Roma, Italia by Mel

Hello from Roma!!
We are in the capital of Italy!! This is exciting! I love Roma. I came here a very long time ago and I love coming back.
We arrived on Thursday the 24th of July. It is full on tourist season obviously, which made the city even busier than normal! But well, I wanted the family to see Europe in summer, so tourist season it is!
We arrived by train from Firenze and took a public bus to get to where we stay. It is pretty easy to use the public transport here, and not too expensive, so we will use it during our stay.
We arrived at our place, went to do a bit of grocery shopping and came back. The kids did some schoolwork and blog and I napped!!! For some reason, I was exhausted, so a bit of rest was needed. We didn’t do much at all that afternoon, as we have been doing so much lately.
The following day, we got to see the COLOSSEUM!
Even if half of it is missing nowadays (due to earthquake, abandon and stealing), it is still incredibly impressive. It would have been amazing to see it in all its splendour back in 80AD, when the construction just finished. It was and still is the largest standing ancient amphitheatre ever built. It could hold around 50 000 spectators. It is one of the newest 7 wonders of the world human made (We saw two now!! The other one is the Taj Mahal)
How to describe it: It is big, but like very big! Ginormous! Colossal! There are arches everywhere. We were wondering why we could see holes in pretty much all the walls: we found out that every wall was covered in marble and the holes in the stone were the anchor point of the marble.
They used to have hunts, gladiator fights, battle re-enactments, naval battle re-enactments and executions… you know entertainment!!! It is very gruesome! But the building in itself, is a fantastic credit to the architects of that time.
With the development of the Catholicism, roman game became less popular (too violent), so the Colosseum stopped being used for this purpose. They found evidence that for several centuries after that, shops, workshops, housing and even a church were built inside the wall of the Colosseum.
It was a very interesting and amazing visit.
Next to the Colosseum is the Roman forum. This is a huge area which used to be the centre of day-to-day life in Rome during the 8th century BC to the 8th century AD. After that, it was mainly abandoned and slowly became ruins. Nowadays, it is still possible to imagine and guess how romans use to live by walking around and using a fair bit of imagination.
To learn a bit more about it, we found a National geographic documentary on youtube in the evening and watch that to finish our day.
On the 26th of July, we visited a lot!
We started with a kid museum, as we have been visiting a lot of ‘serious’ museums, so a bit of fun was needed for Andrew and Emma. It was a pretty well-made museum: a lot of different activities, all interactive and fun covering a lot of subjects: nature, radio, water reaction, inequalities between man and woman (I loved that part!), sound, colours… a lot of things. The kids had fun!
After that we saw the Piazza del Popolo: this is gigantic place with arch on one side, an obelisk and fountain in the middle, a couple more fountain on each side and 2 churches on the opposite side with 3 streets opening like a trident. We continue our visit to the Spanish steps. The Spanish Steps, built between 1723 and 1725, climb a steep slope (29m long) between Piazza di Spagna at the base and Piazza Trinità dei Monti, dominated by the Trinità dei Monti church, at the top. There are 135 steps. We have been climbing a lot of steps during this gap year! The Fontaine at the bottom, called the Fountain of the long boat, is a favourite place to pose and have your picture taken: the kids obviously wanted to do that! So we did! We climbed up, looked at the view, visited the church and climbed back down to continue our visit to one of my favourite spots in Roma: the Trevi fountain.
It was, non-surprisingly packed with people. They only let a certain amount of people close to it at the same time, so we just looked at it from a bit above and slightly further. It was still close enough to have a good look of it. This fountain is beautiful. It was built between 1732 and 1762. It features the titan Oceanus (in Greek mythology, he is the son of Uranus and Gaia, the husband of his sister the Titan Tethys, and the father of the river gods and the Oceanids) springing from the central niche on a shell chariot pulled by two hippocamps and two cascading tritons.
A lot of people follow the tradition of throwing a coin in the fountain to favour a return to Roma. An estimated of €1.5 million (AUD$2.68 million) is thrown into the fountain each year. The money thrown into the fountain is donated to the Caritas association, which uses it for charity work.
I love this fountain: the flow of the sculptures, the size and creativity is for me, one of the most beautiful thing to see when in Roma.
