Hat's Adventure in Italy: Day 2

It was actually a really long day today and I can only be glad that I don’t have feet…..though I am pissed that Jazz shoved me in her bag for the first half of the trip. I was only barely able to convince her to let me hang off her knapsack strap!! Can you believe that!? I come to Italy to see the sights and I get shoved in a dark, hot, humid bag ‘til we needed to take pictures. Eventually the girl got some brains and let me take in the views. Added to this I ended up standing in for Jazz for a couple of the class discussions as she ran off to take photos. I’m greatly disappointed!

Roman Forum

Don't I look smashing?

Roman Forum

Arch of Titus

My life as a stand in

However, after all this we had a great day. We went to the Roman Forum, the Arch of Constantine, and the Colosseum. We walked forever to get to these amazing places and nearly died from heat stroke and drowning (it’s so humid here we’re practically breathing water!) but my girl kept going though everyone got separated several thousand times. Our group was so scattered it’s a miracle we didn’t lose anyone, I don’t know how they did it with all those people last year.
Oh! During our lunch break my girl and I sat with some of our new friends outside of the Colosseum (great view by the way) when a ruckus between the Polizia (Police) and some illegal (?) street vendors occurred. We were just happily eating our sandwiches of mozzarella and tomatoes when these guys started to run/speed walk through the crowds. At first we just thought that they were harassing (which they were) this large tour group but was quite surprised when they started to run up the hill towards us and the road, an angry Polizia woman storming after them with her fingers pinched together and angrily speaking Italian. After several minutes this Polizia managed to round up and chase away 10 or so vendors while her partner just calmly meandered behind her.

Now the Colosseum is amazing! It was the best part of today and there are no words to describe how me or Jazz felt, both of us grinning like loons and nearly bouncing with excitement……I’m actually pretty sure my girl let out several high pitched squeals of delight when she was able to see the entire Colosseum from the inside. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to go to the top most level of the Colosseum or the very bottom area, those sections were reserved for guided tours and I was not about to let my girl spend that much money just to go to the top. We were at the Colosseum for crying out loud! How much more do we need, it’s just life changing being able to walk up to the Colosseum let alone going inside!!
But still we have many more experiences (life changing or not) that we’ll experience throughout this entire trip and we shall enjoy every minute of it!!