All Roads Lead to Roma

From Venice, I caught a train south to Rome. I'd booked the ticket in advance but the same-day rate appears to be about the same, and the trains leave like every fifteen minutes (for Rome and/or Naples, but you can just get off early on a Naples train).

This train ride really was beautiful too.

There were Roman ruins and fortresses scattered amongst the hilltops. I had no idea Italy was so hilly, though it does make sense. The train passed through a lot of tunnels, and my popping ears told me that our elevation was changing.

The southern part of the journey was especially nice. All those grapes come from somewhere.

I arrived in Rome for dinnertime. For some reason I was SO EXCITED to be in Rome, more so than my other destinations. This is the centre of the Roman empire we're talking about here... so much history.

First thing you should know about Rome is that there are occasionally walk/stop signs, but usually people just get to a crosswalk and step out into traffic. Sometimes they don't bother to find a crosswalk. Cars are simply expected to slow down and not hit anyone.

Even the cats don't care about anything.

Some Romans are pretty rich

but unfortunately the Airbnb I had booked was something of a dump. The floor was pretty dirty and I left my shoes on; didn't feel comfortable using the shower. The toilet was... erhm never mind. The bedroom fan was clomp-clomping and I noticed one of the blades had half fallen off, but I decided it wasn't likely to impale me right away and went to sleep anyway.

In the morning I was pretty sore from the mattress. I went onto their wifi to check for other places to stay nearby... and their router was infected with malware. At the least, its DNS was pointing at something malicious that sent me aggressive popups (on Linux) and helpful "boost & clean" app suggestions (on Android) when I tried to visit new websites.

I was like, screw this, and went to a nice park (of the Golden House/Domus Aurea)

then found a nearby bed & breakfast on my phone, called Airbnb to cancel, and by 1pm I was here instead

which is more than satisfactory. I did explain to the Airbnb owners how they should remove the malware (wonderland ads, apparently common in Italy), with written directions for their internet technician. I tried to talk about the cleanliness but their standards are clearly just different than mine (like in roommates, this is not a good thing for Airbnbs). Whatever. I'm happy here now.

Now for the Actual Exploration

The Colosseum was close so I went there! Back along the Avenue of the Golden House

and there it is looming in the distance

and, closer, too big for my 18mm lens but no matter

OK, I knew that the Colosseum had been operating for 500 years and that about 400K people had died there. Which is about the same as the deaths in both WWII atomic bombs put together. And no one seemed to care about this. Of course, two thousand years ago was a very different time -- and I learned from my visit that it played a more central role in Roman society than I realized, and in a lot of ways it had purpose. And it's very clearly in ruins now anyway.

Now it's just a monument that the Italians maintain because they can charge a lot of money for people to enter. Which I decided to do.

It's important to realize that Rome is hot right now. I was sweating, it was over 30 degrees Celsius and the sun was simply Mediterranean in its intensity...

Here's a sun dog that I just happened to see -- hi Apollo! --

and a shot that I managed without looking through the viewfinder, but I have to stop doing this or it will kill my camera

Inside you can see that this place really is in ruins

although the outlines of three layers of bleachers are still present. Tunnels were constructed under the floor to ferry gladiators and animals in and out -- and preventing the earlier spectacles where the whole area was flooded to form a lake for mock sea battles.

Twenty-first century tourists get put into the ring... "Time traveling is too hot, I want my money back." -- "How come I don't have reception??" -- "Are those lions???" -- "Hi, kitty kitty..." -- "Help, I'm wearing red! Do lions hate red?" -- "Shut up and grab a spear."

At one point, some Italians decided to strip a lot of the marble from the Colosseum and make St Peter's church out of it; also, some guy knocked walls down because he wanted a better view of the city; later, they decided they liked the Colosseum and reconstructed pieces.

The more jagged, redder parts are true ruins (with larger gaps as the Roman cement wore away). The boring yellow bricks are much newer. That's why the edge of the Colosseum looks so regular (p.s. cool view)

and why it's hopeless to search for "Julius Caesar was here" in the original Latin :(

See here, the original ruins are on the left and they have little holes everywhere

Most of the holes (the regularly-spaced ones) contained gold, silver, and marble ornaments. Must have been quite the sight. OK, I'm almost done

but it's always better at an angle

and with that I bid you farewell, or vale! as the Romans said.