Postcards to Caeser

(I don’t think this title means much, but Mom insists.)

We are in Syracuse, Sicily, and are having a very good time. After a bit of a searching for a nice hotel, we found a really great one, and settled right in. But first, I need to talk about our visit to the once great city of Rome.
It is an average city, overall. Our place was nice, I guess, and so was the whole area.
The ruins, however, were stunning.
Our first day consisted of a trip to the grand Coliseum, but that move was recalculated when we saw the one hour line. We instead headed to the Forum next door. After a good amount of searching for an entrance, we bought our ticket and entered. The first area was Palentine hill, were the nobles and emperors lived. There were some large ruins, but it wasn’t that impressive because we had no idea what they were for. We moved quickly through the area. What we needed was a guide. We moved through most of everything rather quickly, finally ending up in the main forum area. There we sat around looking at columns and ruins, and were just about to go when we decided to trail a random tour around. Mom said she thought the tours were paid at the end, so we picked up on one. Then it turned out to be free. Great bonus. And even better was the fact that the tour guide was really good, knew his stuff, and made it interesting. At the end he recommended two other tours by him, one of Rome and one of the Vatican. We liked the guide so much we decided to turn up at the Vatican tour. (That wasn’t free, but it was worth the money.) During the tour we popped in to Caesar’s tomb. Believe it or not, this was what we saw:

People still leave postcards to Ceasar at this spot in the Forum.

Thus the blog title.
My total feeling was that the forum wasn’t that interesting until we took the tour. You can’t understand the significance of certain things or what things to actually focus on until you get a guide.
The next day we got to the coliseum early to miss the line. We didn’t. Fortunately, the 40€ ticket to the Forum also included the Coliseum, so we didn’t have to wait in the incredibly long line.
The Coliseum was pretty amazing.

We snatched an audio guide and took a while to locate the multiple locations it specified, but we learned a lot. It described that a wooden platform used to be built over a section of rooms and locker rooms. It was also there to operate the trapdoors that lifted gladiators, wild beasts, and props into the sand covered arena. Quite interesting. Unfortunately the guide focused more on the building and the spectator’s area of the coliseum, instead of talking about the games themselves. I learned the most interesting information from a sign. It was pretty fascinating, and from there we took off for the Vatican. We met our guide, Jason, and he got our money. Then we got to skip the five hour line, and enter the smallest country in the world. Yes, Vatican is actually its own country. You can have citizenship, there are grocery stores, and other things needed in a country. It is really the Pope’s remaining territory after the Italians pushed him out of Italy. Emma has been wondering about the smallest country for a long time, so we finally found our answer. Inside was very crowded, and the museum was huge. We could have spent a week there, so I’m glad we got the tour guide to show us what to focus on. We saw many things, and learned a bunch about the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo, and other Greek and Roman statues. Actually, there were even a few Egyptian ones. The tour ended just outside Saint Peter’s cathedral, which was also stunning:

And while I’m giving pictures, why not a few of the rest of the Vatican?

The next day we just relaxed. During the first few days it was constant movement, so we needed a break. The only thing we did that day was go see was the Pantheon and the beautiful Trevi fountain.

One day later we hopped on a train down to Naples. From there we flipped a coin to see whether we wanted to go to Pompeii, or the also preserved city of Heracleum. Heracleum won, and we hopped on a very cheap train and went to one of the most amazing sights I have seen.

It is hard to describe the amazingness of that perfectly preserved city. The murals looked ten years old, the statues still there, and they even replanted the plant that would have grown their. It was very easy to image how the place looked two thousand years ago. We went through half of it before it started to look the same, and then I got the audio guide, and learned even more about it. At the end we saw some more interesting things, like a subterranean bath chamber and a large statue to some senator. It was better preserved than Pompeii due to the hot mud it was buried by, having taller buildings and even carbonized wood.
Dad said it was much better than Pompeii. Actually, so did Jason. And a travel writer we ran into in Syracusa.
We ended up doing the place backwards because we went in the exit, but it was better that way. We saw the more interesting things at the end.
I really, really liked it.
And that’s all. Now were in Syracuse, but that post will have to wait until later. Maybe on the plane to Paris?

-Bjorn