I’ve heard stories about crazy driving in Italy, but hadn’t experienced it. And then we got to Rome.

Driving here is like a video game, with the main goal being to almost-but-not-quite hit a vespa or pedestrian with your car. All of our cab drivers are very good at this game.



We were only going to be in Rome for a little over a day. The first thing we did was head to St. Peter's Square at the Vatican. There were so many people!!! The entire outside was shoulder to shoulder people.





Next we went to Castel Sant'Angelo.

My perception of Rome has been shaped by bits and pieces I’ve learned through school, other info and characteristics that I thought were about Rome but were really about Athens, Greece, and movies. Mainly “Gladiator”.

This being the case, I measured the importance of things by if Joaquin Phoenix's character or Russell Crowe's character stayed there. Many historical sites were accompanied by me asking Justin “so is this where Joaquin Phoenix would have lived?” or “is there where Russell Crowe would have fought?” or “okay, so he would have been a Caesar like Joaquin was?”. Justin was very knowledgeable on the subject.

This was originally a mausoleum for Hadrian (a Caesar) in the 2nd century A.D. and later fortified into a castle.

Here is the castle. No "Gladiator" characters were here.





Right in front of the castle, there is the Ponte Sant'Angelo bridge. It has an amazing collection of statues on it that fascinated us.







On our way to the Pantheon, we passed through an interesting square called Piazza Navona and snapped a couple pics.







From there it was a short walk to the Pantheon. Built during Hadrian's reign on the ruins of a previous building, the current Pantheon was built in the 2nd century and was the largest dome for over a thousand years until the Duomo of Florence (aka the dome that made me cry).







Next was the Roman Forum, which I knew as the Roman Ruins. This graveyard of stone and marble is what's left of buildings built two thousand years ago, and lies between two of the main hills that Rome was built on (the Palatine and Capitoline hills). It's so interesting because it’s cool that we can see the ruins of something so influential from over two thousand years ago, but at the same time I find it kind of ironic that a people who built things to impress and show off their innovation are now okay with having remains of buildings that really aren’t serving any function, just taking up space. But then again, I guess it would be hard to destroy something with so much history, even if it appears to be just damaged stone and marble.

When we got to the Roman Ruins, naturally we were looking forward to dancing while using hairspray, bathing in a bidet and throwing trapezoids at the ground. You can imagine our disappointment when we saw this sign.



Luckily it did not prohibit knife fighting with yodelers while skateboarding, so we plan to do that next time we're here.

The ruins. Joaquin looked over this area a few times in the movie (before they were ruins).









Right next to the ruins is the Colosseum (a huge part of “Gladiator”!). This was very cool. Apparently in that time people would go to school to become gladiators. And successful ones (meaning those that weren’t killed) reached the type of popularity that movie stars or rock stars have today.

Along with fighting each other, gladiators would also fight slaves and animals. And Russell and Joaquin.









Finally, after a little stroll we got back to the Capitoline Hill and the Monument to Victor Emmanuel II (first king of unified Italy).



In the morning, it was back off to London before heading home.