Thursday, April 10, 1997
For once, woke up after noon! We didn’t have time to go over and see St. Peter’s Square, so we taxied it over to the Forum and Coliseum. First up was the Coliseum. Tre Chic! It was a pretty cool experience to be inside a place that was that old. After some great Gorn shots, we walked around the Forum and Palace grounds. Pretty darn huge, with lots of good vistas of Rome. One can only imagine what it looked like two thousand years ago.
After a couple of hours, we started walking to get something to eat (A decision mom regrets to this day – this was probably her time of greatest pain on the whole trip). An hour and a Metro line later, we ended up at a pizzeria next to the train station. After confirming the time of tomorrow’s train departure, we Metro’ed back to the hotel, of course we had to do quite a bit of walking! I think today we walked a total of 6 hours non-stop.
After resting a tad in the room, I decided to check out a local club. But wait, it was Thursday, and the taxi driver had dropped me off in front of a closed up club. This was not cool. I had to walk by myself back to the train station to catch a taxi back to the hotel. I passed some not-so-tourist-friendly places, but managed to make it over to McDonald’s for a quick snack. I went into the train station and called Matt. We were gabbing away, and I had not realized that the police had locked up the train station. It was not until a nice police officer offered to escort me out of the station that I realized I was locked inside. I think my conversation with Matt ended: “Uh, I have to go, the police are here”. I did manage to catch a taxi back to the hotel and hit the hay. Today left me with a bitter taste in my mouth about Rome. I think if we hadn’t walked so much, we would have been left with a more positive image of Rome, instead the beautiful Coliseum and Forum were overshadowed by a Los Angeles clone with better dressed people.
