Monday, July 10th

We met our tour guide at the Arch of Constantine next to the Colosseum at 9 am…it was already in the 90’s!  I booked the skip-the-line tour through Booking.com the night before…I was so happy that was still possible!  I tried to make reservations for a Vatican museum tour and they were sold out!  The tour guide was very knowledgeable…he was formerly an archaeologist!  The colosseum was built between 72 and 80 AD with the spoils gained during the Judean conquest and financed by the Flavian family thus its rightful name, the Flavian Amphitheater!    It is understood that fights between two people (gladiators, slaves, mere mortals) resulted in a winner and a loser…not always to the death!  One could tap out but wouldn’t be paid as well! More than 1,000 were killed in the arena per year over a 500 year period…wow!!  Major reconstruction has taken and continues to take place…it is astounding to see how much of the colosseum still remains!  We toured Palatine Hill, a beautiful garden filled with unique vegetation (such as a cork tree), flowers and fountains!  This oasis offered a peaceful place for the rich & powerful to escape to and to show their wealth!  It overlooks the Forum below, which was the center of Roman life!  We walked the streets of the Forum…our guide pointed out the many layers of construction (he said, “like a lasagna”) over the centuries where the same building was a palace, then a church and then a monument, for instance!  Wealthy people financed the construction of buildings as long as they could be buried there and have their names memorialized on the outside!  We passed the tomb of Julius Caesar!  When the tour was over, we were glad to get out of the sun and into an air conditioned ristorante where we had lunch!  We tried to walk back to our hotel but found it difficult to navigate past the tunnel…Larry preferred not going through the tunnel!  By the time we got back to the hotel, albeit eventually in a taxi, we were soaked and ready for a nap in our air conditioned room!  We went to dinner at Taverna Agape…great food and excellent service!  Our tour guide, Max, a friend of Vicki Vontz (Phil’s hair stylist), met us at the restaurant and took us on a tour of Piazza Tavona, Campo Fiore (where he once lived), the Pantheon,  Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, past the legislature building and for gelato at Gioletti!  They had the most flavors I have ever seen at one gelateria!  Larry enjoyed hearing about the history of the Pantheon (the dome structure was added onto the original external facade with 16 pillars imported from Egypt) and the flow of water from the Spanish Steps into the rest of the city in underground conduits!