We've now ventured to the present day capital, Rome. We went on a tour of the city that night. We went to the Spanish steps, the largest steps in Europe, The Trevi Fountain where of course I threw a coin in, The Victor Emmanuel monument, Piazza Nuvona which is where chariot racing used to take place and then The Coliseum. It was cool seeing The Coliseum at night. The next morning we went on a guided tour of The Vatican City, the smallest country and home of the pope. It was quite interesting and very informational. We saw the Sistine Chapel and St Paul's Cathedral which is the largest church in the world. I saw lots of works by Michelangelo and Da Vinci. The art work in there was pretty impressive. We then went to The Coliseum and took another tour, this time going inside. It was built in 73 AD and is still there. They've done a lot of reconstruction but there still are original structures which are pretty impressive. When your in there and standing up the top looking down upon the arena, it's quite easy to picture everyone gathering there to watch the games. They used to have an event there every 100 days which was free for the people to go watch. Anything from gladiator battles, man vs animas, animal vs animal and on the rare occasion they would even flood it then have mock ship battles. We then walked to the top of Palatine Hill which is where Rome began. Rumour has it that there were two brothers, Remus and Romulus that wanted to build the biggest city. Remus wanted to build it on one hill and Romulus wanted to build it on Palentine hill. They had a competition of who could get the most birds on their hill and that would be where they started their city. Remus got only five and Romulus got eleven. Remus was still not happy and so the brothers got into yet another fight. In a fit of rage Romulus killed his brother and then started to build his city, hence where the name Rome comes from. There are lots of ruins up there, including the Roman Forum which we walked through. The Roman Forum is a town of more ruins which used to be the town centre in 1000 BC. It was pretty cool walking through thinking how they would've lived back then, etc. We headed back to the camp site and that night had a pool party. The bar was closing for the summer, therefore the bar had to be cleared out. Once again another fun night :)
Overall Rome was a very interesting city. I definitely learnt a lot about Roman history and their time of dominance.