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After the Ferrari tour we returned our rental car and grabbed a taxi to the Modena train station. It was about a 4 1/2 hour train ride (we thought it was supposed to be 3 1/2 hours) through beautiful country.

Interesting thing about the trains – the toilets are an open hole to the railroad tracks whizzing by down below (pun intended).

Our hotel in Rome, The Hotel Columbia (Map), was a short walk from the train station. We checked in, then had a great meal at a restaurant nearby that the desk clerk recommended. Then to bed – big day of walking coming up!

We spent the day touring today. Update to come soon…
My computer crashed this evening, and I’ve just spent the last couple of hours getting it to run again. Not currently in the mood to start writing about the day!

Tomorrow, more walking as we tour the Catacombs and pursue pizza.

Hopefully will update these past days sometime tomorrow…

UPDATE:
I never got my laptop to boot back up reliably, so I packed it away to keep from doing more damage. We wrote notes down which I am now transcribing and post-dating from home on the 18th..

Luckily it wasn’t a hard drive crash, so all our pictures are safe. Whew.

We met up with our tour guide, Mohammed, outside the Metro stop by the Colosseum. He has a degree in archeology and made a career of it for 8 years in Rome before adding “tour guide” to his resume, so it was especially interesting listening to him as we walked through the Colosseum and adjoining Forum. At places you could see layers of four different eras of construction on top of each other, ranging from BC through the 1800s. My favorite part of the Colosseum was the elevator system that would rise up through the sand covered floor with the Gladiators or wild animals aboard. Ahh, showmanship.

Kevin’s three years of Latin were put to use as he helped translate carvings on statues and buildings.

Here’s a map of our walking tour (the blue line).

View Larger Map

Afterwards we walked over to the Pantheon, and FINALLY grabbed some lunch. That’s a lot of walking on a European breakfast. Kevin ordered his favorite pizza, which is just cheese and no sauce. The waitress thought that sounded boring, so she had the chef use some exotic cheese to make it more interesting – then they way undercooked it so the center of the crust was still doughy. Not exactly what Kevin had in mind. He was a great sport though.

We appeased all of us with the best gelato of the trip at a place next to the Piazza Navona. Ummm. Then the long walk back to the hotel via Fontana di Travi.
(The yellow line on the map.)

After resting our steaming feet, we grabbed a cab and went back near Piazza Navona to a recommended pizzaria name Bufalo. It paid off for Kevin, great thin crust pizza sitting outside. Then we walked back AGAIN, but this time tried to take a shorter route, which would have worked if we didn’t miss a turn and end up almost next to the Colosseum again. Ouch.

We got to sleep in a bit this morning, as we met up with today’s tour guide, Julia, at 10am at our hotel. Julia is a Brit who moved to Rome from Kent when she was 19. She chose Rome by throwing a dart at a map (really!). The dart landed on a small town about 150km north of Rome – she figured that wouldn’t be any fun, so she moved the dart to the biggest city around. So she moved to Rome without knowing any Italian and without a job. I guess it worked out okay, because 8 years later she’s fluent in the language, the culture and the history.

We took a cab to the catacombs at St. Sebastian’s (map). These were the original catacombs where the name comes from (“catacomb” means literally “near the hollow”, which is where we were). Though you need to go through the catacombs with a tourguide from St. Sebastian’s, it was great having Julia along with us. Before we went in she gave us a great overview of what we’d see, and she filled in a lot of information during the tour. The local guide was hard to understand, it sounded like he learned english from the Microsoft computer voice – like someone typed in the tour monologue and he memorized the computer-read version of it. Unfortunately you’re not allowed to take pictures down there, so we don’t have anything to put up here. Basically it was a 20 minute walk through hand-dug caves with various areas for putting the bodies (there are five different way’s they’d put the dead in there). The areas we went through were devoid of the dead – all rock, no bones – so if you want to see rows of skeletons like we all imaging catacombs to be like you’re out of luck. Very cool nonetheless.

Afterwards we sat outside with Julia and got a history of Christianity that was fascinating. She was happy and comfortable separating history and faith, and was clearly someone who loves storytelling.

We walked about a mile up the Appian Way to a small cafe where we continued the lessons and eventually called a cab.

Eric, Kevin and I walked down to the Colosseum a few minutes before sunset to see the night view. Here are some pictures.

Travel to Rome

Rome – Computer Crash

Rome – Day 1 tour

Rome – Day 2 tour

Evening in Rome