More Rome Pictures

The copy and paste technique did not work so I will have to manually put in each photo same as before. That means an abbreviated post on some days. On a cruise ship, just like at Vorys where I work, time is money. Especially on the internet.

What we’ve learned most recently is that three days (the combined time we’ve been in Rome on two trips) only scratches the surface of what you want to see. I STILL haven’t been inside the forum, even though we overlooked it after breakfast today. I took a video with my iPhone but don’t know if I can post that. I’ll play with it.

You will notice one picture of a bike tour today. We were told it was a fundraising ride, similar to the massive Pelotonia I have done the past two years. The Rome ride has 5500 riders, but I don’t know what it benefits. I don’t believe it’s cancer. It took them maybe twenty minutes to all get past us at the coliseum.

We are on our way to Sicily now. Tomorrow we do a tour of Mt. Etna and Taormina. We don’t know how cold it will be 5000 feet up an active volcano.

By the way, if any of you future cruisers like the casino, it is fairly common for them to let the slot machines pay well on the first night. It happened again. I may get my Italian cycling jersey on this trip yet thanks to the generous slots.

Now the pictures.

 

The coliseum and our brilliant guide Giovanni.

 

The cycling tour. Somebody look up Inizio Gara Ciclistica, please.

 

They are constantly trying to maintain the coliseum. You can see what they have cleaned and what they haven’t gotten to yet. They use water, not sand blasting.

 

How did you know where to enter the coliseum as a citizen? Look above the arches. LI and LII represented gates 51 and 52. Everybody knew which one to enter.

 

The only remaining section of the original marble floor.

 

One of the very few remaining sections of original building material. Also, the coliseum is still standing today because of the Romans’ invention of the keystone arch.

 

Sorry about the sun glare in this one but it was early morning and I couldn’t help it. The wooden stage in the background represented the ground level of the coliseum. Below that, where the gladiators and lions were kept until it was their turn. In the upper left of the photo you can see some white marble seats. Those encircled the coliseum as the first seating level and housed the VIPs. Male citizens on the second level. Females on the third.

 

A section of what was under the floor.

 

65,000 people could fit inside.

 

A close-up of an area where lions would have been caged or gladiators would have waited for their turn.

 

The Constantine Arch outside the coliseum.

 

Trevi Fountain.

 

Of course I had to do it.

 

Trevi Fountain was at the very end of the Roman aqueduct system.

 

The Pantheon.

 

A mass inside the Pantheon.

 

One of many Egyptian obelisks in Rome. Notice the Christian addition to the top of the obelisk to offset the pagan nature of the stone itself.

 

The bus ride from Rome to the port of Civitavecchia.

 

Out the opposite window was the Meditteranean.