Livonia Brown and the ancient city... I

I'm going to have to split my Roman adventure into three parts as there were three very long days. The good (bad) news is that I made it through another weekend and am safely back in Germany. I picked up Jennifer after work and we hit up the altstadt in Düsseldorf for some dinner and wandering. Her comment was that I had to leave work at work for the weekend, and I feel I was pretty successful at that since I forgot that my cell phone needs a password that's in my car to be turned back on. Afterwards it was a restful evening in preparation for a long weekend. I had forewarned her about Paris and the 22 hour adventure, but I failed to take into consideration the immense climate differential between Germany (crappy) and Rome (beautiful). We took a quick walk through the Köln Dom on the way to the train station as my friend who was supposed to drive us to the airport dropped off the face of the earth about a week and a half ago.
A few hours later we arrived in Rome, stepped off the plane and was quickly introduced to the wonderfully hot weather of a Roman summer. According to wikipedia the august average high is 88F. I had been doing some research prior to the trip and found that Rome used to shut down in august for the most part due to the heat. However, recently it has been remaining open to serve the tourists (us yeah!). Having a rough sketch of a map I managed to lead us to the hostel in about 6 minutes. During my research I looked for someplace close to the Termini train station, but had no idea of the scale. Good news is that it's a pretty small city (the old part) so it was a quick walk. After paying the man getting a map and some quick tips we were off. Without Vlad and his research of sights it was up to me to figure out what we wanted to see and how to get there.
The guy at the desk told us that pretty much everything shuts down at 6pm except restaurants etc. Being about 5pm and starving we decided that today would not be the day to go to the Colosseo and simply started walking in the general direction of the Fontana di Trevi and the Trinita Dei Monti (Spanish steps) both recommended by the guy. In walking I of course had my eyes peeled and we ended up at the Basilica of Maggiore, pictured above, which had 1 of 8 obelisks stolen from the Egyptians in the courtyard. Famished and already amazed we continued on looking for food. There wasn't much to be found in the area we were in and after declining a buffet of nasty looking food we settled on a Chinese restaurant since there were a lot of Asians in the area. I made the mistake of ordering the beef, not likely the seafood medley offered by the waiter Jen followed suit. We did get to see the opening ceremony of the Olympics though. Which with the location we were in was kind of suiting.
Disoriented we picked a direction and kept on walking. I was feeling a little disappointed about the Colosseo being closed and not seeing it the first day. When I looked down a street and bam there it was! Totally psyched we made a quick walk to get our first view/pictures (of which we have many) of the Colosseo. Simply in awe of the sight we made our way down the main road and continued on. The next photo is of the Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele II with Trajan's Column to the right. Pretty cool stuff! Along the way we passed by many monuments etc. After we found the next pictured item, the Fontana di Trevi. This was a cool fountain with a lot of people just chilling staring up at it. After a nice respite we headed north to the Trinita dei Monti, the Spanish steps, another nice hangout of some significance I have yet to find out.

By now it was getting pretty dark and I was looking at the map. Since we were so close I decided we needed to pass by the Pantheon on our way back to the Hostel for our break before the club. After much walking and many other sights/plazas/columns/obelisks we made it to the Pantheon, then back to the fountain. Jennifer found one of those sweet spray paint artists and upon my urging asked for the next one, which of course she got. Lesson 1 for the newb, whatever you want, can be had if you just talk to the right monkey. So remember that picture.. we'll get back to it later. Being totally dark I thought, hey let's pass back by the Colosseo.
We got back to the Vittorio monument and got our first glimpses of the Colosseo at night with the Temple of Saturn in the foreground. Then I got the bright idea of walking around the Palatine hill and archaeological enclosure. By the time we made it back to the Colosseo any chances of hitting a club were over with as both of our legs were shot and I could feel my muscles twinging with each step. However, it was a great day in sight seeing as in a mere 7 hours we had knocked off most of our list of sights.

Day 1: Basilica Maggiore, Colosseo, Arco di Constantino, Arco di Tito, Roman Forum (look it up lots of stuff), Fontana di Trevi, Trinita dei Monti, Templo Adriano, Pantheon, Campidoglio, Circo Massimo, and various other stuff that I don't know the name of yet. I did get a highlighter from the desk at the hostel when we got back and mapped out our path and sights, which is kind of cool to see.

Fin Part I - Please Flip Tape over to side B