Today we started with a new local tour guide who was on our bus to go to the Colosseum. He said mid August is when a lot of Rome goes on holiday and leaves the city which he called Roma without the Romans! So being here in mid August has had a couple of negatives like places being closed but positives too like less people. So we arrived at the Colosseum around 9:30 this morning.
It was quite an amazing site and the guide was so incredibly knowlegable just as our Vatican guide was yesterday. It was fascinating to learn of all the sublevel structure of the Colosseum and how they had elevators to bring things up to floor level. You can see the floor level on the left and then the rest shows the exposed lower levels. Fascinating history.
After the tour of the Colosseum, we came back to the hotel by bus around 12:00 noon and the rest of the day was ours to do as we pleased. We had a tour marked out of a few places to see so we set out on foot around 1:00pm. Our first stop was the Spanish Steps.
Reminded me of the Everybody Loves Raymond Italy episode where they visited the Spanish Steps and Ray complained, "Where's the Spanish elevator?" It looked just like it did in that episode. From there, we had lunch in a little street side ristorante.
After lunch, we went to the Trevi Fountain. We knew it was being renevated/maintained. The water was off and drained and scaffolding was up. They actually built a foot bridge so you could walk out closer to it if you wanted but there many people inline waiting so we moved on to the Pantheon.
We walked around inside a bit. It was pretty crowded. I took a few pictures with my DSLR so I will check those out when we get home. From there, we walked over to the Piazza Navona where some dessert was consumed. Then we headed back to the hotel by taxi.
After a little rest time, we set out to find some dinner. We tried a small ristorante pretty close to the hotel and it was excellent. Then we stopped at another ristorante on the way back for dessert. It was a great day.
Tomorrow we leave Rome in the morning and head to Orvieto. Until then... Ciao!
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