Amazing Masterpieces, Overexcited Tourists and Dishonest Romans. Hello Italy

It’s been a week since my last post. I have a good excuse for the gap! I’ve been travelling to bring you the hottest material off the press. In the last week or so I’ve made my way to Italy and England and will go to Switzerland soon.

So I decided to mix things up a bit. Instead of sending you posts of what I did per day I’m going to write them based on themes and send them in sort snippets (easier for me to write and probably more entertaining for you to ready them slowly)…approximately grouped according to what makes sense in my brain (which means maybe no order at all!).

N.B. Will try my best to make this sound as little of a tour guide as possible.
[(N.B. a note within a note) this is my first time changing the HTML in my blog, guess those quick how to write HTML sessions were useful after all. There’s always a need for innovation]
Last thing, promise and then I’ll get to it. My dad, with whom I travelled over the past 2 weeks, like to take photos with people in them. He’s right it makes the pictures look more interesting. But sometimes obscures the sites and gets a bit distracting. So I will bring you a combination of both.

So today and over the next few days we’ll start with…my favourite monuments and sights.

First stop, Roma!(aka. Rome for those already confused)

The Colosseum

The Colosseum, built over 2,000 years ago by Romans, is one of the best exemplars of Roman architecture and engineering. One of the cool things about the Colosseum is that the Romans took the idea of building an amphitheatre from the ancient Greeks and figured out a way to build two and stick them together to make an elliptical amphitheatre, which in true Roman tradition, is much bigger and grander than what the Greeks had.

Thankfully with the super hot weather that day, Dad and I were able to skip the line for tickets by hopping over to the Palatine Hill and buying the Roma pass which covered the Colosseum, the Palatine Hill, Roman Forum and the Moses statue by Michelangelo.

The Colosseum was predominantly used for entertainment, such as animal exhibitions (like their own zoo), animal hunts, executions, staged Classical Greek plays, and of course the

Even looking from the outside, the building is daunting. It stands in the middle of a square and looks like it goes on forever. Despite the damage caused by Earthquakes and what-not, the Colosseum still exudes a grand and boastful charm that is as inviting to tourists today as it was over a thousand and fifty years ago to the Romans.

Walking in, the place was teeming with tourists. I looked in, up, down, around and imagined myself as a Roman standing in the entrance looking into the arena. Most of the platform has been destroyed which subsequently revealed the passages and cages underneath. This is where most of the animals, prisoners and gladiators would be housed before they were ready for battle. It’s hard to imagine the amount of blood shed and the number of lives lost over the year. This thought literally brought shivers down my spine despite the hot and muggy weather that day.

I climbed a upstairs to check out the view. We got a good look at the Palatine Hill, the old Forum ruins and a few other bits and pieces. But honestly, the Colosseum was the most breathtaking piece and potentially my favourite in all of Rome.

There is so much history and so many stories in this area there just isn’t enough time to learn all about it. Definitely worth visiting again and again.