Colosseum and the Forum

Friday, we had our last tour of the Colosseum and the Forum.  My husband and I were looking forward to it, it was one of the most anticipated tours.  We had to leave early and meet our tour at the metro station near the Colosseum by 8am.  It was an awesome sight to see as we stepped out of the station.  The weather was warming up, so we did not layer as much as we had been all week.  We were a bit nervous that the tour would be canceled again, as it was earlier in the week.  We were lucky though and the tour was a go.

We met our group and quickly learned that two portions of our tour would be canceled.  We had wanted to see the basement and the third tier, both parts were canceled.  In the meantime we got to know our wonderful guide, Francesca.  She is a fellow Archeologist!  I was thrilled!  She is also the mother of a little girl that had recently turned 5 and she did a great job on the tour with the kids. We had a lot of kids on the tour, not only were their my 4, but there was also a 13 year old girl and her little brother that was 18 months old.

 Our guide started out by asking our youngest two if they were twins!  Our 9 year old quickly set her straight.   She was not the only one in Italy to do this, when I was trying on clothes in a store, a clerk thought that I had two sets of twins.

We learned some very interesting facts about the tour.  The Colosseum was built in a mere 8 years.  Which was incredible, especially when you see the size.  It is a massive structure.

Our guide really wanted us to get a real feel for how the Colosseum was really used, so one of the things that she showed us artist drawings of what really happened when the Colosseum was being used.  It showed people tailgating, fighting, cheering, delivering food, resting....

Here is our oldest son, we were on the ground floor of the Colosseum.  The blue box around his neck is the device that we used to hear out guide.

Our guide next to what to what used to be the steps going to the third tier.

Looking down from the second tier into the "basement".

The kids, we were on the second tier looking down.

The Forum.

After we finished our tour, we grabbed lunch in a little tattoria that our guide recommend to us.  The woman that seemed to be in charge, loved on our youngest two boys.  She also asked if they were twins.  We giggled at the antics of the staff as things started going a little crazy and the waiter walked by muttering da, da, da, daaaa under his breath.

After lunch we decided to walk back to our hotel and catch some sites on the way.  We managed to hit some of the fabulous sites in Rome.  The picture above was one of the kids favorite places.  We found after we were there, that among the ruins was a cat sanctuary.  The kids were thrilled to see the cats in the ruins.  For more of my pictures, check my Facebook page.

We saw a lot of the major sites in Rome on Friday and Saturday we finished up what we could.  All in all, we only missed one major thing, the Spanish steps.

Because we had such a busy day, we ended up just eating crepes with Nutella for dinner that night.  Yum!