Day 1: ROME - Sunday February 10th

Well, here is the first installment of photos.... ;o)

We arrived in Rome on Sunday morning after flying all night, and then after a few hours of crashing we went out to explore this amazing city. Armed with a map and our handy little guide book that we procured previously, we figured out the simple metro system bought an all day pass for 4 Euros and picked our first stop:the Colosseum, Roman Forum, and Palantine Hill.

Incredible remnants of such a powerful civilization.....



walking around the Colosseum...







the amazing cypress trees




me in front of the Colosseum











We took a tour inside the Colosseum - amazing to see the real thing - it's incredible to think of the history, much of it gruesome as they estimate that a million people died here in the "events" in this arena




this is underneath the floor, where all the action was during the games, complete with "elevators" to trap doors! ;o)






up towards Palantine Hill....






you find theses all over the city, fountains run off of natural tributaries - very good water!



The Colosseum at sunset......wow.......



Our exploratory night walk around the city brought us first to Trevi Fountain, a magnificent work of art that is completely run by tributaries, so it is not circulated , pretty amazing . :o)



next we found the famous Spanish Steps, a popular stop for couples which also attracts the "petal pushers", what we call them. ;o) Droves of these very pushy rose salesmen prey upon the couples, shoving roses in the faces and refusing to give up! How romantic ;o) At one point, Jacob got very frustrated with one of these men after repeatingly saying no and finally told him to "go away" at which the man looked at him very offended with furrowed fatherly brow and said with very thick accent "it eez not 'go away' it is 'no thank you, fineesh'" Jacob and I laughed at that for awhile ;o)