We kept walking after that with no aim. One thing I like in Roma, is the number of fountains everywhere. Water is flowing at every corner. From the massive one, like the Trevi fountain to the small simple ones where you can fill you water bottle with deliciously cold and refreshing water.
In our walk, we found a small wax museum. It was not the best, but they had an interesting video about how they make the vax figures.
We finish the day visiting the extremely ginormous monument for Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of the kingdom of Italy newly united (before it was a lot of smaller kingdoms). It has three levels connected by stairways, with different statues at every corner, middle, and everywhere else. The top is surmounted with a colonnade of 15 meters high. The style of architecture is neo-classical with eclectic influences. It shows that Italians are masters in architecture and creating incredible monuments.
After that we jumped on a tram and went back to our place with achy feet!
The next day, we did a fun day. Emma found a Colour Hotel, 30 minutes train ride from us. I wasn’t quite sure what was going to happen, but we tried. It is located in a shopping centre, so we got there and bought our tickets. The entrance is like a hotel with a weird looking red eyes giant teddy bear as the concierge, then they take you to the first room which is the elevator with wall covered with screen giving you the impression of going up in the sky and then back down. There are 10 rooms overall. You can stay as long as you want in each. My favourite ones were the one which looked like a massive, padded room where you could jump, the pink fur room, all covered in pink fur where you could dress up in pink fur, the one we could wrote on the wall and copies of art, and the roller-skating one. It was fun!!! The kids loved it, so I am sure they will give you way more details!
We came back to our place to rest and in the evening, we went to listen to some Queen music, opera style. There again, we were not sure what to expect: we arrived in a smaller place than we expected, with only 6 tables set up with wine and nibblies. We took our table. Then the concert started: there was one pianist and 2 singers, one soprano and one tenor. They were all talented, but the soprano was astonishing. Her voice could lift the roof! I had goosebumps so many times! They did some of the most famous songs from Queen either on the piano by itself with the public singing (all 10 of us), or with one or two singers. I loved it, but it was finish to soon! It only lasted one hour and I could have listen to them for much longer than that!
But everything must finish, so went back home singing Queens songs and that was it for that day.
On Monday the 28th of July, we did one activity that Andrew found: guess what it was? A video game museum!!!! Of course Andrew will find that! There was a lot of old game consoles and some information about the beginning of the industry (I think I am the only one who read some of it). There was a lot of arcade games we could play, as well as old games on different console systems. I played Wreck it Ralf on arcade and Crash Bandy Coot on the old PlayStation, and it was a lot harder than I remember! Kids had fun! Kev too I think! Me too, but it was a lot of computer screens all around and I was happy to leave after a couple of hours!!!
After that, we went to do the museum of the Vatican, which is a massive museum with everything in it: from Egyptian art, mummies, Etruscan vases, renaissance paintings and sculptures, rooms decorated from top to bottom… It was a lot to take in. Add that to the number of people visiting… It was a lot! This is a museum that could be done in several days to see everything. Vatican, by the way, is the smallest country in the world. It is a city state, with its own money, government, laws. Which means we visited the 2 smallest country in the world: the Vatican and Monaco! The kids were super excited to be able to walk from one side to the other side of a country in a matter of minutes!
Back to the museum: I enjoyed it, but I wish I had more time and less people in it who push you to try to take a selfie.
I loved the room dedicated to statues of animals and the 120m long map room (the maps were great but the roof of the room is amazing too). One artifact I loved was the tablet written with cuneiform writing, inside an envelope made of clay with cuneiform writing on it too.
The visit finishes with the chapel Sistine. Which is always a big thing to see, but again there are so many people there! And I have to admit that after seeing so many paintings, rooms covered top to bottom with painting and decoration, it lost a bit its effect. I almost wish we could start with it: the beauty we saw before wouldn’t diminished the beauty of the chapel. Don’t get me wrong, it is magnificent, impressive, and all the other descriptives word you can associate with beauty, but after several hours in the museum, your brain is so tired that I think we couldn’t appreciated it to the maximum.
I was not supposed to take pictures, but everyone was taking then so I snapped a couple. I normally respect when we can’t take pictures but I really couldn’t see the issue here (as long as not flash is used).
