Rome Day 11

Day 11
We woke up nice and early to catch our free All American Breakfast! YUPPIE! the eggs were utterly disgusting and the bacon was definately mystery meat... Darrin still ate it for protein mmmmmm! After our hearty breakfast, we picked up our bags and headed out to Rome. This trip took us about 45 minutes where we ended up right next to the coliseum - but before we even go there lets take a quick look at the travel surroundings in Rome specifically the "tube, metro, underground railway system"... Now if you want hot sweaty, disgusting close rubbing sensations..... this is the place to be. You get all of that for your 1 euro worth of a ride! Now if that doesn't please you, you can have free of charge attitude! Besides all of this the ride was near perfect - just a bit bumpy in an old smelly / graffitied up trams.... Now we arrived, ALIVE, at the coliseum a wonderful piece of ancient Rome. As we walked by we decided to start off by going to the Palantine.

What is the Palantine?
This location is where the first evidence of roman civilization was found. They have done excavtions here that lead back to around B.C and have many of these treasures... Not only was this the place of great excavations, it was also the hill in which the temples / Palaces and villa's of the emperors were located. This hill was known as Capital Hill and from there the city grew. We got to see the remains of whole buildings they brought up from beneath the ground. This is truly unbelievable the possible creations the Roman Empire had and all the monuments that surrounded it.
The name ROME came from the legend of Romulus and Remus, two boys who were raised by a wolf just on the bottom of the hill. There were many varations of the legend, but these two boys were thought to be the ones that started the beginning of Rome... Just as a quick fun fact ---> Romulus killed his brother Remus to gain entire power rather than sharing it.

This place was very stunning and has much history to it. It is a must see in Rome and we have many great pictures! After the Palantine we headed over to the Coliseum (created in 80 A.D), the place of Gladiators, Slaves and Lions - oh my! The Coliseum has about an hour or so wait to get in, the palantine had about a 5 minute wait ---> trick: the ticket from the palantine is also good at the coliseum (vice versa)... So we got to bypass this entire line-up hehehe! Inside this enormous structure you see the remains of what was one of the biggest event area in Rome. Surprisingly it was only running for two centuries as a combat field for slaves and gladiators... as it was then seen as savage so it was used for different things (a cemetery, and then a fortress called "Frangipane" and finally a sort of cava for the construction materials)
"in 313 after Christ, the Imperator Constantine proclaimed Christianity the official religion of the empire, obviously forbidding the executions of Christians but also the combats between gladiators and the hunting spectacles."
This massive structure has had much damage to it and is very hard to make out certain details. After many photographs of the ancient ruins, we went to a small exhibition they were having within the coliseum on Eros.

Who is Eros?
Romans were very into worshipping of many different gods, Eros was one of these gods.
In fact Eros was thought to be the most powerful of all gods, including Zeus himself. Eros had the ability to seduce any mortal and non-mortal that he wished. He also had the ability to take any form that he desired, wether animate or inanimate. This gave him the ability to attract anyones desires as well as not reveal himself to them. They may not even realise that they had been affected by Eros's power/charm. Through the years, Eros became multiple personalities, such as; Amor and Cupid!

After this exhibition we headed out of the coliseum to the main road through the ruins of Ancient Rome (Foro Romano). This lead us to the Marcus Aurelius square and the Museum of Capitolini. By this time Ola and I were exhausted, but it was too stunning to stop! We decided to go into the museum and unravel its mysteries within! Mostly potrayed ancient marble/stone statues that were excavated in parts or whole. It was also done in a way that showed the fashions of the different era's within the roman empire (example: the different female hairstyles). It also had the original statues of Marcus Aurelius ---> watch Gladiator the movie if you don't know who this is... and if you don't and have to watch the movie shame on you! We learned however that the movie is waaaaaaay off in the end. Marcus Aurelius was actually the emperor of Rome at one time and one of the greatest in history. We have many photo's of these statues, that we'll save all of you some reading time! In the museum we also saw the original foundation of the Jupiter temple, and from what we saw on the model... the temple was huge!
After this museum we headed back to our hotel leisurely walking through the streets of Rome to the famous underground system.