The one with a Roman New Year's

We woke up on New Year's Eve day ready to actually start seeing some sites in Rome.  Katie was still a little freaked out that something else was going to happen and we wouldn't have a hotel, so we went to check out our hotel location and store our luggage for the day, just to make sure.  Hotel Laura was just where it was supposed to be, and we had a reservation!  With that set, we headed off to ancient Rome for the day.

We purchased Roma passes, which allow you to enter two attractions for free, have three days of free transportation, give discounts to other museums, and skip the lines at many places.  Many cities offer some sort of card like this; you just have to decide if you will be able to get your money out of it.  Ours proved particularly useful, even when only considering that it meant we didn't have to wait in line at the ever popular Coliseum.

First thing, we took the Metro over to the Roman Circus.  I knew from my experience in Merida that these tend to not be very impressive.  It isn't to say that originally the Circus wasn't breath-takingly awesome, but thousands of years has this way of wearing away what was there.  It is the size of at least two football fields and is where the chariot races used to take place.  It is estimated that there were stands to hold as many as 150,000 people, but basically today it looks like a giant sunken field.  The actual level of the track is several meters underground currently.

Next we made our way to Palatine Hill and the Roman Forum.  Rome is made up of seven hills on which the majority of Rome was built.  The Romans had a habit of building over the ruins of earlier emperors, so many times only one layer is visible, but either on top or below, there are additional ruins.  Furthermore, during the reign of Mussolini and the fascists, there was a big push to change history and revise the reputation of the ancient Romans, inspiring feelings of native-superiority and encouraging the idea that foreigners/immigrants were "ruining" Rome/Italy.  In some cases, parts of the Roman ruins were destroyed to better support this story.  To this day, this revised history of ancient Rome is still widely believed and spread.  The parts of Rome that didn't support this, such as the emperor who declared that all of those conquered and part of the empire were citizens, weren't emphasized.  Obviously, I found this really interesting, and the exhibit showing and explaining the propaganda on this was one of my favorite things.

After walking like one hundred miles, we headed to the Coliseum.  It is a site to behold, but it is also hard to exactly picture what it was like, being that the stands no longer exist and even the floor of the coliseum where the gladiators fought is conspicuously absent.  There is also a surprising lack of signs explaining the various parts of the Coliseum, probably to prevent too much crowd congestion and to encourage people to buy the audio guides.  Katie and I pulled up information online about the other sites we saw, but I hadn't read up on the Coliseum specifically.  I think all of that probably contributed to me not enjoying it as much as I could of.  Not to mention, I was already sooooo tired from walking around extensively.

We grabbed some panini and attempted to hop on the metro to go back to the hotel for a rest, but it was so crowded. After like 15 minutes, the train showed up, but only like a fourth of the people could fit.  We decided to walk to Termini to catch the other line to our hotel.  Sadface, especially because this meant more walking for my tired legs.  The nap was a lifesaver, but I woke up with the worst pain in my knee.  We needed to find something for dinner, but walking around, I pretty much wanted to cry it hurt so bad.  After grabbing some stromboli to go, we popped into a pharmacy where they gave me some useless gel to put on it.  Luckily, it felt better on its own after a hot shower!

At the Christmas Tree

Attempting to eat the grapes with seeds

We headed back out to celebrate in one of the big Piazzas.  I was under the impression that we were going to see live music but not so much.  We brought our champagne in water bottles and our grapes for midnight, so at least we were prepared.  It was pretty walking around and seeing the lights, but we were both really tired.  Finally midnight arrived! Spain has a tradition where you try to eat 12 grapes within a minute or with each toll of some bell (no bell in Italy).  We started out strong, but I hadn't thought to consider that our grapes might have seeds...so overall it was a fail.  I didn't finish my 12 grapes and had a seed stuck in my teeth for like two days.  No good luck for me!  At least I was wearing my red underwear, another good luck thing that many people in Spain/Italy seem to partake in.  There were some fireworks set off by various people, but we were tired so we rushed home to bed!