, cold morning streets of Florence, to the train station. The ride to Rome was uneventful, but the arrival at the station was not. Handler 2 had left the large bag at one of the the train cars ends, and so he told Handler 1 to get off the train with the smaller bags and "meet him in the station". Handler 1 exited and went to wait by the exit that Handler 2 was to emerge from. When he didn't come out, Handler 1 figured he must have meant meet "in" the station, possibly near the information desk (where the Handlers were to pick up our Roma Pass card). So, she went down the stairs and followed the long hallways into the station, finally getting to the information desk and not finding Handler 2.

Meanwhile, Handler 2 had realized he placed the suitcase at the other end of the train, got it, left from the same door that Handler 1 had, and immediately walked up the platform into the station (bypassing the stairs option). Some twenty minutes later, everyone was reunited when Handler 1 found Handler 2 standing at the end of the platform and looking around blankly.

The next step was getting the pass cards that would give us entrance to some sites, and free transport on all public transportation in Rome. It turned out the information desk Handler 1 found, was not the right information desk. So the Handlers continued dragging their suitcases about the station following signs.

"Look," said Handler 2, "Only 400 more meters!"

Handler 1 ignored him, because she didn't find that funny...only to find out that Handler 2 wasn't trying to be his normal witty self, but had rather been reading a sign. The information desk was literally a quarter mile and more away from the main entrance of the station!

By now the Handlers were a bit tired, a bit hungry, and Handler 1 wasn't feeling all that well. This is when they entered the Rome subway. Rome has only 2 subway lines, and they cross at the main (Termini) rail station. That means the subway stop at Termini, being the only cross point, being a train station, and being a bus station on top of that, is CRAZY! It was crowded. It had a lot of random and seemingly pointless staircases, and it was not fun to navigate with suitcases.

Finally, we made it onto a train...for all of one stop. We got off and went in search of our hotel. And we searched. And Handler 1 pulled out the google maps picture which said it should be right where we were standing. And we asked some local tobacconists with little English ability. And then we asked another shopkeeper. And finally located the hotel.

The Handlers were very tired and frustrated by this point. Luckily, the hotel manager Garibaldi, made everything better. Okay, his name wasn't Garibaldi, but for some reason we could never remember what our very gregarious hotelier had said his name was, so we just started calling him Garibaldi amongst ourselves. Garibaldi suggested that Handler 1's plan to go to Tivoli would not work that day as it was already past noon, and the Handlers took his suggestion. Instead, they walked out of the hotel, past the Trajan baths (which they couldn't find the entrance to) and arrived at...

The Colleseum! There was a huge line out front but, once again, the magic passes Handler 1 had acquired for us got us to the front of the line.

Seeing the Collesuem was pretty impressive to Handler 2, who spent most of the time there correcting the information we got from the Rick Steve's audiotours we'd downloaded to the Handlers' magic phone/music devices (Hey, they were free! What do you expect?!).

Having had enough of the Colleseum, we made something of a pilgamige (for Handler 2 anyways) across the street to the Roman Forum.

Here's Handler 2 admiring the 2000 year old original broze doors.

Someone told me I could find some lovely virginal women around here, but all I saw were ruins.

Ah, there they are.

Sorry girls, I'm a happily married gnome.

We finished out our tour with a view of the Arch of Septimus Severus (no relation to any characters from popular children's fiction).

After seeing all that there remained to be seen in the Forum, Handler 2 decided we had to go explore the Palatine hill, where all the rich and powerful ancient Romans used to keep their mansions. This is where the Handlers realized they probably should have done the hill area first, because now they had to back track up the hill, and they were already a bit tired from navigating the ankle twisting cobblestone streets of the Via Sacra (not to mention everything else from that day).

Huffing and puffing (and with a little complaining from Handler 1) we made it to the top, for a great overview of the Forum.

After tooling the high ground, we hiked back down into the forum, then back up the Capitoline hill to see the Capitoline Museum.

The folks at the Capitoline Museum let you take photos, so we were able to get shots like this of the beautiful fresco. We really appreciate that.!

This is all that remains of a giant statue of Constantine. According to Handler 2, Constatine was something of an overbearing douchebag. However, he was the first Christian emperor, so a lot of his works were left untouched by future Romans who were so into stealing marble and metal from ancient facades.

His dad owns a dealership.

This statue of the emperor Marcus Aurelius managed to survive as long as it has because people thought it was a statue of Constantine.

Here's the famous Capitoline wolf. The wolf is Etruscan, and significantly older than Rome. The rather disturbing babies were added later.

In a room full of cemetery 'stele', Handler 1 found this awesome inscribed slab.

It's a 2000 year old space lease agreement. Basically, this was attached to a warehouse owned by the emperor Augustus to tell people who wanted to rent space that they had to give 15 days notice of non-renewal, that they had no right to assign or sublease, and that if they didn't pay their rent that their personal property would be confiscated. Handler 1 is totally putting a picture of this up in her office.

Although Handler 1 was tired, and was all for calling it a day, Handler 2 wanted to push on. Although it wasn't really close by (or close to any mass transit) we headed over to the famous Pantheon.

Which, according to Handler 2, was not actually built by Marcus Agrippa. It is a lying Pantheon who lies.

Handler 1 is quite pleased with this photo, which she basically had to crouch on the floor to get.

Afterwads we wandered for a bit looking for a bus to take us back to t he hotel. We ended up in an area known as the 'Area Sacra', which would come back to haunt us again and again over the next few days. Remembering Garibaldi's words, we hopped on the first bus we saw saying "Termini". As we drove, we went over a pretty bridge on the river and past the giant facade of St. Peters. Handler 2 was very interedted to watch all this go by. Handler 1, who was more familiar with the map, was wondering why we were going in the opposite direction from our hotel. Finally, the bus stopped...at the end of the line...nowhere near Termini station. This is when the Handlers discovered that Roman buses listed where they were going on the front, and where they had come from on the side. So, we all hopped on the next bus heading back the way we came and took it to the other end of the. Returning to the room, we found that the internet was not what had been promised and the night clerk nowhere near as friendly or helpful as Garibaldi. We decided to call it a (very long and tiring) day.

The next day, we had plans to leave the big city for some of the quaint surrounding hill town "suburbs".