Hail (in) Rome.

Getting up in time for breakfast, we headed out on the town for another day of high jinks, this time around the ancient part of Rome, all the whilst keeping an eye out for a shop which may happen to sell nuts and bolts in order to repair a broken suitcase (courtesy the local baggage handlers at the airports). The city was busy, hot, and humid, so we quickly ducked into a museum. This appeared to contain all the missing heads of the statues from the first museum we visited 2 days ago. You’d reckon they’d go to the effort of combining them – we wouldn’t have minded if they didn’t exactly match...
And so we strolled down the hill, following the steadily growing crowds of tourists until we came to the Colosseum.This is really big, would’ve been even bigger if it hadn’t been pillaged and then let decay over the years. It was apparently designed to seat 55,000 people, who could all come and be seated within 10 minutes prior to the show starting. It’s taken 2,000 years but they’ve finally managed to solve that issue. Subsequently we had to wait an hour in a long line, pay exorbitant fees to walk around a crusty relic with no show at all. Luckily our imagination could place the recipients of the (we estimated) 1 million Euro per day takings – as the victims of the proceedings in the middle.
Hot and bothered we trudged back into the centre of town to check out the Monomento Victtorio Emanuele. At this point temperatures were boiling so we didn’t spend too long checking out Mussolini’s folly and headed across the piazza for a cold drink of water - 2 of at a cost of $10 Aus.

After visiting yet another museum (this one showing the archaeological revelations of multiple civilisations building on top of the previous ones) we headed home via the local bus. This is an interesting social experiment akin to a sardine factory. The idea is you get a tin container (aka Bus), pack as many sardines (aka people) in as you can, seal tightly (ie. close the doors) and apply heat (aka sun). For good measure shake around a bit whilst it’s cooking (aka bumpy roads). The lack of salt (aka flavouring) was apparently missing at the start, however we soon realised that that this vital ingredient was supplied by the multitudes of participants through their natural sweat.

After being poured out of the tin, we slowly wiped our component parts off the cobblestones into a coherent glob of our original selves and headed back to the refuge of our poorly air-conditioned room for “debrief and cocktails”. We then found the nuts and bolts in a shop 20 meters from our Hostel. The daily build-up of tropical storms resulted in a spectacular display of rain, hail, lightning and thunder whilst we caught our collective breaths. The girls thoroughly enjoyed looking out the window of the room at all the other people across the narrow road doing likewise.

After dinner we now feel recuperated enough to prepare for our jaunt to the birthplace of our current civilisation. The thought of actually not walking to getting somewhere is quite exhilarating.