After that we tried to get a bus to get back to our place, but there was so many people that the buses were packed to the brim: we ended up walking just under one hour to get to our place. Again, the kids amazed me: by then, we have been on our feet since 8.30am and it was late in the afternoon and still walking. They just played their game while walking and did not complain once. I was exhausted and I could have complain (maybe I did a bit!)!!! Those kids are amazing travellers.
On Tuesday the 29th of July, we visited the Pantheon. This is the only monument still standing from the ancient roman era. This is because it has always been in use. All the other monuments, at one point were abandoned and fell into ruins. Not the Pantheon. It was originally a temple dedicated to the 12 Roman gods built between 25 and 27BC. It was reconstructed in 118-125AD and it is pretty much still what we see now. At the beginning of the 7th century, it officially became a Christian church and has been used as ever since. The monument is rotunda with a rectangular front, which was at the time a unique design (It was copied a lot after). In the middle of the dome is a 9m in diameter hole, an oculus, made to open the building to a better connection with the divine. It also allowed to lighten the dome, as it is the biggest dome unsupported and not re-enforced by anything. The oculus let the light and the weather enter the dome and give it a very special atmosphere. The inside is beautifully decorated obviously. There is a recent sculpture of a giant broken crown of thorns in the centre which will receive the rain and hold the water for a while. I asked the kids to do some research about this place, and I think they found some great information, so go read their blogs about it.
We continue the day with a walk to the Piazza Navona, one of the best piazza in Roma. On the way we saw one of the many fountains of Roma called the book fountain. I liked it!
The Piazza Navona is built over an ancient stadium, so it has an elongated oval shape. There are 3 beautiful fountains on it (yes more fountains!) and some beautiful buildings all around it. As I said, on that place used to be a stadium, commissioned around AD 80 by Emperor Titus Flavius Domitianus as a gift to the people of Rome. It was used for athletics contests, but also poetry, songs and music contests. Like the Colosseum, it was abandoned with the decline of Roma and like the Colosseum, was used as living quarters then forgotten and the earth slowly cover it back up. It was uncovered in recent time and you can visit a small part of the stadium, which we did. They had audioguides for adults and some different audioguides for the kids, with more fun facts: I hope they remember some and write them it their blogs!
There was a sign about the average reign of a roman emperor: during the 503 years of the roman empire (27BC-476AD), there was 105 emperors: 34 died of natural causes and 71 of violent death! Which made the average of 5 years per emperor!!! Not a fun job, is it!!!
After that, we had plan to visit Saint Peter church in the Vatican. We got near the Vatican and the crowds were insane. We thought that is a lot: there were a lot of groups of young people with flags, singing songs… We arrived near and got told that we couldn’t get in until 4pm. It was still only around 1pm, so we went to visit a couple of other churches (all amazing) and came back a bit before 4. I looked it up and found out, it was youth jubilee day. Turn out that 2025 is a jubilee year for the Catholic church: which is a special year of remission of sins, debts and universal pardon, with a lot of special mass and events. And obviously, we came here during that year and that day!!!
There were even more people when we arrive!!! We became a bit squished. When they opened the gate to get in, some groups formed conga lines to push through and get in. I got worried. There were too many people and I asked if we could still visit the church to one of the guard: he said yes, but you need to follow the line and keep walking with it. This was not the best day to visit St Peter church, so we didn’t. I don’t like massive crowd especially with 2 kids with me.
I was really sad, as it is a shame to come to Roma and not seeing the biggest catholic church in the world. I was really disappointed to miss that. I should have planed that better.
We finished the day by ice cream and we saw a cat colony! Apparently, there used to have a lot of cats in Roma and they were protected. It is against the law to hurt them or move them if they decided to live somewhere. When some cats decided to call some place their home, people created cat colonies and installed nice beds and toys and food for the cats. We saw one and it was so cute. But nowadays there are a lot less cats in Roma.
After that, we got back home, packed our bags as it was our last day in Roma.
Our next stop is Pescara on the east coast of Italy. We are planning on resting a bit, catching on schoolwork as it has been pretty thin lately, and refueling in energy before another big tourist destination.
I just want to finish with my love of Roma. This city is magnificent: everywhere you look, there is a statue, a fountain, a museum to visit, some type of art, a beautiful building… This is such an amazing city!!! I hope I’ll come back one day!
MelЧитать далее