Goodbye to Rome

This is our last full day here.  We put off visiting the Forum until today and that turned out to be a bit unfortunate.  We are in a hotel which is about 1 1/2 blocks from there and even before opening the doors to the street you could sense that today was different.  It was quiet on the street!  Why?  There were no cars!  It took me a moment to realize that.  All around this area, the streets had been blocked and people were walking down the middle of them.  As we looked toward the Forum, we saw a huge glut of humans...  all waiting in a line to gain entrance.  Wow.  Just yesterday there were no lines.  Why??  As it turns out, the Forum was free today and the line was for free tickets.  I don't know how frequently (or infrequently) this occurs,  but it was like one big free-for-all party in the streets connecting the Colosseum and the Forum, and I'll bet that the Colosseum was the same mobbed (and free) scene as the Forum.  Anyway,we sailed past the lines, happily, since we already had tickets, and were soon walking over the same stones that Caesar and Nero trod upon (or were carried over by slaves or horses).  Since we got there around noon, it was hot (it felt like it must be around 100 F), so water drinking became major.  I eavesdropped on a few guides and picked up some tidbits like:

                                                                                  NERO

 This is a bust of him which was de-faced shortly after his death.  He was not popular with pretty much anyone by that time.  For instance, he had his mother, stepbrother and first wife who also happened to be his step-sister killed, kicked his second wife to death when she was pregnant, and reportedly the source of light for his gardens at night was Christians being burned alive...  you get the picture.  Just your basic sociopath blossoming into full blown megalomania.  He committed suicide just before he would have been murdered.


                                     These are thought to be the busts of his first two wives:

All of what follows dates from around 55AD, or what I cavalierly call "really old stuff"

The gas station on our hotel block, and yes that's the whole thing; a guy sits there on a folding chair beside the pump, waiting for customers

This was by a fountain in a small square where people were gathered; the police always seem to be around in this kind of situation.  They are usually joking and friendly, and so their presence is not hostile.  I took the picture mainly because I like the blue color of their lights.

                    Scene in an alley tonight that caught my eye, although I admit it's pretty cliche

Say arrivederci to Roma, and don't worry...  I threw a few coins in the Fountain for you and so I am certain that you'll be here yourself at some point.  Ciao.

Rome on a Saturday night

Today we walked a bit, and also hopped on the red bus for some more touring around.  This is the only decent picture I took on the bus.  It's of a portion of the Forum.

 We ate lunch up near the train station in an area filled with Ethiopian restaurants, though this particular place made pizza. 

That's pizza dough in his hands and a marvelous wood-burning cavern behind him.  He'd shove limp pieces of dough into it and in just a few seconds it seemed, the pieces would be transformed into puffed bread marvels.

We grabbed dinner at an Argentinian restaurant before heading over to the Colosseum for the night tour.  The food was good, but what mainly impressed me was the young woman who carried the food to our table.  She was tall, had dark hair and the super-erect carriage of a dancer, plus that haughty sort of remote expression that you see sometimes on the faces of Tango dancers (for me, only in pictures up to this point).  I'm sure that she was a wonderful Tangoer, or Tangress.  I would love to have seen them dance.

At any rate, we needed to streak off to the Colosseum.  And the almost-full moon was coming up.

NOW the moon decides to show up....you can barely see it

This is not the glamorous poster shot I'd been hoping to capture:

We walked to the Trevi Fountain, still packed with people at 11:30 PM

This looks a bit like Times Square on New Year's Eve (minus the overcoats), but these are the thousand or so lemoncello-swilling revellers parked for the evening in front of the Trevi Fountain

                                                            Good night from Rome