I must think of a good title for the last post...

Lucy and I have discovered the best Roman food joint ever – it is called Gastronimica Roscioli, and is just around the corner from our hostel. The food is fresh and wonderful. For our last lunch we enjoyed wilted rocket salad, tuna with rice and fresh fish with olive oil and lemon. It is more nutrients than we have eaten in a week!

Well fortified, we headed off to the Coliseum. Our wonderful ‘Roma Pass’ not only got us in for free, but we avoided the kilometre or so of queue to be in the thick of the action straight away.

As with everything else, the Coliseum is much smaller than I expected. Thinking I’d be looking at something the size of Jade Stadium, it was weird to find myself in something covering the same size as about two rugby fields. It wasn’t too crowded, and there were plenty of good viewpoints from which to get a grasp of the building:



The best part are the alleys and corridors that were underneath the stage area – this is where gladiators and beasts travelled to get to the trapdoors set in the floor of the arena:


Before these were built, the whole area could be flooded for mock sea battles and things – the engineering of that astounds me.

Immediately north of the Coliseum is the Roman Forum:


The buildings are similar to those at Pompeii in purpose and decay, but there are many more, and over a much wider area. It was interesting to see a cross section of a church:


The diamond pattern in the ceiling has been evident in lots of the places we’ve been to, and it was cool to see it in an open space rather than in the clean, white interior of a building.

The Forum was absolutely boggling with tourists, and we weren’t inclined to walk all the way to the end. Instead, we clambered out and took the paved route back up towards north Rome, and I showed Lucy ‘my square’ – the enormousness of it was just as cool as before.

From there, we took the back roads to the hostel and spotted some good sights for our return trip (whenever that may be!). Dinnertime found us at a basic neighbourhood place, and they didn’t seem weirded out when Lucy ordered just beer and tiramisu, and I had just fries and lemon liquor. It was an empty restaurant, so we chatted to the waitress, read magazines, and chilled out for an hour or so, enjoying the quiet before sensibly heading home for an early night.

The next morning, we had a novelty-free flight back to London and dumped our bags at home with happy hearts.