Day 29 - Dusty Feet

What a beautiful morning we woke up to (along with our neighbors in our mini mobil, which we could hear EVERYTHING they said or EVERY move they made)! Anyway, like Mark said, this campground is great. The showers were pretty clean and the hot water was plentiful. This place is absolutely HUGE. After we got ready we mozied over to the camp store and bought some individual packets of Nutella (what a great concept!) and then the camp bus took us to the train station about a mile away. We had a busy day ahead of us, our feet were ready for some major walking. The first stop... THEE Colosseum, right as we exited the metro station, there it was, right smack in our faces! Unbelieveable...this huge building, so old, so colossal, right in front of us. We did what our "tour guide, Rick Steves" suggested...don't wait in the super long line to get into the Colosseum, instead walk about 5 minutes to a different entrance and get your ticket, NO LINE! He's been good to us, this Rick Steves guy. :) (Did I give him credit for The Dolomites?) OK, the Colosseum. We had a great time going through this huge place and reading all about the gruesome things that actually took place here. This place could hold 50,000 people and the reason for them being there was solely to watch people die. Ughhhhhhhh. So much blood shed here, just to imagine what it DID look like, crazy. We eaves-dropped in a few different English tours, this gave us a little more understanding that what our guidebook could tell us. Have I mentioned yet that the temperature is rising and it's only 11:00? We're talking probably 90 degrees! And we're outside touring these amazing Roman artifacts. Crazy! Just wait for Israel next year! This is only a test of how much we can actually handle.
After the Colosseum we checked out the Arch of Constantine then found our way to the Roman Forum. The funny thing about this is that neither Mark or myself could really rememeber what this place was. this entire trip has been such an amazing History lesson for both of us! It's been great. The Forum is OLD, Julius Ceasar era, in fact, we saw his gravesight/tomb. All these huge columns standing upright still, bronze doors turned green because they are the originals, the list goes on! I won't bore you with the facts, but that's all I remember about this place...me reading the facts to Mark out of our guidebook. The reason for the title is because the entire Forum is in dirt. We were quite filthy coming out of there!
Filthy and HUNGRY. Things in Rome aren't too cheap, you'd think that pasta and pizza would be cheap? Not to our standards. However, I did spot this hole-in-the-wall place that had pictures of their menu out front. Looked pretty good, £5.50, not bad. The atmosphere struggles quite a bit. Let me explain...pink floral plastic table"clothes", bare pinkish walls with those kitty and puppy posters hanging a little too high saying things like, 'You're my Best Buddy', you know what I'm talking about? It gets better. The people next to us got their meal served to them on plastic plates and used plasticware to eat. Better yet, Mark had a clear vision (through a mirror) to our waiter putting our pasta dishes in the microwave after taking off the plastic wrapper it came in. Hmmm, if THAT'S not appetizing, I don't know what is!!! I guess it tasted alright, we were hungry.
This gave us energy to do The Pantheon. THIS place is super old too. The dome was awesome and I guess it didn't take too long to look around and snap a couple pictures. We were relieved that it didn't last long, we were a bit exhausted. So we walked over to the Piazza Navona where we sat and people watched for a good hour or so. Well, Mark sat, and I browsed around. This was a very populated square. Painters showing off their art work, drawers drawing people, people selling all sorts of things...good thing we're backpacking this trip, I'd have quite a load of goodies if we weren't!
Once again, time to eat. We found a great little pizzeria that weighed your piece and gave you the price that way. Interesting. Very good. :) We made it back to our campground and took showers to wash our dusty, dirty feet and our sweaty selves for a great night sleep...again.