Giorno 92, 8 April: The Colossal City

Montestella Hotel, Rome, Italy, Giorno 92. The Colossal City

Skype with Katya at 8am was pleasant yet frustrating. I woke up Vinnie, moved to the bathroom next door, had no outlet there, went out to the lobby and endured awkward sitting positions and sound problems. Still, we got to see each other’s faces, which is always refreshing, and once I could wake up Vinnie at 9:30, the connection got better and we ended on a good note.

Vinnie and I checked out (‘Grazie! Arrivederci!’) and met up with the others at the train station. Caitlin and Joe told me all about the Easter celebrations going on at the Duomo di Firenze, which delayed them by a half hour just walking through it. There were teeming crowds and odd-to-see-in-the-daytime fireworks.
The slow-moving train left the station just as we reached the top of the stairs of the train platform. It was one of those moments when a sarcastic slow-clap, as if to say ‘wow, we are awesome’, was appropriate. We did. Luckily, the officials let us on the next one and onto Rome we roamed.
From the start, the city was not too hard to manoeuvre through, but we also booked a cheap hotel two blocks from the Roma Termina train station. The hotel manager was a pessimistic Italian, but the room for six was nice enough. Dropping our bags, we headed straight off to the metro and two stops later arose from the underground to behold the nearly two thousand year-old stadium of gladiatorial greatness, the Colosseum. During our brief eating break, the discussion arose of financial anxieties about this trip—not renting a car in Italy has caused us to pay a significant amount for trains to each city.
But that did not stop us from enjoying the guided (yet misguided-ly advertised) tour of the Coliseum, in which the tour guide himself was mildly amusing but not loud enough to hold interest over everyone, including us. (Misguided: ‘private tour’ apparently meant ‘private 50-person group tour’.) We wandered through and I soaked up the sight of the ruins for the second time. A white line quite a few metres away from the current circumference of the Colosseum is where it once extended to, which is incredible to see just how much of the outer levels have vanished over the centuries. The best part for me was remembering to pose for a snapshot in nearly the exact same way and exact same spot that I once did 5 years ago. I’ll try to mash the photos together at some point.
Before the tour, Vinnie had begun a guessing game: each of us had to guess when the Coliseum was finished. Devon strayed from everyone else and went in the early, ~100 A.D. It turned out she was the closest, everyone else hundreds of years off.
We enjoyed walking around the ruins that seemed to stretch for miles (when in reality it’s a concentrated area) and this inspired Joe to make a good judgment call: ‘Florence is more beautiful, Rome is more epic.’ I agree completely. As the wind accelerated its intensity, we called it an early day and headed back to the hotel for a night-in.