You Never Know Where the Jews Will Turn Up

Turns out that the Roman Emperor who destroyed the temple in Jerusalem, leaving nothing but the Wailing Wall, brought 50,000 Jewish slaves back to Rome.  And what did they do?  Build the Colosseum and the Forum!  You just can't get rid of us!

And a good job they did of it too.  A lot of the marble was looted for later churches, and the iron pins used to hold the stones together also looted when the price of iron was worth the effort of getting it out (that's the other thing you can't get rid of - economics).  However, what's left is pretty impressive.  We have spent the last two days seeing the Colosseum, the Palantine Hill where Nero built his palace, the Sacred Road, where Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, and countless others marched to the Forum, the Forum itself, and the Capitoline Museum, housing hundreds if not thousands of remains.  The pictures can't do them justice.



Arch of Constantine




The Colosseum




One of the Remaining Columns





Trajan's Arcg



So, all in all, we felt steeped in history, and Hank was pleased with his trip to Rome, a lifelong dream finally checked off of his bucket list.

Getting back to the hotel, we tried the bus again, but got a rogue bus.  It started off with one marked destination, changed destinations in mid-stream, and seemed to have to detour for dignitaries and police causing havok with traffic.  Hank and I did what he likes to call "broken field running" (you know that sports metaphor did not come from me), hopped off the bus, found a metro stop, and got home like we knew where we were going. 

Dinner at an earlier discovered, good restaurant for our last dinner in Rome.  We both judged it altogether a success.

Today, we had breakfast at the B & B, said goodbye to Giordano, our host, and headed for the train station for the 1 1/2 hour train to Florence.  We have a track record, which we upheld - always the furthest track, always the furthest car.  However, we are both traveling rather light, so amanaged it all without too much difficulty.  The train itself was new, very nice, and on time (Mussolini or no).  We are staying at the Hotel Vasari in Florence, arranged by Hank.  It is very convenient to the train station, and quite nice (and at a reasonable price).  We will see what the breakfast tomorrow holds, but for now, all is well. 

We actually managed to get 5 hours of sightseeing in this afternoon, but will fill you in on that tomorrow.  Suffice it to say now that the eating seems to be later here (most restaurants don't open for dinner until 7 P.M. - in Rome, they were closing up by 9), but our dinner at a randomly chosen restaurant was wonderful.  Personally, I like Florence much better than Rome, so am very excited about our stay.  More anon.